YES, all four wars

Some poor idiot named (??) Robert Price apparently posted comments to one of Varsha Bhosle’s articles. And in doing so, all but invited Varsha to slam his feet into his own mouth.

This Robert Price person tried to indicate how Pakistan has “won” all the four wars that it has fought against India and how Pakistan’s brilliant military strategies (ahem!) have had India begging to the world asking its help to rein in Pakistan.

Varsha Bhosle delivers a point-by-point rebuttal buttressed with references that no one can refute. And thus, she blasts Robert Price’s argument into nothingness. I am tempted to quote some of Varsha’s best (and sweet-sounding to my Indian ears) arguments, but I’ll just quote the final remarks that she makes. I urge you to go and read the full article.

I’m sooo tired of gloating now. Maybe another day I’ll tell you what the Indian Army was up against in Kargil… NO! I don’t mean Paki “valour”; I refer to terrain and climate. But this article’s been long. But, that’s the nature of Indian Defence: We may take long, but we make a comprehensive kill in one stroke — like the kukri to the NLI throat.
NLI refers to Pakistan’s Northern Light Infantry which was wiped out completely during their foolhardy adventure atop the mountain peaks in Kargil and Drass.

Woohooo!!… Way to go Varsha!!

Final human genome sequence released

This time it is the real thing, scientists promise - the complete sequence of human DNA, as perfectly rendered as it ever will be.

…

“What we’ve got now is what we’ll have for all eternity,” says Francis Collins, director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute and the head of the consortium of 16 international institutions that collaborated to sequence the code. [link via Slashdot]

But as they’ve already observed, humans have significantly lesser number of genes than was earlier thought.

While past estimates varied up to 140,000, two international scientific teams have now shown the true number is between 27,000 and 40,000.

…

“The small number of genes is significant [because it means] we’re not hard-wired,” says Craig Venter, head of one team at the private company Celera.

“People think genes are an absolute cause of traits. But the notion that the genome is the blueprint for humanity is a very bad metaphor,” he says. If you think we’re hard-wired and deterministic, there should indeed be a lot more genes.”

SYRIA MAY BE NEXT

Syria may become an American military target if it was found to be harbouring Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to a senior Pentagon adviser.

He said that if such weapons were found on Syrian soil: “I’m quite sure we would have to respond to that”.[link via Metafilter]

Mr. Richard Perle, I think you and your idiot pretzel-fearing boss could do better by using all your resources to try and find any proof of those WMDs in Iraq first. Warheads with traces of nerve agent don’t count if you are trying to justify invasion of a country.

So, before you talk about doing an Iraq on Syria, first attend to the business that you’ve left unfinished in the last year or so… viz. finiding Osama, finding WMDs in Iraq, etc.

And if anyone thinks this is an anti-American view… think again! This is just an anti-idiotarian view!