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Post your comments here

2009-07-20T16:46:00.001+05:30

Let this be the space for all comments. Other posts will not allow comments as per the new policy.

Comment Policy

2009-07-20T16:37:00.004+05:30

I agree with Dave Winer

that "comments interfere with the natural expression of the unedited voice of an individual" and that "If it was one voice, unedited, not determined by group-think -- then it was a blog, no matter what form it took. If it was the result of group-think, with lots of ass-covering and offense avoiding, then it's not."

Therefore I would be disabling comments in future and have removed the past comments as well. There would be one comment post, where everyone would be free to post all the comments.

5 year old mercilessly crushed to death by a speeding truck

2007-12-09T01:04:00.001+05:30

The newspapers are abound with headings like these. The culprit in each case is undoubtedly the truck driver, who was speeding and killed someone. The driver is promptly arrested.

Has anyone cared to calculate how much time does a fully loaded truck moving at 60 Kmph take to stop when the driver jams the brakes. And what magic is the driver supposed to produce when a kid decides to run right in front of it into the highway without looking left or right to see if a vehicle is coming. This behavior is not limited to children.

The knee jerk reaction of the locals is to make an illegal speed breaker at the location, and vehicles with broken axles and other damage would be a common site at the location in future.

Why is a scapegoat necessary. Why can't we hold the person responsible so that other people are more careful while crossing the roads in future.

The media is equally guilty. They choose to go with the impressive eye catching headline rather than saying that the person died out of its own mistake of running into a highway without looking.

Let there be shoes

2007-06-18T15:48:00.001+05:30

My reasons why shoes should be allowed inside temples:

1. God is in everything, every particle. So god is in dust and dirt also. Then whats the point of keep god in that form out of temples.

2. If cleanliness is the reason, just go an take a look at the churches, they are cleaner than many of the temples. Even though shoes are allowed there.

3. Many people have a habit of washing their feet at the entry of temples. Psychologically this may sound all sacred and all, actually they are making the temples dirtier, wet feet make the floor wet and then dirt sticks more to the wet areas.

Now my reasons against the custom of removing shoes before entering homes:

1. It is particularly risky for diabetic people. Diabetics are particularly susceptible to foot infections and other foot related problems. Walking bare feet can create lots of problems for diabetics and in some extreme cases of infection even requite amputation.

http://www.blu-birdmedical.com/html/diabetes.html
http://www.diabetes.org/type-2-diabetes/foot-care.jsp
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/13/world/asia/13diabetes.html?pagewanted=3&ei=5070&en=73ba2f09942a794f&ex=1182312000

2. The practice might help keeping the homes cleaner, but it also helps keeping the feet of most people really dirty. Thats because its not really possible to keep the floor completely dust free, all that deposits on to the feet of people. Then they climb the beds with the same feet and god help the bedsheets :P.

3. Walking on hard floor is bad for the feet. A hard floor gives no cushion to the sole. Since we mostly have concrete or marble floors in India, which is not going to change in the near future, wearing shoes or slippers inside homes can provide the support needed to walk on bare floor.

http://www.stagestep.com/Aeson_needtoknow.html

4. This has resulted in most of the people wearing floaters because they can be removed easily. These days you hardly see people wearing shoes around Bangalore. Whatever happened to fashion. To me, floaters look plain ugly, more-so if the person wearing floaters has really dirty, scaled, dry feet, with cracks on the heels. These ugly feet are again the result of walking bare feet and not wearing shoes (not to discount lack of care). People who regularly wear shoes have neater feet, as they remain protected, clean and moist.

Word Verification

2007-03-22T02:42:00.001+05:30

Nowadays there is word verification for almost anything and everything on the net. Spams, abuse of automated scripts and other problems have made it necessary, but its become like a cat and mouse chase. While OCR softwares (those that recognize alphabets and numbers from pictures) are getting smarter, the word verification engines are using more and more cryptic ways of writing them.

People themselves have some trouble identifying it correctly sometimes, which often happens when commenting on blogspot blogs. I don't see the method viable after 10 years.

Going forward

2007-03-21T12:12:00.001+05:30

Sorry to disappoint some of you, but I am sticking to my guns. This blog does not work on democracy. It is based on my thoughts and will stay like that.

If you don't like it, don't read. Period.

It is quite easy to criticize under a veil of anonymity. I tried to keep anonymous posts open for some time, but going forward, I need to disallow anonymous comments. Thats because most of the flames were coming from anonymous commenters rather than regular bloggers. The worst of those have been deleted, in case you are thinking that you don't see any offensive ones.

Please resist Flaming. You are free to criticize as long as you criticize the posts rather than the author.

