Stupidity: An Intellectual Property

Dear Puppy Manohar and respected members of the Canine Congress (ah dhang you),

Additionally, a joint research project of the WIPO and the United Nations University measuring the impact of IP systems on six Asian countries and (sic) found that "a positive correlation between the strengthening of the IP system and subsequent economic growth."
You might wonder why we are talking about Intellectual Property? Who cares? "Why are we talking about Intellectual Property? Who cares?", you would say. You might also ask why I put the adverb 'additionally' in the beginning. It is grammatically incorrect too, isn't it? Well, the answer to the last two questions is that I copy-pasted it from Wikipedia which had that term and I forgot to remove it.

Economic growth. Economic growth, my friends. The motivation behind all collective human effort. The reason why we have fine creations like the photo copier, the vanity plates and the Indian Railways. The ultimate reason why we all live. What would we be if it weren't for economic growth, so fuzzy, so ambiguous and yet so concrete and meaningful. Both at the same time. "Uncertainty Principle" as Heizenberg might call it or "Acintya Bheda bheda, Tatva" as Kula Shekar hypothesize.

"What is economic growth?", a reckless, naive youngster might ask. Economic growth is not a truck you just dump something on. You can not hold economic growth in your hands; you can not define it. It's like a fragrance. You can't explain it but you can feel it. You can only experience economic growth. I digress. (Hope that clarifies your doubt, Brother)

We are all unique. We were made that way. Hence, our thoughts are unique. Our ideas are unique. If you believe that you were meant to have the cake that you are eating, then you will agree with me that you were meant to have the ideas that you have. You truly own them. We all own our ideas. They are our intellectual property.

Human beings are born in sin, the ancestors of our Christian brothers proclaimed. They were right. Always remember, there is always a scientific reason behind the words of our ancestors. When we are born, we are born with a few ideas in our heads. Whose ideas are those? They are sure as hell not ours. They were invented by some human, whom we shall refer to as Mr. Muththu for better understanding. Effectively, we are stealing the ideas from him, from Muththu. Muththu, for the first time, thought of these things. And we don't even pay our tribute to him (or her).

Noam Chomsky, the father of modern linguistics who discovered language in the 1950s, theorizes that we are all born with an inborn mechanism to learn language. Well, do we own it? Of course not. Muththu owns it. Muththu invented language for the first time. And baby, he is angry. He is very angry. Nobody steals from Muththu.

Stupidity. We all do stupid things all the time. Some more than the others. We all have an innate capacity to commit stupidry. Some of us are gifted with marvelous skills in stupidry. Some others have to try hard. It's a wonder what the human animal can achieve if he doesn't put his mind to it. Who owns stupidity? Is stupidity commonly owned by all of humanity? I know, the mere mention of that takes us back to the Cold War. We know how that story ends.

Stupidity has to be owned by some one person or an organization with individual rights. The most obvious choice would be the inventor of Stupidity. Who invented stupidity? Muththu. Perhaps not the same Muththu who invented language. Perhaps someone else. Perhaps not Mutthu S. Perhaps, K Muththu. Perhaps not. But unfortunately, Muththu is not with us today. He is in Heaven (TM). The obvious logical step would be, well, Muththu's descendants should own stupidity. Like all property, this one should also be passed on to the next generation. So, who are Muththu's true descendants?

From the name, it's obvious that Muththu's descendants have to be the inhabitants of the Southernmost region of the Indian peninsula. The Thamizhans. Which other people can boast of being more stupid than the Thamizhans? Racist claim? Perhaps. Accurate? Certainly not. We have the xenophobic Maharashtrians, the belligerent Punjabis, the impulsive Bengalis, the warmongering Pashtuns, the isolationist Americans, the hypothetical Aryans, the conniving Chinese, the chosen Jews, the hunting and gathering Intuits, the extinct Easter Islanders, the confused Macaulayite Indians. We all can claim descent from Muththu. We all are equally stupid.

So how do we, in fact, find who owns stupidity.? This will be the major question of the 21st century. The fate of mankind depends on this question.

regards,
Baby V.
"Its the economy, Stupid"- Bill Clinton (TM)
P.S: farging laundry.

Cordial Learning

Dear Pupils,

We have gathered here today to learn something very important. The day before yesterday, we discussed the importance of discipline and a powerful central authority to administer control. We argued how everything would be chaos if every person were his own lord. Yesterday, we learnt about the indispensability of necessary violence and coercion for social good.

