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Stress Amma

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Q. I have a lot of difficulties trying to study for my exams. After every 5 minutes I feel the need to go online and check my facebook account. And once I login, I can’t logout. If not facebook, then other social networking sites. I can’t get around to my books. Please help me amma.

A. Aiyo. Facebooking is the bestest time killer if you have nothing to do. But when you have so many words to mug, why waste time checking your friends’ status updates (which also only talk about them not studying). So “de-addict yourself” slowly. Try reducing your facebook time gradually. And avoid unnecessary things like sending friend requests to people you don’t know and adding messages like “you are haawt.. make frandsheep bhith moi”. Study a certain number of topics before you login (again and again). The gods of “no facebook= studies” are with you.

Q. I keep taking breaks while I’m studying. And the break time keeps getting extended. And whenever I take a break, I end up eating something. So I just put on weight and study nothing. I feel worse than I do when I just study nothing. How do I get myself out of this mess?

A. Oho. Queries during examinations are only related to not studying. You have to motivate yourself to study. Your motivation can be as simple as having some fruit (even if it’s the one that got adam-eshwar and eve-entika into trouble) after a definite period of study. This way you’ll eat at definite time intervals and your body metabolism will work fine (I hope). Exams are a matter of a couple of weeks. It’ll all be over soon. In the meantime, all the best my little hardworking students!

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Commonwealth Games Volunteering

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The countdown to the commonwealth games has begun and finally the Delhi government seems to be gearing up in preparation. The volunteering programme is in full swing and all the students who filled up forms to volunteer for this major event can expect some activity in the following weeks. The CID will be arriving at each volunteer’s present residence to inquire about and verify facts regarding the student. The visit aims at checking whether the details filled in the police verification forms are correct. According to a few volunteers, who have gone through this process of verification, they were asked for a residential proof and also for verification by any two neighbours. Only after this verification process is over will the candidates be called for personal interviews. The first round of interviews has already begun. So expect a knock at your door sometime soon and get ready for the interview!

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Mecca

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Hindu held its fest from 14th December to 16th December this year. With performances by Them Clones, East India Company, Faridkot and Jal, the event sure was a crowd puller and proved to be a huge success. The results were as follows:

Choreography

1st: Hansraj

2nd: Sri Venkateshwara College

3rd: Hindu

Fashion Parade

1st: Hindu

2nd: KNC

Streetplay

1st: Hansraj

2nd: Sri Venkateshwara College

3rd: KMC

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In conversation with Ila Reddy

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Ila Reddy is a 2nd Year, Political Science student at Hindu College, and is also the Project Coordinator of the Right to Information Branch at The YP Foundation. We caught up with her on the eve of the commencement of workshops on the RTI Act in colleges at DU.