About progressiveness

2007-03-14T21:28:00.001+05:30

Here are some of my mini theories about progress and the future:

1. People: In every group or culture, there are some people who exert a pull towards the past. They like everything as it happened a decade or more ago. They dislike every change as if it is a rot or impurity. They see every invention as a danger to humanity or morality. I'm not arguing about the correctness of their belief. They may/may-not be correct and there are dangerous inventions also. Similarly there are people who pull towards the future. Usually there are some people who create the future (musicians, scientists, writers, even politicians etc), and others who like it and follow. These followers might be impulsive or have whatever reasons. I'm not talking about the reasons here.
The net direction of this tussle is always forwards (with a low magnitude), probably because the younger generation is more accepting of the new ideas. If there is a new country or continent (as the North America was settled once), there are less past pullers so such places have much faster progress.

2. Oscillations of progress: Lets say there is a quality Q which has an index 10 today. Ideally Q should be 50 for the world to be more prosperous. Gradually Q increases 20, 30, 40, finally 50. Now this Q does not stop at 50. It would overshoot, to 60, 70, 80. Now the reversal starts, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30. And more occilations until it stabilizes gradually at 50. The reverse oscillation can appear to be a retrograde step when its going lower than 50, but it comes back again.

I believe many of the parameters of progress happen in this fashion. We had a joint family which had its pitfalls of less independence. Now we are moving towards nuclear, and off shooting more towards maybe no-family at all. After a while, we would again come back, and probably it will settle in the end somewhere in the middle.

Though another of my hypothesis says the final structure might resemble the internet. A net like structure where each individual has one or more spouse and those spouse can again have one or more spouse, thereby making the whole world related in a net like structure - similar to orkut.

3. Rules: Societies which have more rules progress slower than societies which have less rules. Simply because rules hinder creativity. Rules hinder change. Rules make the past-pullers in (1) stronger. Again I don't mean rules are bad. Maybe a necessary evil, but they do hinder progress.

4. Religion: Societies which have a strong religion, or more interference of religion in everyday life progresses slower than societies with less religion. I believe religious people have more trouble accepting change.

5. Induction: Progress by one society infects the other to go in that direction. Unless there is a strong pull by 4.

6. Violence: Overall violence in the world is steadily declining. Modern wars are more about machines than people. Aircrafts destroy tanks, bridges, powerhouses. Once all that is done, the war is over. Though it might be more disastrous if it comes to nuclear war, I hope it wouldn't.

7. Immigrants: Immigrants are usually more progressive than the ethnic population of any place. Reasons: The severed tie from their native place reduces the backward (towards the past, towards the known) pull. They were adaptable in the first place thats why they migrated. Rigid people stay where they are, they don't move to other places. The immigrants get to learn from two societies, their own and the new one. Also, they have to make a reputation for themselves again, from scratch, which makes them work hard.
(P.S. I'm not counting refugees as immigrants)

Negativity

2007-03-14T00:22:00.001+05:30

Looks like I have built quite a reputation here about being negative. Its not like I don't see the positives, but I like to write about the negatives.

Pondering why:
Maybe because all the good love stories are tragedies.
Maybe because negativity is romantic.
Maybe because of the human psyche of wanting more and more.

Writing positive is way too easy. No thinking required at all. No challenge in it. BTW, I have been challenged to write something positive. So expect a positive post from me very soon. I hope it wouldn't be boring.

Hype of IITs and IIMs

2007-03-12T02:28:00.001+05:30

I feel the entire IIM and IIT scene is over-hyped. I have myself interviewed countless graduates from IIT and their technical capability is no better than those from other colleges.

They are called centers of excellence. By measuring how good and fast someone is at gaining knowledge discovered/created by others, one cannot predict how successful they would be at dealing with new situations, solving real issues.

Working in an industry, we encounter issues which have no precedence, no formula to be applied. Some problems are technical, some are political, some relate to the sheer enormity of the task, some about building a consensus. I don't think the entrance exam would filter correctly candidates which are best of each problem, and for unexpected problems.

If we look are examples the world over, great jobs are often done by people who are least expected to do them. College drop-outs, un-educated, unlearnt people often accomplish great feats.

In addition to that, some people from prestigious institutes have a problem (some, not all). They have a big ego. The behavior of the people at their feat right from their families to all others gives them a sense to superiority over the fact that they have studies in a prestigious institution.

They think those who hail from a not-so-famous institute are less mortals and less capable just because of the fact that they do not hail from IITs or IIMs.

Although not all IIT/IIM graduates suffer from inflated ego, I would prefer hiring in the industry be done on a case by case basis rather than giving a blanket preference to people hailing from some particular institutes.

Indians lack creativity

2007-03-03T02:15:00.001+05:30

Had written this a while ago, thought of posting after reading Sujai's article - Are Indians creative and original?

Indians lag behind not only in science but in arts, music and other forms of creativity as well. India has 1/6th of the world population. Thus 1 out of every 6 famous artist, musician, sculpture, scientist, writer should be from India.