Today, we will go to the next step and learn the importance of education and how it can rightly serve the vanguards of public well being. The sinful, greedy and wretched human mind is always eager to perpetrate acts of malice which generate chaos and make it hard for order to prevail. But to change this, we do not need violence. If the human child is honed from his infancy to live in a civilized fashion then he can learn how to respect the ways of society without waking the devil that sleeps in him (or her).

Education is therefore the foundation of human civilization. A little child has a lot of questions. If left unanswered at the right age, he (or she) will find answers to them himself (or herself). This leads to chaos, ignorance and superstition. Yesterday, Mr./Ms. Vineet Gupta, an innocent 3rd-grader (ah dhang you) told me that he (or she) thought that everything falls to the Earth because she (or he) has an invisible slope around herself (or himself). "I think everything falls to the Earth because she has an invisible slope around her." , he said. (Everyone i.e all children of all classes, standing in the assembly point fingers at Mr/Ms. Gupta and laugh aloud). No, no children, you should never make fun of any question no matter how stupid it is.

Of course, an 8 year old is too naive for one to explain Newton's theory of gravity to but the point is that, if not informed about it at the right age, he (or she) will tell his (or her) children, his (or her) theory of gravity and they (or ?) will tell their children, and so on. The entire Gupta dynasty (ah dhang you) will never learn real scientific facts like Newton's Gravity. They will never be able to send man to the moon.

Independent thinking is nice. But only in limits. It should be exercised to serve accepted facts. Challenging textbooks or trying to reason out what is clearly written in them is anti-social. That is exactly the kind of mentality that causes, riots, terrorism and wars. We all are equal, children. God has made us all equal. We should not try to be different from others. We should try to be like everyone else. You might want to be an artist, like Mr. / Ms. Shireen from 4th C (people look around to see if anyone knows any girl by that name. The students from 4th C are the most surprised...what! she is shireen...she is a muzzlem? she looks hindu) but your scribbles on paper are no sixteenth chapel [SIC] (most students look at their feet). You are better off being a doctor or an engineer, like everyone else. You should always be practical. Become an architect.

Education makes you ready for the world to come. So that you can serve the society with your skill set. So that you have ideas like everyone else, so that you are at the same wavelength as every one else. This society is like a factory, children. You have to be disciplined, skillful, efficient and productive, so that everyone succeeds. That is the most gratifying part of our jobs, when you arrive in our school in the first standard you all are randomly deformed pieces of clay. We make pots out of you. Education is the wheel that makes uniform, standard and useful pottery out of random, meaningless and worthless pieces of clay. And we, children and my dearest teachers, are the potters. .....now let's do some pot. DISPERSE CLAP! 123 123 1 2 3

your loving headmistress
Dr. (Mr.) Brig. Odelia Fernandes Ph.d (Public Policy and National Socialism)
1 800 PASTING
"Call us and we will give you a nice pasting. Child."

Ode to the Indo-Australian Controversy

Dear Puppy,

The following is the speech that Mr. Iyengar gave as Chief Guest and Judge at "Australians: Boon (ah dhang you) or Bane" debate at Baby Vaijayanti's school.

There are a few things that I need to say in light of the current controversy surrounding the Indian tour of Australia. Considering the various events that have unfolded in the past few days, I have a few recommendations to the youth of today.

With Bhagwad Gita as my guide (looking uncomfortably at the catholic priest beside him), I shall infer from the fountainhead of divine knowledge and demonstrate how these ancient and eternal concepts can be employed in the contemporary world to achieve many a benefit.

a) Enterprise:

In today's economically liberalized society, no one doubts the significance of entrepreneurship. Proactivity equals survival. A proactive gentleman should always be on the look out for business opportunities. He must always have an attentive sense to every expression that translates to cash. Social hurdles like morality, popular resistance, farsighted critics, non-objectivists, slum-dwellers, tribals and repressed people a.k.a commie bastiges, stray dogs, parents and the opposite sex will impede his every enterprising step towards success. He should singlemindedly, perseveringly and, if the need arises, brutally, fight against these evils.

The Bhagwad Gita prescribes that the "Karma Yogi" (applause) should be a part of the world and yet disinterested, ambivalent and separate from its social problems. This might sound paradoxical but it is realizable. Whenever a social problem arises the "Karma Yogi" (applause), to whom I will hence forth refer to as KY (note: KY <> KP) and, for simplicity, assign the male gender, should make himself "aliptha" from his environment and keep doing his duty, which in our case is selfishness (refer: Howard Roark's speech, The Fountain Head - Ayn Rand).

