Cerebral Chiba

Another BBC Classic

2007-04-17T14:11:00.000-05:00

Only a BBC commentator could have produced this.

Don't want to worry England fans here, but Vaughan's facing Pollock with all the success of a man waving a wet piece of spaghetti at a passing pea.

For more, read the BBC coverage of the World Cup here.

Desi Superheroes

2007-04-15T06:51:00.000-05:00

One of my all-time favourite movie scenes is David Carradine's superhero speech from the end of Kill Bill 2. The best observation in his monologue is that while Superman was born with superpowers, all the others had their powers thrust upon them.

Hollywood superheroes tend to be conflicted individuals. Under the mask and the leather tights, they are average-Joes who frequently doubt themselves. They often find themselves having to choose between their separate identities, and consequently hurt the ones who they love. Superman too, despite his innate super-ness, has problems due to the fact that everyone around him is different from him.

Why can't superheroes be perfect individuals? Ok, perfect is too strong... why can't they be in harmony with their inner selves? Why should I pay $10 to go see someone on screen who has the same issues in life that I do? It's all getting a bit tiresome. If you ask me, it's high time Hollywood looked eastwards for the answer (they always do, for their emo problems).

No, I don't mean Jackie Chan. I mean Bollywood.

Our desi superheroes are always 100% "super", inside and out. Whether catching the bad guys with a flying kick from 15 storeys up, or romancing the ladies with a saucy little thrust-and-gyrate number, they do it all with aplomb. There are no real emotional weaknesses there for anyone to exploit. The best a villain can do is kidnap the hero's mother every once in a while, but aside from the problem of who's going to wash his super-undies, that's not really an inconvenience.

Why is that? I mean, with all the psychiatric care they could need just a phone call away, why can't western superheroes be more Raymond-like? ("The Complete Man", you know...)

I think this has a lot to do with our superheroes' upbringing. They grow up with tales of mega-achievers all around them. And I don't just mean Hanuman leaping across the ocean and Krishna holding up a mountain on his pinky.

For instance, this particular Lollywood Tarzan never flinched when fired at...

... most likely because as a kid, he watched Dharam paaji do just that, all day long:

Imagine if he'd grown up watching Neo and Trinity instead. The man would've spent years studying martial arts, trained 10 hours a day to stay in shape, and worked at Infosys Bangalore to hide his hacker talents. None of that nonsense... he just ate plenty of mom's cooking (and a dash extra), and trusted the super-tough layers of fat to ward off stray bullets. Who needs jujitsu? Who needs to dodge bullets?

Another messy bit of business with superheroes is their "secret identity protection" plan. They're afraid that exposure will put their loved ones in danger. Well, as Govinda shows in this video, the trick to get around that problem is two-fold:
1) dress up the loved ones in superhero costumes as well
2) always dance together

No fear here!

I can go on and on... but let's just summarize with the three main reasons Desi superheroes are better than the rest.

They have style.

They have faith.

They know which laws of physics are REALLY true ("free your mind", eh?)

To the credit of the Hollywood chaps, let me say that they ARE indeed learning the lessons. And some of the results are outstanding, as evidenced here.

More of this, and the world will be a better place.

(p.s.: Sharan- dedicated to you. Hope you haven't given up blogging for good.)

Another reason why I love Top Gear

2007-04-08T16:49:00.001-05:00

I'm Baaaack!!!

2007-03-05T00:14:00.000-05:00

Well, for those of you who were wondering where good ol' VB had gone, it's a happy day... because today all will be revealed.

As so often happens to desi folks who've lived away from the motherland for a year or two, I'd been missing home too much. Living in Michigan, among all the firangs with their BBQ chicken and their Budweisers, was getting to be too much. I couldn't stay away anymore from the chaatwallas, the tandoori chickens, and the borderline-sleazy music videos. So I moved...

... to Texas. Feels like home, y'all!!!

Yup yup, welcome to the 5th largest mini-Asia in the US- after California, New York, Hawaii(wtf???) and New Jersey. And welcome to Dallas, my town, home of the Everest theater and the Iyengar Yoga-Massage Center.

Some idea of how much one craves contact with home comes from the fact that during my lonely weekday nights, I've been scouring Youtube for NRI comedy acts. (Russell Peters was a flash in the pan. Here's the real boss - #, #, #). On my first free weekend here, I made a beeline for the nearest Bollywood theater and a temple.

Going to the temple, I discover, is the desi way of networking. It's where unclejis and auntyjis look for a good match for their ABCD daughters. One of my friends caught the religious bug last month, when he decided that he'd had enough of living alone, and a good obedient Indian wife would be a welcome addition to the furniture and appliances sitting around (kid you not). You might say that's way retro thinking, but then he also dances to 70's Hindi music and thinks Rafi was the 11th incarnation. To each his own I say.

Speaking of "to each his own", some of my office mates find it surprising that I don't have cable television at home. Of course, TV is to an American what beer is to the German, idly-sambhar to the south Indian, and drugs to the Dutch. Folks in the next cubicle speak of hooking up their 41 inch TV to their Tivo, then to their computer, then their satellite dish, and whatnot (I'm sure I got the order wrong). They speak of various cables and how to fit them together like surgeons discussing a particularly nasty appendectomy.

I rely on the magicians at Youtube & Google Video to supply me with my daily dose of entertainment. And for the longest time, I must say, they did a beautiful job. From my favourite Top Gear series to the latest Bollywood movies to an occasional indulgence in the Mentos-Coke genre, they had what it took to keep me happy.

But you can't escape Big Business. They're putting up their tollbooths wherever a bit flows online. Here's the latest scoop for the RIAA: royalties for Webcasts. The TV networks are also hard at work, slowly but surely removing existing content. And there aren't enough LonelyGirls out there to stem the flow.