Indian musicians are still trying to catch up with the west. No offense to Indian music, but it does not have the concept of harmony at all. Nor does it have a concept of providing a bass. Comparing western and Indian music is like comparing a Windows OS with a dos prompt where only one task can run at a time. Though the Indian classical ragas have good melody as well as subtlety, but just having melody is not sufficient. While the west experimented with drums, toms, cymbals and other percussions totaling more than 100 types of percussions, all we have is a tabla, mridungum and maybe one or two more. No Indian instrument produces harmony. They are all designed towards one note as a time.

The sports story is well known.

I haven't heard of any notable Indian sculpture. The only ones of value are in the ancient temples which were made hundreds and thousands of years ago. And if someone were to attempt to make something like that now, the society would eat up that person with all kinds of people protesting against his/her art.

We have a fair share of writers, though many of the good books are banned, with the writers forced to take refuge in other countries and India tries to avoid giving even a visitors visa to them.

Indian culture hinders free thinking. While the school system is bad enough, even at home, children have to agree to whatever the parents or elders say and don't have a right to opinion. Some people might say that this is a good thing. But whether good or bad, it leads to a decline in creativity and we produce a generation of robots who can be programmed to take calls in a call center or maybe write code in c++ or java.
The goal in life Indian children are taught is to get admission in IIT/IIM/AIIMS, so that their parents can gloat in front of their peers who's children did not score so well. If the children score, they are a success otherwise a failure.

Very few children have the resilience to defeat the environment of upbringing during the first 20 years of life. Those who do, have to nourish their creativity either by hiding it from parents and other people surrounding them or through the brute force of rebellion.

My previous post

2007-02-24T22:35:00.001+05:30

A lot of people found my last post annoying or offensive. The reason was that I had compared Bangalore and Chennai giving some brownie points to Bangalore and a lot of people reportedly from Chennai did not like that.

I understand there is a lot of competition between Bangalore and Chennai. But actually none of the comments relate to the spirit of the post at all. They are more of an emotional response on the likes of "How dare you say Bangalore is better than Chennai".

Some of the comments are outright rude or offensive. The rudeness infact adds strength to my post. I almost decided to remove the post and had done that for two days too, but finally brought it back. Incidentally most of these comments are from people from Chennai who could never have faced language problem in the city.

Anyway, I don't want to defend myself further on the post, because most of the comments do not relate to the post, are offensive or point out things which i never wrote.

Economics of Brain Drain

2007-02-21T15:31:00.001+05:30

For a long time the word "brain drain" was used in India over the people leaving to other countries for better opportunities. The phenomenon was described with an emotional sentiment, suggesting non-payment of dues, that those who are born in this country have a duty to lead a sub-standard life here as opposed to a better life in some other countries. No one bothered to think why people were moving to other countries.

US has been the most popular destination for smart people all over the world to move to. People found it a refreshing change to the repressionist regimes in their own countries.

Another local brain drain has happened in the recent past which, it seems, people have failed to notice. This brain drain is towards Bangalore. People from all over the country are migrating to Bangalore for better opportunities.

So what was common to US and Bangalore apart from job opportunities. The common factor was that people are welcoming towards immigrants, towards people of different race, color, language.

A stark contrast to Bangalore is Chennai, where even if people know your language, they would not speak it, and would rather see you have a hard time communicating. The result is that no one wants to migrate to Chennai, and many of the talented people from Chennai have moved to Bangalore.

Also, thanks for Bangalore, many of the people who migrated to other countries earlier and now returning back to the country, with a lot of money to invest in Indian business.

A similar example in the international scene is Germany. Germans are in general hostile towards foreign people. As a result they are facing a slow down in the economy.

About giving advice

2007-02-11T23:21:00.001+05:30

Person A says "I like apples. I'm not able to locate an apple shop, can you tell me where to find one ?"

B: "Why don't you eat mangoes. They taste good and keep you fit."

A: "But I want apples. I don't like mangoes."

B: "Try to like mangoes, once you start having them, you'll start liking them."

A: "But whats the point. I already like apples, and they also give nutrition. Why don't you tell me where to find an apple shop."

B: "No believe me, no point eating apples. They don't taste good anyway. If you like them, you are probably mistaken or have some problem, why don't you get yourself checked, I know a good doctor. I can take you there..........and regarding the mango shop, its down the street on the first left."

A starts beating his head.

Good rules to observe when giving advice:

a. Unsolicited advice should be rare. Anyone who tells you he has a shoulder pain is not asking for your mother's recipe of homemade pain killer. Nor is he asking you when you last had a pain in your stomach and how the remedy for your stomach pain should cure his shoulder.

b. Advice should aim at solving the problem of the person, and not what you perceive of the situation. Try not to get your personal hatred of apples, refrain you from telling him the way to apple shop.

c. Giving advice is a responsibility. If you are not sure, say you are not sure. Don't portray your hunch as a home truth.

d. You are giving an advice, not an order. If the person decides not to follow your advice, respect his decision, even if it is wrong. Everyone has the right to be wrong. There is no reason to take offense about someone not heeding to your advice.

