"... and his work on the Declaration of Independence laid the ideals on which America was built. I hope you enjoyed my report on Thomas Jefferson"
"Ok, very nice Stan. You get a B. Now let's see who is next ... hmmm... who is next..."
"No, God please not me... Oh Jesus son of God, Oh Father in Heaven no..."
"... how about you Eric?"
"Aaw! Godd-ddd-dammit..."
"Eric Cartman"
"...Son-of-a-bbb*tch"
"What did you say!"
"Nothing"
"Don't you have the report on your favorite person from History ready?"
"Yes I have"
"Then why don't you come here and present it?"
"I'm gonna"
"Now Eric!"
"Godd-ddammit!... Good Morning. Today I'm going to talk about my favourite person in History, who is ... umm... eh... yeah I know, Adolf Hitler!"
"What?"
"Adolf Hitler was a great leader... umm... he was totally awesome... umm.. he was the leader of Germany and did many good things for the world... "
"This is full of crap! You can't like Adolf Hitler! He just mass-murdered people and started the World War. He din't do anything good!"
"Yes he did! He identified the Joo problem and solved it by killing them..."
"This is outrageous! This is a hate speech!"
"... Mrs. Garrison I'm really having a difficult time with all these interruptions"
"Kyle, let Eric present his report"
"You call this a report? How can you allow this kinda racist crap?"
"That's enough Kyle! Go on Eric"
"... ummm yeah... and so, Hitler killed the Joos and ... ummm, got the world rid of Hippies and Gingers! That was my report on Adolf Hitler which I prepared after extensive study and research. Thank you!"
"It's obvious you just made all that up right now. You get an F Eric, now go back to your seat"
"Aaw! Godd-dammit!"
"Hmm, now let's see... Kyle you are next"
"My favorite person from history is the Indian spiritual and national leader, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi"
"Mrs. Garrison, I seriously object to Kyle using the word 'Indian', its ignorant and racist. The correct term is 'Native Americans' "
"It's 'Indian' as in 'India', retard"
"Yeah, and besides, look who's talking- you are the one who is a racist assh*le, fat-ass!"
"KYLE BROFLOSKI WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE! ERIC CARTMAN STOP INTERRUPTING THE CLASS! STAN MARSH MIND YOUR MANNERS! KENNY MCKORMICK STOP STARING AT BEBE'S CHEST!... whew... Continue Kyle..."
"M. K. Gandhi was also called 'Mahatma' Gandhi or a great soul in India. He helped India get independence through non-violent and peaceful struggle, not by killing... "
"Fags!"
(Laughs)
"ALRIGHT EVERYONE JUST SHUT-THE-HELL-UP! Jesus-tap-dancing-Christ!"
"He was born in an affluent family in India. His family's good standing in the society enabled him to have good education after which, he moved to England to study law. He went to practice in South Africa, where he campaigned for the rights of Indians and the native people who faced racist discrimination at the hands of the administration run by the minority white population. Later he went back to India and started a mass-movement for freedom against the British administration. He also worked hard to bring dignity to the people of low caste in India, who were historically discriminated. His famous methods of peaceful resistance have been used by many leaders all over the world, including Martin Luther King. Thank you."
"Very Good Kyle, you get an A"
"What! Thats bull-crap!"
"Eric, for the love of God..."
"No seriously, Kyle gives this gay-little speech about some p*ssy-ass Joo and you give him an A, while I get an F!"
"Gandhi wasn't a Jew fat-ass, he was a Hindu"
"Hindoo, Joo they are all the same. And did you see the obvious holes in his report Mrs. Garrison? There were people in his own country who were discriminated and this guy goes about accusing government of being racist in South Africa. How is that discrimination any better than racism?"
"No, that's different"
"Different? People in India identify caste based on their parent's caste right? In other words, its their birth which defines the basis of their discrimination. Well, its the same with racism. Except here, you have an obvious indicator of your birth, which is the color of your skin"
"Eric you get an F and that's final"
"Fine, I don't want to sit in a class with people who live in denial. Screw you guys, I'm going home!"
