Hunter

Oxfam pays $1m duty - British charity Oxfam paid the Sri Lankan government $1m in duty for importing Indian-manufactured vehicles to be used in tsunami reconstruction work.

Niger court frees slave activists - A Niger court has freed on bail two anti-slavery campaigners who had been held for six weeks on charges of fraud. The appeals court in the capital, Niamey, said there were insufficient grounds to continuing holding the men. Note that Niger officially banned slavery quite sometime ago… well…. May 2003, to be precise ! The Niger government apparently says that there is a caste system in the country and members of lower castes have been often mistaken for slaves. A brilliant whitewash, say what ?

Amardeep’s blog on Parineeta and Vidya Balasubramanian’s “very traditional Indian looks”, has an interesting Sidenote : An interesting article on the 'Devdas phenomenon' is at the University of Iowa. And Poonam Arora has written a serious, scholarly article on "Devdas, India's Emasculated Hero: Sadomasochism and Colonialism". Have started reading Poonam Arora’s article, no comments as yet.

Also read Amardeep’s thoughts on 'Glocalization' and hybridity - MTV Desi

Turbocharge your ego - Is your name on the Stardust microchips ?
Just completed “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S Thompson.
A numbing tornado of Tequila, Cadillac “whale”, sweat, hangover, Acid, floral shirts, screaming tape-recorder, mescaline, Las Vegas, .332, TV on “snow” channels, f-words, rum and ice, the Great Red Shark, a Samoan attorney, Budweiser, abuse, Rolling Stone, lizards, coke, reckless driving, felony, casinos… as if my brain was put in a blender and the lid flipped open while the blades whirred…For the uninitiated, i strongly recommend his “Hells Angels”

"The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others - the living - are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's in. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions." - HST 1965. The Edge that i refer in the footer…

Even his death was some wild abandonment - "On February 20, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head at his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado", said a statement issued by Thompson's son, Juan Thompson, to the Aspen Daily News.