La Salle Debain

Although my daughter Shailaja has technically been attending preschool for a year, her class hasn't been doing much in the way of academics though I suppose they have learnt some valuable life skills such as the social unacceptability of lifting your dress up over your head. From next a year a more ambitious program of instruction is to be attempted.

It was felt that some sort of graduation ceremony (or congrajulation as Shailaja calls it) was in order and this Friday morning my wife and I joined the other parents for the proceedings. Unfortunately, although we were beaming with pride, the general reaction amongst the children was confusion and terror. Not Shailaja as she already has extensive experience of participating in ceremonies and rituals. But the other children it seems do not. After 45 minutes of hair pulling, screaming freakouts and pants wetting, everyone was successfully gradulated and pizza and fruit punch were served.

The picture shows Shailaja with her teachers Miss Shaheena and Miss Viviana.

According to an article at MSN Health and Fitness, Jersey City (where I live) is the the third happiest city in America. The most depressed incidently, is Philadelphia.

The Official Debian Developers Home Page.

Btw do you like my new hackergotchi? A few days ago, Antonio "gnrfan" Ognio offered to redo my old one. With a name like gnrfan I was a little afraid he might draw a mullet on me but it actually came out very nicely. Thanks gnrfan!

Morgen das Sonnensystem!

In the spirit of magnanimity, here's some leftist poo-flinging. Though I was in the area at noon and there was only one forlorn protestor there. I guess now the economy is improving the protestors all have jobs or something.

Apparently noted LKML loon Jeff Merkely has found a new field to make dumb statements in according to something I read on Aneesh Kumars' blog. Jeff said:

> Interesting trivia. Krishna in hindi means "all attractive". The Greeks 
> took the word and over time it was corrupted into the word "Christ" which was
> later used for Jesus of Nazereth. I lot of people probably don't know his 
> last name actually came from the  Vedic culture.

Uh no. Krishna isn't Hindi it is Sanskrit and means "black" or "dark." (Referring to His skin color.) Christos is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Moshiach meaning "Anointed one". There is no etymological relationship between the two whatsoever. Perhaps a minor thing, but it drives me up the wall.

...and a web page. Our little boy is to be called नीलग्रीव (Nilagriva. By the way if you couldn't read the characters to the left, install the ttf-indic-fonts package .) Actually strictly speaking, in Sanskrit it should be नीलग्रीवा But the long vowel makes it sound like a girls name so we'll just say it is in the vocative case or something. The formal naming is tonight.

I've discovered I can sleep standing up.

Birthdate and time: 10:07pm EST, November 13, 2004

Height: 19.5 inches

Weight: 5 lbs 9 oz.

Rashi: Vrshchika

Nakshatra: Vishakha

Both mother and baby are doing fine. We still need to pick a name though.

Today is Diwali and tomorrow is the first day of Vikram Samvat 2061 (Durmukha naama samvatsara) Best wishes to all my readers and their loved ones and here's hoping you stay happy and prosperous (and free!) in the coming year.

For those keeping track of the baby situation, the doctors had managed to persuade him to stay put for a while but now he's making another break for it. We're going to the hospital now. Lets see what happens...

Update: It looks like tomorrow will be the day.

I am embarrassed to say I actually ended up not voting. I have a good excuse though, my wife had to be rushed to the hospital as it seems our son may be born prematurely. Had I voted, I would have cast my ballot for George W. Bush. (Not that it would have mattered too much in heavily Democratic Hudson County, NJ.) As I write this, it the majority of my countrymen have also picked Bush who will remain president.

Not that GWB is someone I'm necessarily jumping up and down for. In fact from a conservative point of view there are plenty of reasons to be appalled by his track record. for instance the unprecedented increase in the national debt, the expansion of the federal government, our inept handling of the liberation of Iraq which should have been a cakewalk. Although I've tended to vote Republican since I became a citizen, I genuinely considered a switch this time.

And at first the Democrats didn't disappoint. Any candidates displaying any incipient signs of progressivism (Kucinich, Dean) were swiftly shown the door. I would have preferred Lieberman myself. He would have also appealed to the Evangelical Christians who are the Republican core (the most philo-semitic and pro-Israel constituency in US politics.) However today, ant-semitic views are most likely to be found amongst the hardcore left, Blacks and Hispanics -- core Democratic supporters so that wasn't going to fly. I was as surprised as anyone when Kerry got the nomination mostly by hiding in a corner while the others destroyed each other.

That was a winning strategy for the primaries but people want a president who stands for something. To some people what Bush stands for might be scary but at least you know he means it. Why is there always such a cloud over Kerrys opinions? It is a function I think of the state of the Democratic party since the sixties. They stand for nothing. They are just a loose conglomeration of whiny special interests that have nothing in common beyond disliking Republicans. Kerry couldn't have taken a stand on anything even if he wanted to without annoying one faction or the other. If the Kerry of the debates had shown up three months earlier, he may still have had a chance instead he just couldn't shake the flip-flopper label.

The other major factor turning voters off Kerry was his supporters. Bush will not go down in history as the greatest president but the attacks on him reached frightening levels of hysteria. From the Goebels-like manipulation of Michael Moore (apparently currently being channelled by Osama bin Laden,) the blatant partisanship of the media to the shrill shrieking of the newly-minted political experts of the Film Actors Guild Bush was turned into Evil incarnate. If "the people" were so fed up with GW, why did their "grassroots" movement have to financed by an international billionaire financier? Voters were savvy enough to realize that the opposition were every bit a part of the oligarchy they claimed to be rebelling against.

Aging flower children were also out in full force. Iraq was to be the new Vietnam. The spectre of a draft was raised. (never mind that it was Kerrys' plan that was more likely to require a draft.) The tired old tropes of class warfare were trotted out one more time. They even dug up the corpse of Joan Baez at one point. For those of us who have only experienced the sixties on MP3, it was not impressive.

Despite P. Diddys direst threats, the vote did not get rocked. Young people love liberal comedians for the zingers the throw at President Bush (who lets face it is particularly zinger-friendly) but inadvertently this has caused them to think of politics as just another entertainment spectacle. This election shows that rumors...(pause)...on the inner'nets are a piss-poor match for old-fashioned and boring organization.

All this means Americans have by resounding margins put their trust in George W. Bush. Both houses of congress have also increased their Republican majorities. Any illusions liberals may have that they represent America may be considered crushed.

Predictably though the libs will start wringing their hands over why the "sheeple" have let them down once again. Good old reliable http://adam.rosi-kessel.org/weblog|Adam Kessel] has already blogged about how Bush may have stolen the election. If that's the kind of thing that will tide you over for the four years until President Giuliani is elected, knock yourself out. You might try a new tactic: personal responsibility and respect for your country and its people. Ironically Bush would have been vulnerable on that front but the American left in its present condition can never make it stick.

Is November. participants have 30 days to write a novel atleast 50,000 words long. I'm going to try it. My novel is a science fiction story provisionally titled "Man's Best Friend." A time traveller arrives in the distant future where men and dogs are basically the only species left. Humanity has evolved to incredible levels of intelligence but a side effect is a total inability to concentrate. Meanwhile dogs' empathy has evolved to a kind of telepathy. Being more practical, they rule society but due to the lack of opposable thumbs are forced to keep the humans around. Then something happens (I guess I should think about this quick!) to upset the balance of power and only the man from the past can save the day.