1. Does it bother you sometimes that the youth of this county are completely apathetic towards civil and political issues?
I wouldn’t like to generalize the youth like that. There are some who are apathetic, some who are ignorant, some who just like to complain, while a lot of others who care about such issues but don’t know what they can do about them, or even what they want to do.
2. How does the RTI Branch help in creating awareness about the same?
The Right to Information Branch develops young people’s engagement with legislative research, increased awareness on laws in India and their application to our daily lives. Our most recent initiative, the “What Does Your Vote Want?” campaign is a non political, non partisan project both initiated and run by young people in 2008 that aimed at sensitizing young voters and helping them register for voter ID cards. Last year, the project successfully helped register more than 4000 people in Delhi and Raipur. Post elections 2009, the project launched a platform for young people to explore governance accountability and for direct dialogue between the youth and the public sector to discuss their key issues and concerns and clarify their questions regarding governance mechanisms and accountability. We have picked the RTI Act as our focus for the year. The first open forum in this series was held in July in the form of an interactive discussion, where we were joined by Mr. Wajahat Habibullah, Mr. Salman Khurshid, Mr. Shekhar Singh, Ms. Maja Daruwala and other eminent people from the RTI world. Through this discussion, we aimed at generating awareness around how young people can utilize the act, as well as how it can be made more accessible to young people through incorporating the inputs of key stakeholders, experts, and the youth, aiming to promote the concept of active citizenship and accountability amongst young people and the government.
We now plan to do workshops in colleges to further raise awareness amongst students about the Act, while equipping them with the tools to utilize it as a medium of accountability from public authorities. Our workshop series start from the 11th of December at Hindu College, Delhi University, followed by one at Hansraj College on the 14th of December. Four more workshops are lined up at other colleges in January end.
3. Why did you choose the RTI Act as an area to work on?
The Right to Information Act was passed in 2005 and grants citizens the right to ask for and be provided with information about the work of government-run and supported bodies. The essence of the Act was to provide citizens with a tool to combat corruption and ensure transparency in matters of governance.
However, a recent study by Mr. Shekhar Singh, champion of the RTI and part of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, revealed that only 33% of the urban population is aware of the RTI Act, out of which only 2% are students.
The Act is a provision made by the government to encourage transparency as well as people’s participation, but the key to the Act’s success lies in the hands of the people for whom it has been enacted.
We all keep criticizing public authorities for being corrupt and not transparent in their functioning, but seldom use a provision like the RTI to actually find out about the work being done/not done.
It’s a tool provided by the government itself, so why not utilize it to keep check on public authorities, instead of just sitting at home and complaining about them, without really knowing the exact details?
4. Can you throw some light on how a student of DU can use the act to his/her benefit?
Whether you want information about the status of the roads outside your house or the criteria of your internal assessment in college. Whether it’s the allocation of money towards different departments by your local MP/MLA that you want to know about, or merely the status of your passport. You have a right to ask the concerned public authority for necessary information.
Information can be in any form, including records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law and is required to reply expeditiously or within thirty days.
5. You are holding workshops in DU colleges, what are these workshops about? What can one expect in them?
Our workshops would be about the basic provisions under the RTI Act, what issues RTI applications can be filed on, real-life stories of both successes and failures, provision for appeals and complaints, loopholes in its implementation and finally, how to draft an application. This would be done through innovative mediums like facilitative group discussions involving different activities like ‘myths and realities’ and mock-filing of applications.
6. You are a college student. How do you manage with college and The YP, which must take a lot of your time?
It does get taxing at times. Juggling between classes, pending assignments and projects, team trainings, staff meetings, on-ground events and the like. But somewhere down the line I feel its all worth it. I always wanted to DO something but didn’t know what it was. Now that I know what it is, I’m trying to figure out different ways of doing it. There’s so much work involved in running a project like this. Right from training a team of volunteers to failed attempts at fundraising to writing scary partnership proposals. It’s the process that makes it fun and the way you do it. We all work our asses off to make our events work, but we also make sure we’re enjoying whatever it is that we’re doing.

(As told to Rajneil Kamath)

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MONTAGE ‘09

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JMC college presents to you MONTAGE 09. The two day festival (from 10th December to 11th December) has a wide range of events for students to enjoy and display their talent. Eighteen active student societies of the College including Choreography, Dramatics, Fine Arts, Western Music, Indian Cultural and many others work to provide a storehouse of new and interesting events to the participants. With more than 40 events, spread over a period of two days, be it dance, drama, music, debating, fine arts, quizzes, literary events, power packed performances by groovy bands, they seem to have got it all. The college festival “MONTAGE” is an attempt to provide the right forum for students to come together and interact with each other in an environment of team spirit and healthy competition.
Montage 09 awaits!!

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Horoscope

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By: Kritika Kushwaha

ARIES

While work runs smooth, the relationship front might still need a little work Try to be more understanding of the people you love.

TAURUS

If you have been thinking of pursuing something, now is the time. You need to spend more time with your family.

GEMINI

You can leave your financial worries behind for this week for you will get some money from someone. Your family will lend a helping hand.

CANCER

You will get noticed courtesy a talent of yours and good times are seen on the study and activity front. Make the most of it.

LEO

You come out of your shell to interact with people again, on a large scale too perhaps. Try not to divulge secrets to outsiders.

