Venu's Thoughts Series

  I have to admit that it used to (privately) bother me to see women wearing the Burqa or the Niqab - clothing that covers the whole body head to toe – including the face.  I was even ambivalent about the Hijab (head scarf). However, it bothered the rational side of me that I was so easily bothered by a piece of clothing .   After all, practically every society has a dress code - pieces of clothing that must be used to cover various parts of the body.   And, in almost all cases, the rules were different for men and women . I am quite certain that many people have had similar types of feelings.  I am writing this post in case it helps anyone else's thought processes about this. After having thought much about this, I realized that the reason why it bothered me was this:   I was subconsciously and automatically associating the (above mentioned) two pieces of clothing with oppression of women . But having different rules for clothing ...

Which  World   are you from?   Third , Second or First ?  And are you sure there is no fourth , fifth or sixth worlds?   And are you from the Developed World , where presumably, from the title, development is now a thing of the past? I cringe every time I hear the term Third World or Developing World   in spite of the fact that I currently live in what many might think of as the First World  or the Developed World . (Don't get me wrong - I'd rather live here than anywhere else.) I find the terms very derogatory  and arrogant .  If I were to be living instead in this so-called third world, I would be very upset at such a reference.  Third on what count?  GDP?  Military might? Family Values? Per capita murder rate? Terms like these stem from long-held sub-conscious feelings of supremacy - feelings that reduce one's openness to understanding others, and get in the way of everyone...

May all of you have a wonderful new year, and may all your wishes for 2015 come true. Here are some of my own wishes for the coming year, in no particular order. May this year end more wars and begin new peace initiatives. May everyone understand one another better and be less fearful of differences - whether in political views, forms of government, race, religion, ethnicity, color, and how one acts, walks, talks, or dresses. May we have real-time video transmission from every airplane so we will always know what happened inside. (With a good codec like H.264, and a low frame rate (3-5 fps), we could likely send the video with about the same bandwidth as a satellite telephone call). May the world have less police brutality. May the world have less unarmed and armed robberies of stores. May the world have less double standards both towards , and within , every community. May we have video cameras on all police cars on all sides and inside as well. Then add body cams as well - th...

Venu's Thoughts Series: WHITE IS NOT A COLOR?                                 ( White vs. Colored TERMINOLOGY) This thought struck me a long time ago - probably when I first came to the U.S. and started hearing discussions of 'colored-ness' of people.  I have to finally get it out! I'd like to point this out to everyone(and especially to everyone in the U.S. and Europe), to people of all races/ethnicities:                             ****** Folks, WHITE IS A COLOR !! ****** So can we please STOP DIVIDING THE WORLD INTO AN INVALID AND INCORRECT TWO-WAY BINARY SPLIT (1: colored 0: non-colored).   'White' people are colored people too - the color just happens to be white (or m...

Venu's Thoughts Series: TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY (Kudos to U.K.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The concept of territorial integrity is much brandied about (when it is convenient for the speaker). I propose that this concept is utter hogwash ! The concept basically says that previously established borders of a country must remain so.  Note that in most cases, these are borders established by some foreign power for their own convenience - in many cases, borders established by some colonial power without regard to the diverse cultures within these borders. Recently citizens of Scotland went to the polls to hold a referendum on whether to break away from U.K.   This, to me, is a model that the whole earth should follow .  No world leaders cried foul saying it is a violation of the 'territorial integrity' of U.K.  Kudos to citizens of U.K. for allowing this referendum to proceed peacefully and accepting its res...

Venu's Thoughts Series: INDIA'S LOST CLOUT ---------------------------------- (Rather than being thought of as a single country, India deserves to be considered more like the European Union (of countries) - from a cultural diversity and population point of view). ---------------------------------- The nation of India was cobbled together by the British. If each of the Indian states were be individual countries, * 20 Indian states would be in the top 100 countries by population * 19 Indian states would be bigger by population than Switzerland or Israel * 18 Indian states would be bigger by population than Greece, Portugal,        Czech republic or Cuba * 17 Indian states would be bigger by population than Australia, Taiwan,         Syria, North Korea, Romania or Netherlands * 16 Indian states would be bigger by population than Afghanistan * 14 Indian states would be bigger by population than Malaysia, Saudi Arabia ...