On Freedom of expression:

Ted Rall's rather tasteless cartoon on '9/11 widows' created a controvery. New York Times pulled it off its site. People have been quite upset pretty much all round. John Scalzi seems to be the only well known writer who defended Rall's position in his column. (Scalzi has some great writing in that site, worth exploring).

Incidentally, Rall antagonized a lot of people some time back too by taking on Art Spiegelman, The doyen of the cartoon world in New York. It precipitated a very nasty and very public legal brawal with Danny Hellman, another cartoonist (Hellman's take here and Rall's here). Rall doesnt appear to be a very pleasant guy. I went through some of his cartoons. Most of the time, he isn't very funny. He seems to use cartoons as a tool for social commentary. But I do feel that he has every right to publish bad cartoons so long as someone is ready to publish them. Similarly, NYT has the editorial right to take these off their site if they offends their sensibilities. No big deal there.

In another totally unrelated event, Arundhati Roy, the Pulitzer prize winning author was jailed for a day and fined Rs. 2000 on contempt of court charges in India. Yesterday, in Mefi, I kind of got blinded on the related issue of the Sardar Sarovar Dam controversy and my own views on Arundhati Roy's politics. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that this has less to do with Arundhati Roy and more to do with her right to express her opinion however strident, theatrical or attention grabbing those opinions may be.

This is one cliche that is worth repeating again and again and again: Freedom of speech is one of the most sacred and inalienable rights in any democracy and we should all go out of our way to preserve it.

(Most of the links are derived from mefi. I dont feel very good about that. But I spent whatever spare time I got yesterday in mefi. So, no surprises there).

PS: My today's presentation got cancelled. All that hard work ......