Review of 'Bhagvad Gita As It Is'

2007-01-05T15:17:00.001+05:30

First of all, this review is not about the Gita itself but the above
mentioned publication/translation of the Gita by Mr. "A. C. Bhaktivedanta".

Pros:
The organization of the book is really good. The best part is that it has a word by word translation which is without any interpretation by the author. So the translation would be free of any mental bias of the author. I have not personally verified whether the translation is correct but having faith in the author in this respect.

The book lists all verses in the following format
1st - The verse in Devanagari script.
2nd - The verse in roman script (with accented characters for proper pronunciation).
3rd - Word meanings of all the words used in the verse.
4th - Translation of the verse in English.
5th - Author's interpretation of the translation.

Cons:

The Author's interpretation is quite biased towards worship of Krishna. It often goes too away from the actual words and context. There are many assumptions made like.

1 - References to detachment have been interpreted as devotion to Krishna. So if the text says that one cannot be free of misery without detachment, the author interprets it as - "One cannot be free without devotion to Krishna". (Text 55, Page 141).
2 - References to god in general are also interpreted as references to Krishna.
3 - The interpretation keeps rotating about Krishna consciousness although there is not much reference to that in the verses.
4 - Verse (Ch 3 text 3) clearly says that there are 2 ways to realize the self. 1. Through empirical Philosophical speculation or 2. By devotion to God. But the books always preaches the second and ignores the first one, thus being biased.
5 - Meanings of some words in the translation are also dubious. "Karma Yoga" is again ambiguously interpreted as devotion to Krishna. There are too many places in the translation carrying repetitive reference to sacrifice and devotion to gods and pleasing gods which I am doubtful of.
6 - The author is printed as "HIS DIVINE GRACE A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada". If the author actually believed in the Gita and had learn t from it, I would expect him to be above ego and not refer to himself using the words 'His Divine Grace', 'Swami'.

Overall:

I would recommend reading this book to have a first hand knowledge over what is there in the Gita. It is very difficult to find a religious book with pure translation unbiased by the author's views. Some word meanings in the direct translation are questionable but otherwise, its good. Take care about words like "sacrifice, devotion, Krishna consciousness", which tend to support 'pleasing the gods'. Also be a little vary of the interpretation ("Purport") section in each verse. Better to read the translation but skip the purport.

[Will post more about the content later]

How to solve life's problems

2006-12-29T00:05:00.002+05:30

These are the most popular ways to solve any problem in life that you may have. The best part is that you don't need to tackle the actual problem at all. This one remedy fixes all kinds.

Doing any one of the following should be sufficient. However you can do multiple to be more sure.

1. Goto Vaishno devi temple and pray to god.
2. Goto Tirupati temple and ask god for that, maybe get your hair shaved there.
3. Do the Art of Living course.
4. Do the Landmark Forum course.
~~5. Join IIT or IIM or MIT etc etc.~~ (Removing this, doesn't make sense)
6. Do a havan.
7. Ask an astrologer for the particular stone that you should wear to get rid of the problem.
8. Get an Ojha to ward of the evil spirit causing the problem.

I guess the readers can add more methods to it.

Landmark Forum

2006-12-18T21:28:00.001+05:30

I met a few people from Landmark Education.

They say its a miraculous solution to any problem
you might be facing. Even if you are not facing
any problem, it will miraculously solve it :p.

Ask them about what they do: No Answer
Ask them about what is taught in the courses: "You come and see"

I went to their introductory session. One by one different people came and told about how they were facing problems and after landmark course, their problem went away. Nothing about the course.

This is their website http://www.landmarkeducation.com/

Please let me know if anyone can make sense about what they do.

I'm not saying they are totally fraud. But whats so secret about the course
that they would not tell anyone though they are ready to enroll everyone ?

And what is this miracle that will solve everything ?

Will telling about it make it ineffective or what will happen if they tell in advance what they teach there ?

Smart Guys

2006-12-05T22:01:00.001+05:30

The current list of movie actors that I like:

Cute:
Tobey Maguire
Jude Law
Hugh Grant
Jet Li
Leonardo DiCaprio
Keanu Reeves
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Tom Cruise

Tough:
Morgon Freeman
Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus)
Tom Hanks
New Bond - Daniel Craig
Sylvester Stallone
Samuel L. Jackson
Rahul Bose
Arnold Schwarzenegger

Sly/Comic/Misc:
Pierce Brosnan
Jim Carrey
Johny Depp
Will Smith
Eddie Murphy

Old and Gold:
Harrison Ford
Mel Gibson
Al Pacino
Patrick Swayze
Richard Gere
Robert De Niro
Michael Douglas
Clint Eastwood
Dustin Hoffman
Naseeruddin Shah
Om Puri

Is making babies a business investment

2006-10-10T21:53:00.002+05:30

There have been demands for a new post. Here's one
Well, I'm going to be flamed big time for this one.

