Funny Side (Hopefully) Up

We've had a lot of talk lately about something called "Net Neutrality" in India. The basic idea of net neutrality is not that fishing nets don't have a gender - that's already been established, thank you. It's about our ability to visit whatever websites we may choose to without paying extra. You see, all these telecom chaps - the guys who give us our internet connections - hit on a brilliant idea. They could have all the large conglomerates pay them extra money and then allow their users to visit only those sites for cheap, charging extra if they want to use another website. That may not sound too bad, but the implications are huge. Say, for instance, that you wanted to visit my blog (and if you don't, why not?), you would have to pay some company that's already making way too much money even more. Sites like Google.com, YouTube.com and so on would be available to us at sensible rates, but everything else would be insanely expensive. Call me picky, ...

Hey guys! This is really just a, like, micro-post-type thing (is that what they're called?) to say that this blog is getting UPDATED! WOOHOO! At long last, I'm going to change the name, and make the blog stop looking so... boring.This theme is really only temporary, but temporary means until I get off my lazy behind, and who knows when that might be? Anyway, I really need a new name for my blog, and I really can't seem to think one up myself, so tell me what you think the blog ought to be called in the comments below or on Facebook or Google+ or wherever you're reading this. Thanks guys!

I know what you're thinking. "Great, another post about education. Didn't we just do one last week? Jeez, Ritvik, come up with something new!". But I won't, because it's my blog and I get to decide what I write about, so there. This post isn't so much about education (rejoice!) as about how we - or rather I, because I'm not the entire human race - learn. Recently there's been this whole thing that video and audio are the best ways to learn anything under the sun. Personally, I don't entirely agree. However, I also don't exactly disagree. A few weeks ago, I was working at an orphanage (for free, because I'm such a good person, aren't I?) and was helping the kids learn to read English. The trouble was, the kids weren't exactly what you'd call fast readers, and the lady who ran the orphanage - a wonderful person by the name of Roopa Mahajan - wanted them to be. Not that there's anything wrong with being a fast reader, o...

Oh, the choices the modern teenager is faced with in terms of education. It's quite beyond a joke, I must say. Not too long ago, people went to whatever college was nearby and that they could get into. Now, it's nothing like that. Now that I'm in the 10th grade, it seems like a good idea for me to make a decision about what exactly I want  to do with my life. The problem: I really can't seem to figure out! And this is despite the fact that I know exactly what college I'm aiming for! For starters, there are all the acronyms. This doesn't really have to do with what I want to become, but I still think it's a problem. Just the numerous exams that different colleges have - CET, SAT, several other ones ending in T - make me want to go AIEEE! I keep reading all these articles on academics and exams and whatnot and find myself doing a Google search on some new obscure acronym roughly every five seconds. That's about as long as it takes me to read a couple of ...

Being a teenager, I very rarely have very strong opinions on anything political. However, one article in this morning's papers caught my eye and it had nothing to do with my immediate position in life (you can find it  here  if you're interested in reading it). The article, in essence, stated that the VHP wanted to ban white-water rafting in Uttarakhand. According to them, it " leads to many illegal activities" in the holy town of Rishikesh. According to the article, the VHP thinks that white-water rafting leads young people of both sexes to "mingle, drink and indulge in objectionable activities" on the banks of the holy river. This somehow disturbs the sadhus and sants gathered there to meditate. Now, from a purely economic standpoint, Rishikesh draws more than over 4 lakh adventure tourists. 320 or so firms have jobs to do because of these tourists. The government then levies a tax of  ₹5000 on each of these firms, earning it some money in the bargain t...

A couple of days ago, I did something I haven't done in far too long: I picked up a random book out of the large collections that my parents have assembled over the years and began reading. Of late, I've spent most of my time watching videos and checking social media. I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to hold an actual, physical book in my hands and read (frankly, I was surprised I remembered how to turn a page). The book, as it happened, was Jeffery Archer's "A Prisoner of Birth". Personally, I haven't read a whole lot of his books, but intend to do so now. But I digress. The point is, reading the book was so much better - several orders of magnitude better - than any video I've ever watched. Needless to say, I finished the book in two days. Not because it was a great book - although it was - but simply because, after all these days of allowing the grey matter to turn brown with rust, I was finally exercising my intelligence and expanding my ...

 This is a post I should probably have made right in the beginning and then linked to after each of my longer absences, but it never struck me to then, so I'm doing it now. Some you readers may think that writing a blog is just sitting behind a keyboard and banging away at it until something interesting comes out. Whether that's true or not (it is, but let's pretend it isn't so that I can give this post some substance), here are some of the reasons I find it hard to come out with a weekly blog post. 1. Laziness: As those of you who have been following my blog fairly closely (and if you haven't, why not?) will probably know, I am possibly the laziest being ever to claim to not be a sloth or other equally lethargic animal (teenagers, for instance, are normally every bit as lazy). Writing a blog only takes me twenty minutes to half an hour, but I'm too lazy to get off my bum for even that length of time. Quite an impediment to blogging, I must say. 2. Topic...