Priyadarshini's Killer Deserves Death

Priyadarshini's killer, Santosh Singh is the son of a senior police officer, a lawyer and a father. He brutally raped and killed Priyadarshini 10 years ago.

Does he deserve death?

Yes I say! He has lived 10 years more than his victim. Death is too good for him.

Justice delayed is justice denied. The rich and the powerful routinely get away with their crimes. Santosh's lawyers had the audacity to tell the court that he could be reformed and rehabilitated. And that he was a father (of a 2 year old girl) and hence should be shown clemency.

What?

What about the girl he raped and killed? What about the young life he snuffed out?

They will appeal in the Supreme Court of course. And then if all goes well and the Supreme Court upholds the High Courts judgement, they will appeal to the President.

Even if he is hanged in the end, Santosh Singh has at the very least a few more years to live. Time that he denied Priyadarshini.

If the President has any sence he will reject the clemency plea when and if it happens. Like he did in the Dhanonjoy Chatterji case. Dhanonjoy raped and killed a 14 year old girl. He lived for 15 years more before he was finally hanged by the state.

The difference this time is that Singh is the son of a powerful man. Let's wait and see how the drama unfolds.

My condolences to Priyadarshini's family on her loss. At the same time my best wishes in their quest for justice. And my congratulations on this joyful milestone on the hard road for justice.

See the special coverage by the Times Of India.

Pakistan - Military Strike On Madrassa

The Pakistan army launched a strike against a madrassa training terrorists. About 80 people killed. Why now? Because Prince Charles is visiting and there is growing pressure on the pakistani leadership? Maybe.

Anyway, the Yahoo! News article carries photos of the aftermath, Bodies all over and people protesting. Take a look.

For once it is not photos of mangled bodies of inocent Indian civilians, victims of a terrorist attack.

How Many Have you Read?

Random House's Modern Library has a web page listing the 100 Best Novels. A two column affair with the Board's List and the Reader's List. The differences are striking to say the least :-)

But I digress... How many have you read?

Homework For Dad :-)

Mamli, my daughter, came home on Friday very excited about a Turtle! And then she asked me if I had Logic Oriented, Graphics Oriented. I gave her a blank look and got a look of pity from her :-) She then proceeded to tell me all about how you draw turtles with LOGO ... Turtles???

Well, the next step was to fireup FireFox and type in ... Turtles? LOGO? Ahhh. LOGO Programming. All this time Mamli was telling me about how you tell the Turtle to go right and then go down and then go left .... :-) All without the mouse. Use keyboard only. What?

Then it hit me :-) Some sort of programming language. That narrowed things down a bit. Well, after looking at Google results from people selling Logo creation serices, I finally managed to narrow down and find my first reference to LOGO. It was simple after that. I found a number of web sites about Logo:

1. A ThinkQuest page on LOGO
2. Berkeley Logo (UCBLogo), which took me to...
   
3. FMSLogo: An Educational Programming Environment and
   
4. MSWLogo

I also found a LOGO Interpreter called Torture (written in Java).

Downloaded Torture (I like things written in Java) and played around a bit. Seems simple enough but by now I was begining to realize that I had landed myself a considerable amount of homework!

I now have to learn the LOGO language and put the whole thing into a package that I can then teach my daughter. Opps...

Boss Day Celebrations - TimesJobs.com

TimesJobs.com, a leading Job Portal in India is running a Boss Day Celebration. The picture above appeared in this morning's edition of Times Of India, Hyderabad.

Have you entered your boss yet? :-)

Or do you hate him/her?

:-)

Net2Ftp

Till recently I used www.web2ftp.com to access my web site from work. They have shutdown the free access module and I had to go looking for a new solution. Google threw up Net2FTP and I used it today to make a few changes. Looks nice. In fact it is easier to use than Web2FTP. Nice GUI.

My Most Cherished Photograph

This photo is my most cherished possession. It was taken by Dr. Krishna Swarup Reddy, then HOD, Pediatrics & Neonateology, Apollo Hospitals Hyderabad on the 21st of March, 2004. I am holding Bablu, our second child, just after birth. The feeling was awesome. I can still recall the awe & pleasure I felt when I held my son for the very first time. The funny thing is that I saw our son before my wife did. Bablu was born by cesarean section and Padmaja was still under anesthesia at the time.

Today Bablu (Jyotiraditya Satpathy) is a naughty two and half year old.

Unfortunately for me I wasn't present when Mamli, our first child, was born in Rourkela. I arrived almost a week later. I have a similar photo of her in my hands. She was about a week old at that time. That was much before digital photography entered our lives :-) I have to find that photo and digitize it. Mamli (Durgesh Nandini Satpathy) is seven and a half now and in school (class 3).

Finally! All Set To Go Now!

I finally found time to make the necessary changes to the web site to point at this blog rather than the older Thingamablog based one.

Anyway, everything is all set up and ready to go. I will resume regular blogging from now on!

Testing Email Blogging

This is a test of email blogging.

What I do is me: for that I came.

(from "As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame" by Gerard Manley Hopkins)