VIRGO

A rather busy week lies ahead so get ready. An innovative idea will come into play for the good. The Lovers card indicates a good time to initiate a relationship.

LIBRA

You work hard this week, ending the week by partying harder. Some of you might go for a short holiday. Keep peace with your fellow travelers.

SCORPIO

Work, work and more work is keeping you on your toes. It’s a busy time so don’t mess it up by multitasking too much. Take life a little easy.

SAGITTARIUS

The run of good luck spills over to this week too, as your work gets completed and you have a good time with your friends and loved ones. You’re on a roll.

CAPRICORN

You still have some doubts in your mind regarding some decisions. Seek help and you will get it. Things, slowly but surely, will improve.

AQUARIUS

The good flow of money has probably made you a little tempted to spend it all at once so keep a check on your needs. You will have a good time with friends and family.

PISCES

The work front seems good though it will take up most of your time as you will be travelling around a lot. However do keep a check on your health.

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WAR OF THE STEREOTYPES

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Disclaimer: The opinions contained in this section are not of the paper’s or the writers’. They simply depict stereotypes and stereotypical understanding of gender differences, the presence of which though regrettable cannot be denied.

I understand that I fail to understand girls

I have been wondering —what principles, laws or theories in this universe govern a woman’s behaviour?
Sometimes it seems so simple. You meet someone, you talk to her, you form an impression and hence you get to like or dislike her. Unfortunately it’s seems not to be so simple for women themselves. In reality the fairer sex in its adolescent age is ‘dynamism at its peak’. Usually in the age group of 16 to 22 one can find highly peculiar and specific traits among females which are peculiar in the fact that they are absolutely erratic. This capricious personality of girls is fickle to such an extent that I am forced to assume they themselves are little in control of their changeability. Their thoughts race down a new track every few minutes and you are left completely flummoxed for explanations. In fact this is the very reason for the unpredictability of this whimsical “mystery race”. Girls usually lack stable thought and have dangerously flexible rather fluid premises and postulates regarding worldly matters which form the foundation of a fragile judgement. (Not to say that boys don’t lack sense, but atleast their insensibilities are uniform and less erratic, and therefore less chaotic).

Girls typically look but do not observe, listen but refuse to understand, read but do not learn! Their moral conscience comprises of preachy forwarded messages advocating positive attitudes, all written in flowery prose which itself must have been composed by fluffy brained women living in pink ivory towers.

While lounging at a quiet dinner table with mild music playing in the background these girls need must loudly discuss their new nail polish brand or the quality of footwear at a new mall. Moreover if an unfortunate male victim comes along, they would scarcely condescend to listen to his ‘useless’ discussions of political problems or economic depression, and despite being perfectly able to comprehend the issues talked about would refuse point blank to display even an iota of interest in such ‘boring’ matters. If a girl does mention some random fact that she may recall regarding the subject under discussion it would only be because, as she would admit herself in aggravating fashion, she had mistakenly taken the editorial part of the newspaper to the loo instead of the lifestyle and entertainment supplement and thus had to bear that ‘crap’ for ten long minutes.

We see so many girls today belonging to this specific age group displaying the pervasive jealousy, insecurity and complexes characterizing their kind. Each girl need must be concerned about what the skirt of an unknown girl in the elevator shows and what it hides. A girl will utilize all her brains to conclude whether the dress of the lady sitting right next to her in the metro is from the shelves of a UCB showroom or from that of Palika Bazaar and achieve a sense of accomplishment about it. A lady would rather notice the way another lady gorges on a burger at Mc Ds and mock her for it than concentrate on her own plate.

The theoretical basis for emotional and behavioural problems in adolescent girls shows systematic links with peer pressure, early partnership transitions, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder etc. Historically, girls have evoked images of sweetness and light, purity and beauty. In this fairytale land of youth, girls are angels and princesses, characterized by positive adjustment and certainly not by behavioral or emotional problems. However, in reality females and especially young women are much more complex, unpredictable, arbitrary and indeed a great deal more maddening.

