yazadjal.com

Well, now that he has gone off on a jamboree to Bangalore, the average IQ of the blog has gone up. I thought I’d restore the balance a bit by putting in dumb joke I read off the DNRC newsletter
After a tragic communication mixup, Flossie Mongo devoured her husband of 30 years, Lester. […]

Can someone help me please?
I registered my domain about 2 years back with Win2000hoster.com. I was young and naive, and it seemed like a good and cheap deal at the time, but now I’ve realised that the problem is that they are both the hosting company and the domain registrar, and there doesn’t seem to […]

Need to escape from the heat of Bombay. So, I’m going to enjoy the cooler environs of Bangalore from March 31st to April 3rd. But to pay for my hedonism, I’m also going to bake in the oven of Chennai on April 4th.
Bloggers who’d like to see / hear / feel / (AE:Whatever) me, drop […]

Quick, without googling, tell me who is Norman Borlaug?
Once again. No googling please. I’ve talked of him on my blog earlier so no looking there either, and if you know about him only from looking there earlier, you are disqualified from answering. It is supposed to be Indian tradition to be eternally grateful to […]

Women, mark March 14th in your calendars. It’s payback time, with Steak and BJ day!
Disclaimer: The page is sexist and has links to some graphic stuff. Definately not safe for children or during work. Good for a lauch though!
Link courtesy: The incomparable MadMan!

All those who use Movabletype, please install MT Blacklist on your site to protect against comment spam.
We can add the URLs that the spammers advertise into a blacklist. MT Blacklist will purge the comments containing those URLs from the system and prevent any further comments with those URLs. You can import the blacklists […]

If I vote in the coming Lok Sabha elections, my vote will be the least valuable in India. Where am I?

Turns out that my vote is not actually the least valuable. That honour goes to a resident of Outer Delhi, which has a constituency size of 3.1 million. My constituency - Thane comes second - […]

The supreme irony of life is that no one gets out of it alive.
~ Robert Heinlein

Alyque Padamsee would like to extend a monologue into a dialogue. The poor penis felt quite left out while the vagina kept ranting away. So Alyque is organising the Penis Dialogues. Fabulous! This is one play I must see. And quickly, because the culture vultures are already hovering.
[AE: Shanti beat you to this story. Get […]

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
~ Lord Acton
If the name sounds familiar, it’s because of he’s the same man who said “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Here’s a brief bio.

Thought provoking piece by Jesse Walker on libertarianism from the bottom up.
Link Courtesy: The Agitator

Ronald Bailey’s new article in Reason shows that new technologies have always had a rough ride in initial public opinion.
In 1969, a Harris poll found that a majority of Americans believed that producing test-tube babies was “against God’s will.” Christiaan Barnard was condemned by many as a “butcher” when he transplanted the first heart into […]

The more corrupt the State the more numerous the laws.
~ Cornelius Tacitus (AD 55?-117?)
Quote source: Freedom’s Nest. Biographical info on Cornelius Tacitus
in Wikipedia.
Doesn’t look like this has been heeded in India. Bibek Debroy has done a lot of work in this area, estimating that there are 35,000+ laws in India (the exact number, […]

When I talked about legalizing corruption, I was thinking of payments to political parties. Recently the CII called upon its members to donate to political parties only by cheques and in accordance with the law.
Now whether they pay openly or on the sly, companies (or individuals or unions for that matter) are not doing it […]

Happy birthday to guest blogger Ravikiran Rao, who turns 37 today. Since he’s taking a break from his site (just like I am), y’all can drop your wishes and b’day bumps right here.
I’m kidding about his age. He’s not a day over 35 29.

Ravages asks about my argument for legalizing corruption, “And if corruption were legalized, would you have a law that says how much of corruption is within the limit?”
Actually, if I remember correctly, the Supreme Court has answered that question in atleast one case. What happened was that a company claimed the bribes it paid at […]

Ok people, I have some posts pending. I want to make a post actually defending Nehru and another post attacking Nehru. I am also not going to shy away from the challenge thrown at me by a couple of commenters, asking me What Would I Do In 1947.
This is in addition to the next post […]

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own […]

Shailesh Gandhi and others have launched Satyameva Jayate in response to the heightened degree of corruption and criminalisation in India. This is one of the many civil society responses to the break down on governance.
They have brought out a booklet and the site is the e-manifestation of their efforts. A nice set of […]

The first ever quiz I took to find out whether I was a libertarian or not was the World’s Smallest Political Quiz (WSPQ) Well, as I already considered myself not just libertarian but anarcho-capitalist (I had just finished reading the Machinery of Capitalism), I scored a perfect 100 on both personal and economic self government […]