Approx 120 of every 1000 girl children are killed by Parents
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/south/07/07/india.infanticide.pt1/index.html

Parents kill daughter for she was in love with Italian
http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/53233

Man tries to kill daughter for marrying ‘lower caste’ boy
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060928/haryana.htm#10

Lovers shot at, girl's kin suspected
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2132814.cms

Why all this drama and pretence of love and sacrifice when their sole motive is to gain profit ?

They(parents) care and provide - accepted. But the moment you take a decision on your own, the moment you refuse to be a robot, they are your worst enemies. Beware!!!. They would be out of kill you. If you happen to be a girl who likes some guy. They would file false police cases of kidnapping against the guy. They might kidnap you themselves and hold you in confinement. Bashing up the guy is a commonly accepted norm.

The same model parents who said "don't tell lies", will go to any length possible and break any number of laws to get you under their control. They least they would do is sever all contact.

The reason for your birth is they want support when they become old. They want you to accomplish what they couldn't and gain happiness out of that. They want kudos from the society for doing such a (supposedly) noble job. Power is a big motivation. They want to control you and feel powerful.

Are children mere business investment for them ?, the moment they think there would be no profit, they want to shut down the business or abandon it.

Natural Beauty

2006-09-22T15:35:00.001+05:30

Natural beauty is considered to be superior. Beauty achieved by make-up or cosmetics surgery is considered superficial or artificial.

Let me put an analogy.
Person A is born in a rich family. So s/he was born naturally rich.
Person B was born in a poor family. B worked hard and later acquired money through effort.
Putting the same logic here, Person A is a naturally prosperous and thereby would be superior to person B who only has artificial money. But we do not consider it so, we consider person B better. Why not think the same way for beauty ?

Why do we give importance or luck rather than hard work?

Natural beauty is a sheer luck of the person being born beautiful. On the other hand, someone who put makeup or went through cosmetic surgery actually wasn't endowed with beauty as a free gift but worked hard to achieve it. We merrily go around denouncing beauty achieved through work and putting natural beauty ahead of it.

Second part of my argument, why is cosmetic surgery considered bad ? Why only the lucky people should be the ones to get compliments all their lives and all others live in oblivion. What’s wrong if a person who was not lucky enough to be born beautiful wants to look good and be complimented?

I know it leads to a competition, but so do all other aspects of life. People go for degrees and courses to improve their career, what’s wrong if some people do things to improve their looks.

Indecent Attire

2006-09-20T14:08:00.001+05:30

There is a belief among some people that women who dress provocatively attract violence and mis-behavior.

Let me dissect dressing provocatively.

1. In Taliban controlled Afghanistan, even one inch of skin showing was considered indecent. They didn’t allow even an ankle to be seen. So by their standards, exposing feet is provocative dressing.

2. In Pakistan, its not so bad, women are expected to cover their heads, but I guess face and feet being visible is considered normal. Anything more would be provocative.

3. In India, wearing sleeveless tops is acceptable; bottoms which cover the knees are acceptable. Anything less is provocative. One hypocrisy being - waist showing is decent if one is wearing a saree but indecent if wearing a western outfit.

4. USA. I need not explain.

Now let’s looks at crime/atrocities against women in these 4 regions.

I guess all would agree that the crimes are opposite to what one would expect by the "provocative dressing" logic.

I'm sure if there was a society where being nude was perfectly acceptable, it would have even lesser crime against women than USA. Probably data can be taken from some tribes on this.

Fallacies

2006-09-19T12:03:00.001+05:30

Common lame arguments people put forth when their view has no merit.

It has faced the test of time. It has been happening for eons, so it must be correct.

All the people are not fools. So the facts of the world would be decided by democracy. If they all agree (as they did once) that the earth is flat, it becomes flat.

It's against nature (or against god's will). Oh yes, nature came to you and told you what's against it.

You are only a child, you don’t know anything. Any you as an adult are 1000 times stupider.

There must be some reason. Very nice logic.

You just argue and don’t accept anyone's point. QED.

Death sentence to acid throwers

2006-08-30T14:02:00.001+05:30

Recently, The Bangalore High Court awarded life imprisonment to an acid thrower. He had burnt to ashes the face, both eyes, nose and one ear of the victim. The punishment was a step in the right direction but I think still short of full justice.

Throwing acid is a crime worse than murder. When a person is killed, it’s a few minutes or maybe hours of agony and it’s over. Throwing acid is a life long torture. It’s like hanging between life and death. It kills the self respect, self image and everything a person could have in life.

Whether we accept or not, life is easy for a beautiful / handsome / smart looking person and equally tough for an ugly one. A person bearing a disfigured face is worst of the lot. Disfiguring the face disfigures the whole life of a person. If the attacker had a little conscience, he would have killed the person instead. Acid throwing is a sadist's weapon of choice, lesser risk of punishment, more harm to the victim.

Secondly the act of acid throwing cannot be done in hot blood, the person needs to procure the acid and plan the attack. It should be treated at par with cold blooded murder when awarding punishments.

