Bessie Braddock (to Winston Churchill): Winston, you’re drunk.

Churchill: Bessie, you’re ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober.

George Bernard Shaw showing scorn and resentment at corny humour such as this poem

This exchange (perhaps apocryphal like any other exchange attributed to Churchill) is up there for no particular reason. I find it funny and that quite suits.

Well, here’s another poem and like my previous poem blogs, again not by me, but in reaction to email dissemination of my attempts at serious rhyme through poem. In response to fierce criticism through email that in the real world could have translated to egg on my face, I retorted with the life experience of George Bernard Shaw and his travails at finding a publisher for his work for nine years. Of course, the implication in invoking Shaw being that I may somehow be of such a kind. A good friend from  this lab which has some science on its menu had this to say:

Please desist from the literary arts
Yours stink worse than lighted farts
If at all you must persist
Then let your works be lost in mist

By mist I mean oblivion
Forever and ever – time AND space
We are not your guinea pigs
So spare us all, the human race

You would be better received on Mars
Where life forms are not yet sentient
Go recite to rocks and fungi
At least they’ll be more patient

And if this is a dent to your ego
I hope it comes well in time
For failure after much persistence
Is like your work, an empty rhyme

Coming from a person with as corny a sense of humour as corn itself, I chose to make it funnier using a recent and under-utilised humour tool, called Google Translate. Yes, as useful as it might be for writing emails in our own languages (even Indic ones now!), it can be used very effectively for humour. Running this poem through Google Translate produces:

कृपया साहित्यिक कला से विरत
तुम्हारा जला farts बदबू से भी बदतर
अगर तुम सब पर दृढ़ रहना चाहिए
तो फिर अपने काम करता है धुंध में खो दिया जा

धुंध तक मैं विस्मरण का मतलब
हमेशा के लिए और कभी – समय और स्थान
हम अपने गिनी सूअरों नहीं कर रहे हैं
इसलिए हम सभी को छोड़ दो, मानव जाति

आप बेहतर मंगल ग्रह पर प्राप्त होगा
जहां जीवन रूपों अभी तक संवेदनशील नहीं हैं
चट्टानों और कवक को सुनाना जाओ
कम से कम वे अधिक रोगी हो जाएगा

और अगर यह अपने अहंकार के लिए एक गड्ढा है
मुझे आशा है कि यह समय में अच्छी तरह से आता है
बहुत हठ के बाद असफलता के लिए
अपने काम, एक खाली कविता की तरह है

And that is how you can have canned corn at Google’s cost!

The Government playing Blindman's Bluff with its citizens instead of being inclusive!

Responding to a call posted on the Rajya Sabha Website where now and then, standing committees mulling over our collective future as a nation act responsibly by inviting comments, I sent off the following comments on the proposed amendment to the Indian Copyright Act, 1957. All in all an opportunity which has only been half, if improperly used by the Government. In any case, in hope that all comments are given their due, I have shared mine within the deadline of May 31st, 2010 (So, run and send yours too; there are two more days).

Thanks to a tweet from Sunil Abraham of Centre for Internet and Society.
It is a laudable effort of the Government to bring the existing legislation up to date with international consensus and frameworks. Kindly note the following comments.

1) We endorse the reading of “fair use” to apply to private and personal use legalising any use of copyrighted material for private or personal use such as making backups of material for personal use, which in some country contexts (like the DMCA of USA) has not been read as fair use.

2) While it is commendable that the Act removes the need to pay royalty/seek permission for conversion of copyrighted text to Braille, the spirit of inclusivity is lost as most people with visual impairment have moved on to e-readers and audiobooks. We strongly recommend that the amendment be widened to be applied for all types of devices/technologies that are geared towards making a particular text available for visually impaired. Such a wide application of the amendment would make India indeed a pioneer in inclusive legislation.

3) We appreciate the move to give content creators more rights over their creation and this move to shift some power from industry to individuals who create content is commendable.

4) While the efforts to provide copyrights as a right to assert authority over intellectual or other kinds of original work is an important role for legislation, we believe legislation should also make space for frameworks which explicitly try to improve and open up opportunities for collaboration. Various such frameworks are in use worldwide today, one well known among them being the Creative Commons system. Original work ‘copyrighted’ under this system encourages the spirit of sharing while still allowing the creator to retain ‘intellectual rights’ over his/her work.

For more, please see http://creativecommons.org/education?utm_source=ccorg&utm_medium=ccedu

Leading institutions and governments are now in the process of adopting and endorsing the Creative Commons system. We request that the Committee consider the option of providing a legal space to such licensing within a legislative framework.