In this particular scenario, I suggest we start a new company: "Burning Figures of Execrating Gents, International" aka "Burning FEG International". In South Asia and the Middle East the most popular form of protest is burning effigies. However, such genuine sentiments of the general public receive a setback when they can't find good effigies of people. For example, recently the loose mlechha, Richard Gere, publicly defamed one of our finest beauties. People needed his effigy to burn. Innovative gentlemen from well funded right wing parties managed to acquire one. However, most people, who clearly care about this issue, could not come out on the streets and protest on account of the dearth of Richard Gere effigies.

In today's world of advanced graphics and multimedia, it's a shame if ordinary people can not obtain Ricky Ponting effigies. Hence, I propose we start mass producing effigies of celebrities. The business model will be a JIT manufacture and distribution. Effigies of international political figures and controversial people will be mass produced and an inventory will be maintained, however, everything else will be just in time, just like homework and exam preparations (applause).

Investment? It is clear that celebrities like Ricky Ponting will be interested in investing in this firm. Ricky Ponting, Steve Bucknor are all well aware that such actions in future will invoke even more public anger. They will only benefit from investing in our company.

b) Military Action:

As Arjun lies in despair pondering with doubt at the sombre scene of battle at Kurukshetra, Krishna instructs him to go to war and kill the enemies of Dharma, even though they are his family. I urge the great Indian Nation State to invade Australia. It's high time, I say. We should just go in there and bomb them to the Stone Age whence they came. It's clear that we need a little more living space, 'Lebensraum' , for Indian people. A relatively rarefied Australian land will be the perfect subject. If we learnt anything from the great days of being the jewel in the crown of the British empire, it is that we have to utilize opportunities like this to perpetrate aggression against people. The barbaric lands of Australia lie, cheat and blaspheme. It is high time we roll the Dharma Chakra and reveal the truth there.

c) Linear Execution:

To solve the problem of bad umpiring and unjust adjudication, I propose that all Umpires and Match Referees should be made to stand in a line and shot.

(Applause).

Regards,
Baby V

"Ricky don't lose that number. You don't wanna call nobody else." - Steely Dan

Pup-lick Speaking

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Boys and Girls,

and my fellow canines,

There comes a time in a puppy's life where he (or she) has to stand up, grab the microphone and take center-stage.

My time is now.

Today, for my public speaking debut, I am going to talk about "change".

A wise person before me once said, and I paraphrase "d(change)/dt = 0". For all you calculus illiterates out there, this simply means that change is constant. I have since learned that there are other such constants, including but not limited to Death, Taxes and Australia winning the Cricket World Cup. We, however, are not concerned with these trivial things and we shall concentrate on Change.

In my limited years on this planet, I have seen the word "change" used in many forms. It has been used to refer to small coins that can choke a puppy such as myself, to denote the act of transformation, or as a verb, to transform something. I have also seen it appended to the name "Jackie" on the television and on large, glossy posters on the streets. As a result of this varied usage, you are now looking at a very confused puppy.

Speaking of puppy, who came up with that word? "Puppy"? Why do balding, German men refer to their complicated measuring devices as "puppies"? I fail to see the similarity between a Spectrum Analyzer and a canine. Spectrum Analyzers do not have ears. They do not have noses. They do not urinate on trees. Why, then, are they referred to as "puppies"? Some human behaviour I will never understand. Scratch that - most human behaviour I will never understand.

But back to the topic of this speak, i.e., "Change". Yes, now where was I before I digressed?

"Change" can be of two types - "Loose Change" and "Unwelcome Change" but these are fuzzy distinctions. Sometimes, loose change can be unwelcome change. To illustrate this point, imagine yourself (or your owner, if you are a canine) going to a grocery store. Now, a delicious snack is chosen and its price has been read from the compulsory "MSRP" label. Assuming this MSRP number is odd, usually a slightly larger amount is given to the store owner. Now, in the case of ( unwelcome change = loose change ) the owner will hand back several coins of small denominations, leaving the purchaser no choice but to make faces and put it in his or her pocket / wallet / handbag / purse or pouch. At this point, the coins will jingle every time a movement is made, much to the annoyance of the mover. This is a good example of the fuzziness of change. Many more examples can be found from the India Change Fellowship; we have 1000s of books and audio lectures on this subject.

With this, I end tonight's speech.

I look forward to interacting with you all during the after-speech cocktail party.

Thank you, and Happy No-Pants Day.
Of course, if you are a canine, every day is No Pants Day!

Have a good Evening!

(- Puppy Manohar)

"Tomorrow we can drive around this town and let the cops chase us around" - Gin Blossoms