-Tanmay Dhall

I understand that there’s really nothing to understand when it comes to guys

Mankind, humanity, humans. Trust men to go to such lengths to assure themselves that the world revolves around them. This mistaken conviction evidently rises out of a sense of insecurity since everyone knows that without women, the human race can just as well say “goodbye world!” and start digging its grave. The one petty role men had in creating life that they’re so obsessed with has also been rendered redundant thanks to the advancement of science and women can now spawn little baby girls completely independent of the hairier sex. So, technically speaking, men serve no purpose on this planet, except perhaps to break the monotony and provide a permanent affirmative to the question “Can it get worse than this?”

They have classified us as the weaker sex (another of their self appeasement ploys), a statement which may hold true in the very basic physical sense of the argument, but when it comes to inner fortitude and rationality, we women can kick their sorry rear ends any day. At the age of eighteen we may all have turned adults on paper but only women are trusted to possess the mental faculties required to make crucial decisions like that of marriage while men have to wait another three years. Yes, boys will be boys in every sense of the phrase. They may be ageing physically, but society has resigned itself to the fact that they will never really grow up. Little adult boys cannot survive without their mommies so we leave our own families to join theirs after marriage. Teaching is a job seen as the female forte. Why? Because, duh, men are so clueless about their own lives, it’ll be catastrophic if we set them loose on young children.

Dense as they are, you’d at least expect them to know the difference between a loo and public spaces. Unfortunately, they fail to live up to even this infinitesimal expectation. They’ll unleash their bladders on walls, trees and bushes, apparently unconscious of the fact that there are other inhabitants on the planet who may not find the stench of their bodily fluids very attractive. They paint the town red very literally with disgusting splotches of paan strewn on walls and every other street corner.  When it comes to etiquette, their knowledge remains constricted to its spelling (wait, I’m not even sure of that, actually) and they find it perfectly acceptable social behavior to violently scratch objectionable parts of their anatomy, belch and dig their noses and indulge in other such revolting conduct in public.

Through eons of evolution men have not yet managed to shake off their cave manners. Women may have evolved from apes but men are still just less hairy versions of them (though the likes of Anil Kapoor don’t even have that distinction to their credit). They can continue to live in denial, tell themselves we’re the “weaker sex” and that humanity’s fate rests on their able shoulders. We, on the other hand will continue sniggering behind their backs and running the world like we do. Abhishek will always be Aishwarya’s husband, my dears and so will Rahul be Sonia Gandhi’s son.

– Aina Mathew

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The Survivor’s Guide to Eschatological Prophesies

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Eschatology is the branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind.

For many centuries, people have been predicting the year, the month and sometimes the day when:

> A violent and sudden end would terminate all life on earth;

> Major social and political upheavals would occur around the world;

> The war of Armageddon would take place in the Middle East;

> God would pour horrendous wrath on most of humanity; and/or

> Christ would return in what is referred to as the second coming.
Here are a few such prophesies, some of which have already overshot their expiration date to no effect, and some of which are still to arrive.
Failed Prophesies:

500 CE: This was the first year-with-a-nice-round-number-panic.   The antipope Hippolytus and an earlier Christian academic Sextus Julius Africanus had predicted Armageddon at about this year.

968 CE: An eclipse was interpreted as a prelude to the end of the world by the army of the German emperor Otto III.

992: Good Friday coincided with the Feast of the Annunciation; this had long been believed to be the event that would bring forth the Antichrist, and thus the end-times events foretold in the book of Revelation. Records from Germany report that a new sun rose in the north and that as many as 3 suns and 3 moons were fighting. There does not appear to be independent verification of this remarkable event.

1496: This was approximately 1500 years after the birth of Jesus. Some mystics in the 15th century predicted that the millennium would begin during this year.

1669: The Old Believers in Russia believed that the end of the world would occur in this year. 20 thousand burned themselves to death between 1669 and 1690 to protect themselves from the Antichrist.