Also, unlike other laws, a strong law for acid attacks cannot be misused by anyone. I don’t think any person in the world would be ready to go blind and burn ones face to misuse a law.

Dementors

2006-08-11T15:23:00.001+05:30

J.K. Rowling introduced an interesting concept. Harry Potter has creatures called dementors. They feed by consuming the happiness in the air around them. When dementors are around, people start feeling depressed, and relive their worst memories. Those kept in the company of a dementor for too long are often driven insane

I have actually seen people like that in real life. They suck the happiness out of everyone around them. They create negative energies everywhere they go, and feel a sense of satisfaction by making people sad. That satisfaction is driven by a hatred towards everyone. People actually say things like "he's driving me insane" about them.

I think hope and spirits follow the pattern of heat. They flow from higher potential to lower potential. If we are around an energetic and high spirited person, we start feeling some of that energy. Vice versa for a depressed person. The dementors keep their own potential so low that all optimism around starts flowing into them. It takes a strong person not to be affected by a dementor.

Why I hate religion

2006-08-07T15:16:00.001+05:30

1. People change with time, culture changes with time, way of life changes with time, values change with time. How can one set of static rules apply to all times ? How can rules which were made eons ago apply on today's world?

Stale water in a pot rots, dead body in a coffin rots, anything which doesn't change with time rots. No wonder many major religions of the world are rotting.

2. I know how to live my life. The things that I don't know about, I would want to figure them out myself. I don't want someone else dictating terms of my life and how I should live it.

3. I don't believe any of those rules came from god. They were all framed by people keeping their selfish interests in mind rather than looking at the world's interest in mind.

4. The world history is full of examples, the only things religion leads to is wars, deaths, jihad, crusade, burning people at stake. I am yet to see large scale kindness in the name of religion.

RELIGION is a synonym of EVIL

~~I would exclude Buddhism from this talk because I am yet to see Buddhists waging a war to kill people or forcing their views on others, nor do they have an expansionist agenda.~~

Some people protested about the above line as to why just exclude buddhism and there are other religions also which do not harm anyone. So I am striking out the above line altogether.

I would also want to clarify that this post is regarding the concept of organised religion as a whole. Not all religions suffer from those ills, but I feel on the whole, a world without religion would be a better place.

Fear

2006-08-01T23:39:00.001+05:30

Me: Fear is a direct outcome of hope and prosperity.

Friend: Fear is realizing your weakness and vulnerability.

Me: Hopelessness removes fear, depression removes fear.

Friend: Yes, they do, when the fear is overcome by resignation. But you resign only to those things which you know are costly but still bearable.

Me: You sometimes resign to life, and then nothing else matters. Depression can take away fear of life also.

Friend: We tend to resign on longish things, but not on spilt second things, and then you only feel primal fear. Once you have the time to rationalize that fear, you then tend to calm down and resign and become hopeless. So if you are faced with a 5 second danger, you will have intense fear, not hopelessness.

Me: hmmm, primal fear is not logical, it's instinctive. You need to put logic into it to remove it. You fear when are not prepared to defend against an attack. There must be uncertainty for fear. Certainty of either victory or defeat kills fear.

Deviants

2006-07-28T17:44:00.001+05:30

n.
One that differs from a norm, especially a person whose behavior and attitudes differ from accepted social standards.

In a given set of people, the majority (say 80%) would usually do same kind of things i.e. follow a predefined stereotype. The remaining 20% will want to deviate from the regular average world and do things differently.

Interestingly these deviant 20% are the ones who perform all the innovations. Scientist who look like horrible animals but come up with theories which change the way we know our world forever. Artists and musicians whos works are remembered hundreds of years after they die. Incidentally, the deviant people deviate in all kinds of ways which include way of dressing and mannerisms.

In the earlier world, most of them were labelled witches or monsters and burnt at stake or maybe put in prison. The number of deviant people have more or less remained the same. But nowadays, the world is more moderate towards the deviant. So more of them come out of the closet thus we see more of deviant people these days.

It has been seen that many of the famous creative people were/are gays: Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Elton John, Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Ludwig van Beethoven, Lord Byron.., its an endless list.

We would see more innovation if we are more tolerant towards the deviant. As long as they don't harm other human beings deviants should be accepted by society.

God save Lord Ayyappa from women

2006-07-24T12:04:00.001+05:30

A case is running in the High Court and the government is about to order a Crime Branch probe.

Incident: A popular actress visited the temple. WoW

http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/08/stories/2006070811900400.htm

A website dedicated to the Lord Ayyappa temple says -

"Sabarimala temple is open to all, irrespective of caste, creed, religion, social status or nationality." Notice the absence of the word "gender". Women are not allowed in the temple. They bar 50% of the population and claim to be open to all.

The reason provided "This is because the Lord is a chaste yogi in Sabarimala." So our great god is so weak that he cannot even control his urge if he looks at a woman ?

Shouldn't we expect our gods to be stronger willed ?

