Time’s 2009 Top 25 Blogs

Time Magazine names the following as the top 25 blogs “in the world, spanning politics, housekeeping, astronomy and everything in between” for the year 2009:-

1. Talking Points Memo
2. The Huffington Post
3. Lifehacker
4. Metafilter
5. The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan
6. Freakonomics
7. BoingBoing
8. Got2BeGreen
9. Zen Habits
10. The Conscience of a Liberal: Paul Krugman
11. Crooks and Liars
12. Generación Y
13. Mashable
14. Slashfood
15. Official Google Blog
16. synthesis
17. bleat
18. /Film
19. Seth Godin’s Blog
20. Deadspin: Sports News without Access, Favor, or Discretion
21. Dooce
22. Confessions of a Pioneer Woman
23. Said the Gramophone
24. Detention Slip
25. Bad Astronomy

Click here for details and why

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Top 10 of Everything

(Time Magazine Logo image source: http://www.amanochocolate.com)

Temples vs Schools

Actually this is something that me and my cousin have in our minds for some time now…

(Having beautiful temples is good but having better educated students is better – Image source: http://media.merchantcircle.com)

This will be, in my opinion, one of the best ideas to come when it comes to our fellow Indians’ behaviour with donation money and temples.

From Raged Indian:-

Why build thousands of temples when our Indian children can’t even afford to go to the school? Why the fuck do we need air conditioned temple? So that people will call our God ‘cool’ eh? The Tamil schools don’t even have a ceiling fan, and we have fully tiled expensive marble temples all over the country?

We have the biggest statue in the world, and we also have the first school to be located in shop houses. We point our fingers towards the politician, but shouldn’t we be looking in the mirror? The change should be with us. We’re the one to be blamed.

We hesitate to give to another human being, but we do not hesitate to give it to God. When had God used your money? He do not need your pocket money all la! If you’re saying by donating directly to the school, the schools might misuse the money; then what about all the money you give out to the temple; it goes to Lord Sivan’s pocket is it?

We are so scared about God and punishment that we eventually forget what He said in the first place, to help fellow human beings first, not Him. He does not need your fruits, rice or any other things. We, humans are the one who need it. We give out so many offerings to the God, using our hard earned cash, when none of them realistically would reach God.

Ayya veke ayam, attha veke atte kutiyum vettenethe pothum pa…

Annual festival in the temple and you take part in as much as ‘Abishegam’ (ceremonies) as possible. You pay between RM 51 to sometimes as higher as RM 1001 for something that is solely based on your faith. Is there a price for faith? Will God not accept prayers from the poor?

If all this funds can be redirected to schools, imagine how many thousands of children would study in a much more excellent condition than below cramped and hot classrooms?

It is a noble idea especially people have been bugging me to donate “generously” to temples and especially on certain days of the year so that me and my family will get that “extra” blessings. Well, it has not be to only Indian students but to any Malaysian students who been derived of proper environment for better educations. Poor students in schools, facilities depleted schools and struggling charity homes should take precedent to cash rich temples.

Further, with many small temples still hesitating to merge with other smaller temples and create a more efficient temple administration, depriving them of the extra cash in yearly festival donations may just be the trigger to force them to merge into one bigger temple.

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Temple Fiasco Revisited

Samy Vellu & RM50 Million?

The One Sided Threat

It is rather humorous to read a politician’s threats

(There are always 2 sides of the story and thus it justifies fairness on both sides. Image source: http://www.seattlepi.com)

Yes, the threat can be real of course – after all, they are holding all the ISA, MACC, PDRM, etc panic buttons. It is humorous because politicians are well known to be very selective in their threats.

What threatens their hold on power and money and corrupt way of life is often deemed and sugar laced as a deadly threat to national unity, racial harmony and national wealth. At times, such threats are made to pacify groups of citizens (especially when elections are around the corner) but nothing concrete is done thereafter.

In the last few years, such threats have been coated by politicians as coming from bloggers and opposition politicians. Many direct and indirect attempts been made to silent or to control the blogsphere but so far, bloggers  like RPK have prevailed.

But so far there is no end of the attempts for control of bloggers – the latest crap is this:-

Bloggers who incite hatred or harp on sensitive issues like race and religion in their postings can be prosecuted for sedition, said Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein.

(Source: The Star)

Any civic minded citizens will agree that anyone who incite hatred or harp on sensitive issues like race and religion need to be locked in some deep dungeons and the keys to the locks to be thrown away.

But the thing is this; such statements did not come from some “Mahatma Gandhi alike” personality but rather from a person from a political party. Similar statements have been made countless times from other politicians who  have decided to close one eyes on similar acts of hatred and incitement from their own circle of family and friends but jump high and wide with threats when the same thing comes from others.