1970’s: The late Moses David (formerly David Berg) was the founder of the Christian religious group, The Children of God. He predicted that a comet would hit the earth, probably in the mid 1970’s and destroy all life in the United States. One source indicated that he believed it would happen in 1973.

1991: Mother Shipton, a 16th century mystic predicted the end of the world: “…The world to an end shall come; in nineteen hundred and ninety-one.”

1992-OCT-28: Lee Jang Rim, a Korean Christian pastor, taught that the Rapture would occur on this date, at 10:00 AM EST. It didn’t happen; many of his followers allegedly committed suicide.

1997-NOV-27: The Sacerdotal Knights of National Security report that “A space alien captured at a UFO landing site in eastern Missouri cracked under interrogation by the CIA and admitted that an extraterrestrial army will attack Earth on November 27 with the express purpose of stripping our planet of every natural resource they can find a use for — and making slaves of every man, woman and child in the world!”

1997: Superdave the Wonderchemist took the magic number 1331 and added it to 666 the “Number of the Beast” from the Book of Revelation to get the year of the arrival of the Antichrist and the end of the world.

Sometime in 2000: Many Christian individuals and groups have long anticipated that Christ’s return would happen in 2000 CE. Many of them believe that this event would be preceded by a 7 year period called “The Tribulation.” They expected that this interval would start in 1993 and that 42 months into the Tribulation, terrible things would occur. However, that time passed and the anticipated events did not happen.

2000-MAR: The numbers of solar flares on the surface of the sun goes through an approximately 11 year cycle. This number reached a peak around 1999-MAR. It was suggested that this peak might cause electrical power failures, which might trigger other disasters. It didn’t.

About 1999: Orville T. Gordon (a.k.a. Nodrog) leads a Texan group called “Outer Dimensional Forces.” He expected that UFOs would come from outer space, remove the ODF groups from earth, and destroy the United States with a great flood. It is not clear where all the water would come from.

1999-JUL: Nostradamus predicted that a great king of terror will come from the skies. This has been interpreted by some as referring to a nuclear missile strike: “The year 1999, seven months, From the sky will come a great King of Terror: To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols, Before and after Mars to reign by good luck.”

Recent Past: James Kingsley predicted that:

“To the chosen of the Most High ‘The Christ’ will soon be made known, though many who see (and have seen) the ‘Signs in the Heavens’ will not believe. Those ‘Chosen’ will be given an intense impression (possibly even visually, or heard in music) of where they must go to be saved from the upcoming ‘End of Days.’ These will be few (144,000 persons) and many will be falsely told that they are following the ‘Antichrist.’ This is untrue as the ‘Beast’ is later realized to be ‘George W. Bush’… the ‘False Church’ is ‘materialistic capitalism’… the ‘False Prophet’ is the ‘European Union’ and the ‘Daughter of Babylon’/’Whore of Babylon’ is the ‘United States of America’.”

End of World Theories waiting to happen if we survive 2012:

Before 2019: Tathagata predicted in 1999 that the end of the world as we know it will happen within the next twenty years. an imbalance in gravity will cause the disappearance of all civilizations by a 1000 meter high tsunami, as well as earthquakes, volcanoes and “crustal formations. … Most of creatures are to be exterminated.”

2023: According to Clarence D’Souza, Daniel 12:12-13 predicts the end of the world and of the Universe during this year.

Before 2038: The environmental group, Greenpeace, predicts massive starvation due to uncontrolled population growth. Global warning will melt the polar ice caps and cause massive coastal flooding. Thousands of plant and animal species become extinct.

2047-SEP-14: According to The Church of !BLAIR!, the human race will probably be terminated at 3:28 AM (Soho, UK time). The church teaches, with tongue firmly in cheek, that if the human race does not discard their plastic conformity, then the Gods will withdraw their protection. The Gods don’t want us to worship them; they don’t want sacrifices or even offerings. They just want us to rid itself of our excessive “Normalcy”. At that time, Astro-Lemurs (extra-terrestrials similar in shape to lemurs, but with rainbow colored bodies) will attack the entire human race and beat them to death with gigantic burritos. You have been warned.

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