I would imagine a being like god to be much above things like ego, desire, revenge etc. How can the presence of one woman annoy god ? And if any act annoys god, would god be expected to take revenge from other people who are in no way concerned with the act ?

The power hungry and self assumed spokesmen of god, protray god as cheap as they themselves are.

Backward Class

2006-07-21T17:09:00.001+05:30

Einstien told us that everything is relative. When we say certain section of people are backward, they need to be backward in comparison to a control group. What is that control group ? Can people of another country be considered a control group, thereby declaring a whole country as backward ? Do people in Somalia (no offense to the country) need a reservation because everyone is backward ? Would it even make any sense reserving jobs in the country to the whole population of the country ?

Can a minority of one country be taken as a control group to declare the rest of the population as backward. If yes, do we need some minimum size of this forward minority ? Does one forward person make the whole country backward by comparison ?

I say NO. A group should be termed backward only when its backward in comparison to the majority of the population. So declaring that 75% of the population is backward is implicitly wrong. The number of backward people can never be more than 50%, otherwise that's how the country is, with only a minority group who are forward but no-one backward.

Reservation of any resource for the majority of a population is not actually reservation. It's simply apartheid. It means they are excluding one particular minority group from accessing the resource which is available to everyone else.

Split Personality

2006-07-05T00:44:00.001+05:30

Whenever I chat with someone and then later talk to them, I feel the person on chat was somewhat different from the person I am talking to. Again the same happens when I meet the person.

It looks like it is possible to communicate with three personalities in every person. The person face to face is the most modest and consequently the most camouflaged. The person on the phone is somewhere in the middle. The person on chat is the most open.

Probably to keep the facial expressions under control, people control all their emotions and hide a lot of their personality. The person on the chat feels he/she cannot be seen and so doesn't put so much effort into hiding his/her feelings.

This is what my friend 'Deepak' had to add on reading this post

"Its not that I am not what I am in person. I am that also and this also. It's true that I don't control or restrain much while on chat. but on chat I don't mind being serious. Or speak like Plato.

There more time to think and analyze on chat. When face to face or even on phone, you speak the first thing on your mind but on chat, it occurs that I say 4th or 5th thing. Also, there is relatively nil degree of fear.
This fear can be of many types - like you might fear that the other person might get angry, might not like it, might think something about u or u might not be able to explain properly and a misunderstanding might develop

In-person, the mind has to control so much more, the body language, the dialogue delivery, the tone, timbre, depth, for required impression

I think chat brings out our true relationship with the particular person more nicely."

The big apple

2006-06-09T18:22:00.001+05:30

This is again another amazing piece from 'The HitchHikers guide to the galaxy'

"I always thought that about the Garden of Eden story," said Ford. "Eh?" "Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?" "Yes of course I do." "Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting `Gotcha'. It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it." "Why not?" "Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end."

Hide and Seek

2006-03-13T22:40:00.001+05:30

A and B are two robots.
They are initially standing 100m apart.
The software of A says: maintain a distance of 10m from B.
The software of B says: maintain a distance of 5m from A.

Now A and B start moving towards each other, following their software. 90...50...30...20...15...12...11....10. They are now 10m apart.

Now B continues to move forward - to reach 5m. A's goal again begins to unsettle. It starts to move away from B. What started as a meeting turns into a chase.

A waste of energy by both. Only if B could understand A's goal or A could understand B's goal, they could stop the struggle.

Inescapable

2005-12-13T02:16:00.001+05:30

A situation never imagined or perceived, which requires learning the rules from the scratch, a situation a person has no in-born talent to deal with, and is utterly defenseless to face. Where help fades, where books are either absent or preach every action possible under the sun, where instincts are found not very trustworthy, logic turns out to be the demon.
Love the eternal backstabber is too dangerous to try. The decision the person takes is often inky pinky ponky spur of the moment style. The hopes turn sine wave, with people hiding the troughs; their ego too big to permit them to accept that they can go negative. The people find them lucky, deluded by the outer perceived glow. They know not of the black hole inside, ready to engulf the very existence of the person’s being.
Every person however capable would one day face this music at least once in his/her lifetime.

The Seed

2005-12-06T15:00:00.001+05:30

A friend sent the following to me in response to my last post "Cultivation". Thank You. I am at a loss of words.

When the seed opened eye, it knew not what was in stow;
It was promised abundant sunlight; comforting warmth, nurturing glow.

The seed grew up, strong and bright;
it dreamed of a tree, of strength and height.

The day came when it wanted to bear fruits;
show colours to the world, to start a new pursuit.

Alas, the thunder struck and the gale blowed;
the tree was banyan, it had no flowers that showed.

It stood there fighting, getting strong, bidding its time;
Centuries passed, it nature grew sublime.

What happened to that tree, many people asked.
Did it wither down, like all around it had passed.

A traveller had come, mesmerized in his thoughts;
solace He was seeking, wisdom was what he sought.

