Is it right to smack children?
A complete ban on smacking has been rejected by British ministers, after a review suggested most parents opposed it.Laws on smacking in England and Wales were tightened in 2004 to stop parents and carers who assaulted children using “reasonable punishment” as a defence.
But children’s minister Kevin Brennan said laws would not be changed further, as new rules appeared to be working.(BBC)
DIVAS says:
My pa, now in his sixties and living with us two sons, still can’t understand why we ran away from home simply because he was ‘rough’ in his view for our well-being.
We as teenagers were so much fed up with our parents’ ‘wise’ scoldings that we were ready to anything to leave their house.
Although, in our 30s now, we have understood how their own background was affecting their behavior, and that parenting is really most difficut job, we still think much of sufferings would have been avoided with just a few nice words.
Should scientists talk about race?
… the nub of the story is that Dr. Watson was quoted in a British newspaper as saying that Africans are less intelligent than Europeans.
The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the US suspended him, the Science Museum in London cancelled a talk he was scheduled to give. He’s gone home now without completing his book tour.
Regardless of whether you agree with the assertions attributed to him, should he or anyone else be allowed to make such comments? Or does race have to be removed from science’s research? Are there some beliefs about race which are simply intolerable and deserve disassociation and condemnation?
It’s worth adding that Dr. Watson says he doesn’t remember saying the comments. (BBC)
DIVAS:
Scietists should be allowed to discover any aspect of human life; coz no one can stop that.
And of course, even acc to evolutionary theory, some races may be more intelligent than the other, if their predecessors were in the business which required mental skills. Some races are physically sturdier similarly.
However, this should by no means be applied to decide on individual cases.
Ghanachakkar’s ghanachakkar
Thanks to Dr Arun Gupto for clarifying the issues of marginality, representation, and subaltern studies based on an emotional outburst of a Madhesi student’s reading of the ‘Ghanachakkar’ ( Post, Feb. 10).
Despite himself being a ‘Madhesi’ professor ( sorry Arun, I know you’ll be hurt to be addressed like this; but even in the US, one’s still judged by the color of the skin, than by the contents of the character), Dr Gupto seems concerned that Sudeep’s angst and inferiority complex might send wrong signals to the people(not only Madhesi) at large.
Sudeep, too, deserves commendation for venting out his frustrations that provoked Dr Gupto to write such a soothingly illuminating article on a taboo subject in the University.
It’d be even more exciting to read Dr Gupto’s insights into his colleague Dr Beerendra Pandey’s article on Madhes, in which Dr Pandey had suggested a coalition of armed and non-armed groups in Madhes to defeat the Pahadi mentality of the state.
“Every writer I know has trouble writing.”
“Every writer I know has trouble writing.”
I was waiting for my turn.
The interview was for the post of Assistant Web Editor.
One of the anxious looking applicant began making introduction with everyone.
There was a gentleman reading a fortnightly.
I couldn’t resist myself, when I heard his name.
“Aren’t you the writer of ‘ABC’( name of the book withheld).”
“How could you remember my book written thirty years back?”
I quoted some of the lines from his book that I’d read some 15 years ago.
His eyes spread with happiness & surprise at once.
“O my goodness, you still remember after alll those years. Nobody remembers nowdays!”
“Your book ‘ABC’ is one of my favorites in Nepali literature,” I disclosed.
Of late I had been thinking that I was getting too old for job interviews.
And here was a writer of the calibre I envied appearing with me in a job interview.
i care for my baby,…black or white…
i care for my baby,…black or white…
‘Hey Uncle, congrats!’
My friend was unashamedly ‘congrating’ me.
It was his third baby.
The elder ones belong to the ‘fairer’ gender.
Hence, although i didn’t ask him, i was pretty sure that this must be the ‘unfair’ one…a boy.
I know about my friends perhaps more than a friend should know.
For example, I know that my this friend had aborted at one of the cases.
I mean abortion in its exact sense, no metaphors.
I know his wife very well. She’s a descent, sensitive, & also educated( besides other adjs).
I wanted to tease him why he was ‘congrating’ me for a result i’d made no contribution at all.
Their girls are healthy, lovely, & playful.
They easily became freinds with me the very first day i met them…a rare thing indeed. Kids are generally afraid of my ‘villainous’ looks.
Whenever their kids won’t ‘behave’, my relatives threaten with, ‘Do this/that, or i’ll tell Buzi(Monster) Uncle, Mama, Thuloba,..whatever’
And even the devil himself won’t like being addressed like that by the kids.
So, i was naturally very happy when these girls started playing with me.
I told him,’Look after these kids carefully, so that they don’t have to suffer like us.’
Once, when i asked him why were they waiting for a boy, he said, ‘You don’t know, she wants it.’
Everyone knows that the social conditioning wants it.
There are many reports from India that millions of female fetuses are ‘killed’ after identifying them with the ultrasound.
There are no such studies here in Nepal, but anyone can guess with certainty.
Of course, they care for their kids like all parents do.
Yet i know very well that things would never be the same with/for the two girls.
No matter how much their parents would love them, they’d never miss to observe that things no longer remain the same as they used to be.
But, hey feminists & activists, it’d be equally fallacious to conclude that the boy would enjoy being an ‘apple of the eyes’.
Anyway, i’m going to congratulate them all in the boy’s Nwaran(the naming ceremony) tomorrow.
One Response to “i care for my baby,…black or white…”
illnaturedgr, on December 26th, 2007 at 9:27 pm Said:
I think that it’s a total tragedy for all humanity to still have gender issues 5 days before the year 2008…
It’s a reality though and we must face it… Don’t think that only India or Nepal have gender issues,it’s China (which has the biggest problem due to overpopularity),Thailand and lots of other countries (not all of them of the so called “third world”) to cut it short…
