Not too long ago, the Sunday Leader published an article on prostitution in Sri Lanka. It was so absurd and poorly written that not only did it prompt the good old pitchforks-and-torches response from Colombo on Facebook; it also probably made every single dead journalist turn over in their graves and scream in spiritual agony. The Queen, had she seen that ...
There’s a video making the rounds of the Internet: a student protest at Yale. What they are protesting over is a bit complicated, but I’ll try to simplify: the Yale Intercultural Affairs Council sent out an email to everyone asking people not to wear Halloween costumes that might cause others to feel uncomfortable with regard to their race or ethnicity. ...
I’m seeing this all over my newsfeed today. Long story short, girl wears short shorts to school. Girl gets suspended temporily. Girl goes on a rant. Rant is picked up by a lot of feminists. Rant is picked up by a lot of newssites. “When you send a girl home from school because her clothing […]
I first came across George Redhawk by accident. Someone on my Facebook shared a GIF. A GIF, for the very few who don’t know what I’m talking about, is a short, animated image, usually looping in on itself. This one showed a human face; a man, woman, I can’t tell, but on his head was a phoenix vomiting fire. His eyes and ...
Yesterday, Eran Wickramaratne, Sanjana Hattotuwa (Groundviews) and Malinda Seniviratne (Daily Nation) got together for a forum on social media and the whole question on censorship. Now, far be it from me to talk about that, because by a rather unlucky combination of work and delayed meetings, I completely missed out on that thing. Pity – […]
People have always speculated why Instagram picked the 1:1 square format for its photos. I always believed it was a love letter to those old Polaroid and Kodak cameras – until I came across a Quora post by Kevin Systrom, co-founder and CEO of Instagram: “We realized that if we were going to do photos, that we’d have to be ...
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!” -The Who, We Won’t Get Fooled Again I think every sane, responsible Sri Lankan, at some time during the past 30 days, has wondered whether the new Yahapalanaya government will turn out to be the same as the old regime. It was a risk we took. One month later, things are ...
Recently, a friend shared an old poem by M.H.M Ashraff called “The Buddha and the Poet”. In it, the Poet – presumably the author – meets the Buddha, and they discuss, in rather rambling verse, the problems in the country, and [in the poem] the Buddha concludes that he must return and teach the Dhamma in Tamil. At the time ...
Right. As some of you may know, I’ve been looking for a bike. Not just any bike. I refuse to buy a modern Indian bike (apologies, Indians, but the last thing I need is an overpriced, underpowered piece of crap with more plastic than metal and a tacky-sounding name). It has to be Japanese, simply because the Japanese know how ...
Gopiharan Perinpam created an excellent set of voting guidelines targeting the upcoming election. Here they are, with minor modifications. If you’re voting, you might want to read this. PART ONE: ELIGIBILITY 1) Voters List for the Parliamentary General Elections 2015 will be based on the Electoral Registers of 2014. You are eligible to vote if your name appears in that register. ...
A week ago, a new friend (and a bit of a kindred spirit) and I turned this question over in our minds. Rewriting the Bible in programming code seemed like a very cool idea (especially if you’re a few glasses of wine into the evening). Not only would it be a fantastic intellectual exercise (init_light() print “Let there be light” ...
I haven’t written anything here in a while. Not for lack of wanting; there have been many, many times where I picked up this particular digital pen, despite the lateness of the hour and the to-do-lists on the walls. But there is always a leap between want and do. These woods are lovely, but I have had many promises to keep. And sometimes many miles ...
In 1993, Samuel Huntington wrote an article titled “The Clash of Civilizations”. In it, he expounded his theory that the world was basically divided into 9 civilizations – the Western, the Orthodox, the Islamic, and so on and so forth. He split these civilizations based not on economics but along racial and cultural lines, and explained that wars would happen ...
In the wake of the Paris attack, Anonymous declared war on ISIS – #OpParis. Cue sinister Guy Fawkes mask promising the digital destruction of the Islamic State. Within 24 hours of ISIS calling them idiots, 5,500 ISIS-related Twitter accounts went down. Anonymous’s war on ISIS isn’t new. Some part of the collective has been hammering away at ISIS since Look up ...
Before you read this, I want you to know that I have nothing against Spongebob. I love Spongebob. But man, I just realized that something is seriously off about this show. Okay, let’s start with something we know, and have no trouble accepting: Mr Krabs* is obsessed with money. Plutomania: an insatiable craving for money A lot of people say ...
Like many others, I used to get up in the morning and check my RSS feeds. It didn’t matter where these feeds were. I always had them on call. Now I get up in the morning and check my Facebook. And there we are: the daily dose of politics, courtesy of NYT, Al-Jazeera, the Daily Mirror, Colombo Telegraph. The best ...
The government of Sri Lanka has filed an appeal before the Riyadh Court in Saudi Arabia, on behalf of the Sri Lankan female domestic worker who was recently sentenced to be stoned to death after being found guilty of having a clandestine affair, the Foreign Employment Ministry said. The Ministry sources said the woman was married and having children in ...
When is racism not racism? Apparently, when it’s a minority doing it. Many people who read my article ‘Wali Kukul Le’ liked it. Many didn’t. Ironically, it was those who hated it that saw through to the next question: why are we bashing one particular ethnic group for being inordinately proud of their race? What about the others? Granted, the ...
I grew up a Buddhist. Or at least, they tried to make me one. Growing up, it was interesting to see how my parents approached religion. My mother was zealous and by-the-book. Truly bad luck was attributed to karma. Poya days were inevitably spent at the temple. Monks were never to be argued with. My father was the complete opposite. Sarcastic and ...
Some days ago, a boy was denied access to an education on the suspicion that he had HIV/Aids. It seemed the entire Sri Lankan rose up in protest over his plight – and over the retarded comments of the Education Minister, who tried to make a case for separating the child from his mother. And what did we do? Nothing, ...