The banyan stood steadfast, welcoming the stranger;
it was natural for it, it did not fear any danger.

In the comforting and serene shades,
the tiny seed which now made,
the stranger got the Enlightenment; of universal truth.

The tree still stands there, bearing no fruits;
a testimony to what it had borne; though not what it had dreamt of.
I respect the tree, I respect its resolve;
it was the Chosen One; it had a destiny; and lived to see it evolve.

Cultivation

2005-11-30T11:36:00.001+05:30

You sow the seeds,
You till the soil,
You spray germicide,
protect the crop,
You add manure,
tend carefully to the small plants.

But you made one mistake.
The seed had 46 chromosomes, and ALAS, a brain.

You never wanted a brain, but had no choice. That’s the package. Take it or leave it.

You try control,
the brain resists,
You blackmail,
it blackmails back.

The crop refuses to be cut. You remind it of all the tending you did. It’s not impressed.

You curse the crop,
It goes away,
Tries to find why it exists,
There is really no answer.

You wonder what you did wrong.
It wonders what it did wrong,
There's really no answer.
The problem was the brain,
You didn’t need a brain.

Edge cases:

You cut the crop,
the brain dies,
you are happy,
the crop is not capable of being sad.

You try to cut,
the crop hits back,
You die,
The crop is still not happy.

You burn the crop,
anger satisfied,
the crop is dead,
better or worse cannot be said,
the crop fails,
Your honor hails.

Rare case:

You like the crop,
decide not to cut,
The crop likes you back,
gives you the fruit on its own.

What happens next:

Recurse(crop).

I cannot respect you farmer, you cultivated me so you can cut me off.
I cannot forgive you farmer, you uprooted me and threw me out when I refused to bear fruit for you.
I hate you not farmer, it gives me nothing.

I wish to farm,
but not to cut.
I wish to tend,
to see it grow.
The brain will dwell,
I do not mind.
Or so I think,
will know with time.

The law of leeching

2005-11-29T02:50:00.001+05:30

Let’s say there is a plant which produces 100 units of energy a day. The plant requires 70 units a day for its own maintenance and 30 units to grow more leaves and branches. On the plant is stuck a parasite(leech) which also eats up its produce.

Now if the leech eats up 30 units a day, the plant never grows and both the leech and the plant stagnate.
If the leech eats more than 30 units a day, the plant will not have enough to maintain its current state and will gradually wither. Along with the plant the leech also dies.
If the leech decides to eat 10 units a day, the plant will grow. After some time, it might be producing 300 units a day, consuming 210 and having 90 spare. The leech can use all this 90 and stagnate or use less and have even more food later.

The moral of the story? Well, there are lots of analogies.

The business/economy of a country is the plant. The government is the leech. The message is clear. There are many who would want to eat away the so called "rich" and later starve to death by their own folly. They only survive because of the refusal of the "rich" to die.

Cloning

2005-11-25T19:33:00.001+05:30

Before I deal with the ethics of cloning, I would want to bring forth my views on some other matters first which would play a part in my arguments regarding cloning.

What is killing : Thousands of chickens, cattle are killed everyday to serve as our food. Every breath we inhale brings millions of microbes into our air passage an lungs which are all killed by our immunity. But the self appointed guardians of morality will comfortably eat away all kinds of cows and pigs everyday but raise a big hue and cry if a small bunch of cells with 46 pair of chromosomes is used for making the life of another human perpetually better.

They are very quick to shout about those 4 cells that were killed, but very comfortably forget about the thousands of blind people who live each day in darkness. Those people could have normal vision with the help of cloning. A fully grown and conscious person could be saved from liver cirrhosis if we direct our morals more towards the good of the living people among us than towards those 4-10 cells which have no brain, no consciousness, as are as good as vegetables in their current state.

The term "designer babies" has been coined as sarcasm over the improvement of human race using genetic methods. Why should one individual who, by luck became good looking and intelligent be the only one to bear the fruits of it while all others work twice as hard and still can’t get the same quality of life.

After "god", "morals" is second most effective term invented to justify criticism and hatred towards the progressive.

Bliss

2005-10-12T02:05:00.001+05:30

Good leads played on overdriven guitar, slightly heavy music but not very strong drums, me standing in the open, face towards the night sky, complete darkness, being accompanied by someone I trust. That is my idea of Heaven. It's so peaceful, so perfect, serene, eternal, like time has stopped, full of harmony, stability, joy.

I remember the Mark Knopfler concert. He was performing "Telegraph Road". Alternately playing solo piano and overdriven leads, my eyes were closed, was thinking of absolutely nothing. Amazingly wonderful...

People say heavy metal is noisy, violent. I find it completely the opposite. It’s like a protection. It imparts a sense of peace with oneself and the circumstances, warm and comforting. Like an external energy making you tick and not requiring anything of you.

Proof that God doesn't exist

2005-08-19T22:42:00.001+05:30

This is from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful the Babel fish could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.