Statistically speaking

0.3% of bloggers really do write for themselves.
30% of towel users use the same towel for more than three weeks.
47% of officegoers say The Times of India is a better lunchtime table mat when they're eating at their desks than any other paper. The combination of newsprint for absorbency and glossy paper supplements to prevent seepage is unbeatable.

Where did we get these figires from? They're a DRE estimation.

No, honey, I don't want to go to another bloody wedding

Guests arriving with presents found themselves cajoled by Blood Kumar and his wife Mangalam to join the blood party, held at a corner of the wedding hall in a busy part of the city.

Read.:

Speaking of freedom..

FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) has an Action Alert out:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency prohibits journalists from having unsupervised interviews with Hurricane Katrina victims who have been relocated to FEMA trailer parks, according to a report in the Baton Rouge Advocate (7/15/06).

“If a resident invites the media to the trailer, they have to be escorted by a FEMA representative who sits in on the interview,” FEMA spokesperson Rachel Rodi is quoted in the article. “That’s just a policy.”

The alert goes on to describe stuff that would seem natural in a police state, like security guards refusing to allow a reporter to give a victim her business card, not allowing photographs or interviews, and being "chased by the guards in golf carts, who said they would be taking down our license plate and that we couldn't return."

FAIR recommends that you follow the advice on FEMA's website which

urges citizens to report "allegations of civil liberties or civil rights abuses" to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, who is Richard L. Skinner.

CONTACT:
Inspector General Richard L. Skinner
Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528
E-mail: DHSOIGHOTLINE@dhs.gov

Link courtesy Prem Panicker via email.

More light at the end of the tunnel

Regular readers of this blog (hola, zig!) will remember the link we posted in May about the gentleman who had a light bulb (wattage not specified) removed from, um, the end of his digestive tract.

Awab Alvi points us to this story on Yahoo, about a similar case in Multan:

Mohammad, who is serving a four-year sentence for making liquor, prohibited for Muslims, said he was shocked when he was first told the cause of his discomfort. He swears he didn't know the bulb was there.

"e-mail has become the new snail mail"

E-mail is so last millennium. Young people see it as a good way to reach an elder _ a parent, teacher or a boss _ or to receive an attached file. But increasingly, the former darling of high-tech communication is losing favor to instant and text messaging, and to the chatter generated on blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Read on.

[via Nancy's status message.]

As Martin Niemöller didn't say

When the DoT came for the religious fundamentalists,
I remained silent;
I was not a religious fundamentalist.

When they blocked the leftists,
I remained silent;
I was not a leftist.

When they came for the libertarians,
I did not speak out;
I was not a libertarian.

When they came for the litbloggers,
I did not speak out;
I was not a litblogger.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

The original

What the heck, since we're ripping off the good pastor, we might as well continue to sermonise ponderously. Here's what we wrote to the Bloggers Collective early this morning, with a few links added:

Congratulations! (and a but..)

Pat yourself on the back.

It is absolutely fabulous that the pressure created by we few, we happy few (as of the time when the news of the blanket ban being lifted came out, this group was just 357 people strong) has pushed the ISPAI to rethink the ban. Hopefully, it will also make the Government rethink its policies.

Which brings me to the "but.."

Much remains to be done. Remember, it could be your blog tomorrow, getting banned all by itself, with no horde of angry bloggers coming to rescue you.

There are threads on this group and a page on the wiki about a possible Public Interest Litigation. There is also a lot of information in both places about the Right To Information act, as well as plans to file petitions. Please follow those threads, and keep the momentum going on this movement in favour of free speech for all of us.

Gifts from Pakistan

Please see:

InBlogs, a creation by Yasir Memon and Naveed Memon, which will provide the same service to Indian blog readers as pkblogs was doing so stoutly these past few days.

And also:

The Grease Monkey script by Mansoor, designed for Firefox users.

In this email to the Bloggers Collective from which I learned of these goodies, Dr. Awab Alvi, Pakistani blogging community stalwart, says

We seriously thought it was because of a thick and stubborn headed Pakistani
government that resulted in such a stupid move but seeing the Indian
Government react similarly it seems all governments are the same when they
want to implement decisions always without due thought and consideration.

Reading a few emails in this group just recently it seems the Indian
government might actually come to its senses and finally lift this blockade
surely a big relief to the world, but until then we would like to present
the Indian Blogging community with yet another tool to be used on their
websites which converts all Blogspot links into a URL utilizing the proxy
servers of pkblogs.com.

This tool can be downloaded from the the Don’t Block the Blog website, and is credited to Adnan Siddiqui

The good doctor (his specialisation is dentistry, by the way - never thought we'd say nce things about a dentist) goes on to say

We share all these as a gift to build better friends across the border and hope to shed the image of hatred and violence and give way to a peaceful co-existence between to lovely nations.

Doctor Saahab, shukriya.

The marginalien gets a driving license

Go along for the ride: 1, 2, 3. The saga will, no doubt, continue here.

For those of you in india, the same links, pkblogs-ised, 1, 2, 3. The saga will, no doubt, continue here.

Y'know..

It's pretty awesome that a small (357 as of this writing) rag-tag group of vociferously disagreeing, rude, loud, opiniated, individualistic soap box orators can get the monolothic powers that be to (or at least their scapegoat) to back down and be sensible.

Whew. Too long, that sentence, especially after the last ten days or so of manic activity around the Mumbai Help blog and wiki, the Bloggers Collective and the Bloggers Against Censorship wikia. Will come back and write more about this, we will (be still your beating heart), unless, of course, someone pays us to do so first. Which reminds us. We have shitloads of deadlines to meet, and all of those people know this URL.

So you go read them links. Especially the BC archives. Much fun. We shall go back to the salt mines.

Extra, extra! Indian Industry's feelings have been hurt!

Just found this while looking for something else

..trade chamber Assocham issued a strong statement saying the movie, directed by Madhur Bhandarkar, shows Corporate India in bad taste by portraying industrial houses as 'ruthless and heartless', other industry bodies like CII and Ficci chose to keep mum and distance themselves from the issue.

'It's merely a work of art, and nothing more should be read into it,' a Ficci official said.

The movie in question is Corporate, and no, we haven't seen it, so we have no idea if it is, as the FICCI official claims, a work of art.

Flash! Mr Bhandarkar and his producers should use this in their publicity: "a work of art - FICCI"