I had intended to post this on Oct 2, but since I was about half-dead then, I decided to postpone it to Jan 30.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
A Pilgrimage to Enlightenment
Just finished reading an epoch in popular science books. 'The Ancestor's Tale' by Richard Dawkins. No, this is not a tirade against religion, which by the way is getting a bit stale off late- 'The God Delusion' becomes painfully redundant from the middle through the end, especially if you have read some of his previous books or discourses. No, this is pure Science. And yes, Science in every sense.
The book is a journey in time. We start off from the present and march backward in time through hundreds, thousands and millions of years to the beginning of life on earth. On the way, we meet 'pilgrims'- organisms/group of organisms- who join us at a commonly shared ancestor. At each rendezvous point, selected pilgrims tell a tale of how they came about. The structure is inspired from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. A total of 40 Rendezvous points before we finally reach the Canterbury of life- the primordial replicating machine 4 billion years ago. 614 pages of an epic journey, and not one of them you would want to skip in haste. Dawkins, with his well known wit and clarity, forces the reader to see what he sees. Every distinctive piece of biology and every idea that's worth mentioning is given an thorough analysis that it deserves. And Dawkins does this with a judicious and brilliant use of all the tools of Science available under the sun- from Bio-Chemistry to Anthropology, from Quantum Mechanics to Computer Science. In short, this book is the biology-equivalent of Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time'. Its a Brief History of Life.
Toward the end of the last chapter, when the pilgrims return back to the present (and even that is not a simple retracing of steps forward in time, but a far more fascinating study of what kind of organisms would statistical reruns of evolution MIGHT produce in 4 billion years time!), Dawkins, in the voice of the host bidding farewell, expresses the exhilaration after having traversed the journey, which every avid reader would share, summarizing the spirit of the book-
If, as returning host, I reflect on the whole pilgrimage of which I have been a grateful part, my overwhelming reaction is one of amazement. Amazement not only at the extravaganza of details that we have seen; amazement, too, at the very fact that there are any such details to be had at all, on any planet. The universe could so easily have remained lifeless and simple- just physics and chemistry, just the scattered dust of the cosmic explosion that gave birth to time and space. The fact that it did not- the fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing- is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. And even that is not the end of the matter. Not only did evolution happen: it eventually led to beings capable of comprehending the process, and even of comprehending the process by which they comprehend it. The very fact that we have evolved the brain power to understand our evolutionary genesis redoubles the amazement and compounds the satisfaction.
The book is a journey in time. We start off from the present and march backward in time through hundreds, thousands and millions of years to the beginning of life on earth. On the way, we meet 'pilgrims'- organisms/group of organisms- who join us at a commonly shared ancestor. At each rendezvous point, selected pilgrims tell a tale of how they came about. The structure is inspired from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. A total of 40 Rendezvous points before we finally reach the Canterbury of life- the primordial replicating machine 4 billion years ago. 614 pages of an epic journey, and not one of them you would want to skip in haste. Dawkins, with his well known wit and clarity, forces the reader to see what he sees. Every distinctive piece of biology and every idea that's worth mentioning is given an thorough analysis that it deserves. And Dawkins does this with a judicious and brilliant use of all the tools of Science available under the sun- from Bio-Chemistry to Anthropology, from Quantum Mechanics to Computer Science. In short, this book is the biology-equivalent of Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time'. Its a Brief History of Life.
Toward the end of the last chapter, when the pilgrims return back to the present (and even that is not a simple retracing of steps forward in time, but a far more fascinating study of what kind of organisms would statistical reruns of evolution MIGHT produce in 4 billion years time!), Dawkins, in the voice of the host bidding farewell, expresses the exhilaration after having traversed the journey, which every avid reader would share, summarizing the spirit of the book-
If, as returning host, I reflect on the whole pilgrimage of which I have been a grateful part, my overwhelming reaction is one of amazement. Amazement not only at the extravaganza of details that we have seen; amazement, too, at the very fact that there are any such details to be had at all, on any planet. The universe could so easily have remained lifeless and simple- just physics and chemistry, just the scattered dust of the cosmic explosion that gave birth to time and space. The fact that it did not- the fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing- is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. And even that is not the end of the matter. Not only did evolution happen: it eventually led to beings capable of comprehending the process, and even of comprehending the process by which they comprehend it. The very fact that we have evolved the brain power to understand our evolutionary genesis redoubles the amazement and compounds the satisfaction.
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