Let me know how many times rumour and hatred inciters from the mainstream media and ruling political party have been hauled and booked for breaking the laws? Let me know how many times innocent citizens have been detained for questioning and booked under harsh laws based on unsubstantial rumours? Let me know how many times politicians made many threats in public forums to punish the non-Malays for questioning on outdated  and unfair policies and then got scot off free?

And just when I thought Hishammuddin may have decided to change for the good and is going to make serious cleaning up on those who incites hatred and raise sensitive issues, the seasoned politician lets the cat out of the bag with this statement:-

“There should be some boundaries when posting in blogs. Irresponsible bloggers can cause disunity and derail the 1Malaysia concept,” he said

Ha, so the threats has nothing to do with real preservation of national unity and racial & religion harmony among all Malaysians but rather it is about saving Najib’s crappy and outdated 1Malaysia concept. It is about saving Najib’s face in front of Malaysians and getting those who been breaking the illusive 1Malaysia concept to be silenced

So, this is what I think Hishammuddin should do – make the threats fair and square and get everyone, no matter how powerful the parasite may be, to be booked for crimes of inciting hatred and raising sensitive issues. Do this or shove the threats into your keep your one-sided threats to yourself.

Read Also

RPK’s I am Raja Petra Kamarudin and I incite hate

Aisehman’s In the Gutter

MACC Critics

(MACC – was a big mistake and is not an institution for all Malaysians? Image source: http://www.mysinchew.com)

As the police are having a hard time piecing together the sequences that led to Teoh Beng Hock, the mainstream media led by the ruling party is doing its own spin. The fact that it is now touching on sensitive areas like racial composition of the MACC leads one to think that the Government have lost all avenues to keep shielding MACC from a guilty stand and is desperate to distract our attentions from MACC.

The latest insensitive spin was one written by New Straits Times group managing editor Zainul Ariffin Isa in Berita Harian:-

Berita Harian suggested the agenda was to weaken Malay-controlled institutions in the article, “Kematian Teoh timbulkan pelbagai spekulasi politik”, written by the New Straits Times group managing editor Zainul Ariffin Isa.

He wrote that political opportunism can turn grief into political capital, and death can be made a catalyst to stoke anger and racial sentiments.

“It is not just the Chinese or supporters of the Pakatan Rakyat who know anger and seek justice. “Suspicions have been raised especially among the non-Malays that MACC, which like other departments have many Malay officers, selectively chose non-Malays to be investigated,” he wrote.

(From Malaysian Insider)

Certainly Berita Harian and its learned editor have lost track of the plot and time (I guess they are still locked in the Stone Age mentality).

This certainly requires a strong response! And a hard hitting response it came in form of Art Harun’s post titled “Macdeth Act II – an open letter to Berita Harian” where among many thing he said:-

Yes, the deceased is a Chinese man. But most and foremost is the fact that HE IS A MALAYSIAN. Every death in custody, regardless of race, creed and breed, will be a tragedy and will be treated as tragic by us, Malaysians.

A. Kugan, an Indian, also died in custody, with horrific injuries or mark of injuries. Malaysians of all races denounced that. Malaysians of all races wanted the truth.

When Nurin Jazlin Jazimin and Sharlinie Mohd Nashar were kidnapped, the whole Malaysia was outraged.

That’s hitting a nail to the outdated and reckless statement from Berita Harian that the current tragedy has turned out to be a fight between the Chinese against Malays. It is not! All Malaysians would have been angered the same if the innocent, irregardless of his age, religion and colour of his skin, was interrogated into the wee morning without his lawyers and turns out death on the same premise on eve of his wedding.

Has everything that is going against the establishment has to be racial in nature? Can the establishment make not mistakes, abuse of power and corrupt? As Art Harun said – shame on you, Berita Harian!

Changing Clothes Again

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Update: The new template is great but there are some bugs to the code and as Yvy mentioned in the comments, the side bar need to be trimmed. So, the old template is back until I have the time to check the codes and change the background picture.
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There comes a time when you open your blog early in the morning, stare at the screen for 5 minutes and then tell yourself “Man, this blog template is getting boring”. You look at it couple of times, just to be sure and find the blog is not changing for better. You do what anyone with itchy hands would do…you change the blog template.

There you go – my simple explanation on my new blog template. I was at Caz this morning and one template caught my eyes. It was with my favorite color, blue and a non-xxx rated picture (there was another template I liked better but it had a picture of a guy holding a girl’s bare backside – cool. Probably I will use that someday). So, since I was in the office very early, I managed to find time to change the template, tweak here and there and presto, my blog have changed clothes – for the 7th time since I started blogging. Yes, the itch is gone for now.

Compared to the previous template, the sidebar at the permalink is working correctly now (the only defect of the previous but otherwise superb template)
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(Filed under Del.icio.us Tag: Blogsphere)
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