A broken advertising model aside, I think the networks always had the edge, content-wise. Given a choice wouldn't you rather watch characters you're familiar with, who come back every week at the same time, and are presented in a slick, sexy format? Youtube instead has a multitude of 3-minute laughs to offer... some of them are indeed brilliant, but where's the continuity? Besides, flicking is easier than clicking (i.e. you've to work harder and longer to find good stuff on the net).

Wired magazine recently explained the Youtube phenomenon using the old analogy of a million monkeys typing away furiously. Where every once in a while you get a Hamlet. I think the networks are betting on the fact that their monkeys are a little smarter than the ones populating Youtube.

So, here's the 64-million dollar question: given that their current source of content is being squeezed, will Youtube (and by extension, Google) have to become a sort of movie studio to continue flourishing? Yahoo has already attempted to become a content provider, with disastrous results. Perhaps they were a little too early for the times. Will Youtube do better? How?

Google's $1.65bn pays off, as we find out...

2006-10-24T20:26:00.000-05:00

... the cause of all man-made disasters and achievements. Here's the story, brought to you by the brilliant men who gave the world YouTube.

"Men With Cramps"
Introduction. Part I, II, and so on.

Is this worth 1.65 and seven zeros of investor money? I really think not. When Google removes all good videos from YouTube as a result of all the lawsuits, videos like these will be what we'll be left with. And then how will the GOOG stock do?

Pull out your money before it's too late, I say.

Why I Became A Mass Murderer

2006-08-27T08:48:00.001-05:00

(a.k.a. A Day in the Life of an ISA Member)

Note to the ignorant: I'm handling airport pickup of incoming Desi students from Detroit to Ann Arbor this year. The way it works is: the newbies will mail in their arrival time, hopefully 2 weeks or more in advance. Upon which I request/beg/bully some fellow with a car to go pick them up from the airport. Under usual conditions a pickup takes about 90 minutes, round trip. But ever since the London bomb scare... let's just say I now officially hate airplanes.

So this guy (whom I'll call AJ for no particular reason) was supposed to come in on Friday, 6:30 pm. Friday evenings being the time most grad students go skirt-chasing on Main Street, AJ's airport pickup was arranged with some difficulty.

At 5:25 pm, he calls to say that his flight got delayed to 11:35 pm. "Don't worry kid," I say... "we'll be there." And make arrangements as such.

At 11:50, he calls to say he missed the flight, will come at 8:15 am next day.

Hmm.

The original picker-upper gets fed up. I find someone else, somehow, to go do the pickup. It's 1:15 am. I have to spend the night working, by the way.

Get up from my desk in the morning, start towards bed, and right on time AJ calls to say that says he's delayed a bit. Coming at 9:50am now.

Wake up the new pickup guy, ask him to go later. Convince him somehow. Exhausted, pop off to sleep.

15 minutes after which, Good-Old calls & leaves a message to say that he'd noted the time wrong... it's actually 11:55am. I'm in la-la land so never hear this.

Wake up at 1:30 pm to see thirty-two missed calls. Oh my god, I think, he's still at the airport. Forget brushing, forget bathing, run helter-skelter to get to the airport. Find a guy who's willing to give his car, another guy wiling to drive.

At which time I notice Good-Old's voicemail... apparently his aunt (who lives nearby) picked him up, and will drop him off in the evening to Ann Arbor.

Now this is the time, dear reader, that a mosquito chooses to land on my arm. And bites hard.

I swat the bastard. I paint myself red with its mongrel blood. After which I launch a pogrom against all its brethren... at least half a battallion lies dead at my feet. And I emit a war-cry that goes "YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGGGGHHHHHHyousonofaB%!@#"

This job is driving me crazy, I tell you.

The War Tapes

2006-08-12T08:02:00.000-05:00

While I continue struggling to manage 2 jobs and incoming student issues, please excuse me as I fail to update the blog regularly.

In the meanwhile, here's something interesting: The War Tapes, a documentary film shot by soldiers and directed via email.

Scratching In All The Wrong Places

2006-08-09T13:48:00.000-05:00

My first pool tournament yesterday. Paid $10 to play 2 matches, beaten to pulp in both... 0-3, 2-3.

In my defense, here's why I lost-

Didn't get any practice time.
The tables at that joint have a different 'feel' from my usual place.
Had walked 6 miles in biting heat to reach there- while carrying a 25-pound backpack.
My opponents had handicaps of 3, while I got an unfair 4.
I scratched in all the wrong places, at all the inappropriate times.

Now if you're a desi, or an avid Sex & The City viewer, you may get a completely wrong idea about point #5. Scratching in pool is actually a good thing- especially when your opponent does it. Allow me to explain.

Scratch
Pocketing of the cue ball in pocket billiards. In many games a scratch is a type of foul. Scratch is sometimes used to refer to all types of fouls. See foul.

Foul
A violation of a particular game's rules for which a set penalty is imposed. In many games the penalty for a foul is ball-in-hand for the opponent or ball-in-hand behind the headstring. In some games, three successive fouls in a row is a loss of game.

Unfortunately my first opponent, this pint-sized football fan probably still in 6th grade, knew all the ins and outs of competition 9-ball, and used the 3-foul rule to devastating effect.

That ploy was psychologically effective as well. Usually when we practice and a foul occurs, the opponent just says "Oh that's okay... take the shot again!" Coming from that environment, into one where fouls are used as a match-winning strategy, a man can't help but be offended. You can't play well when the dominating thought in your head is to kick this kid in the butt and teach him a lesson in respecting his elders.

Anyhoo, that's the agenda for next week's tournament. Now back to the practice table.

We Are The Champions...!

2006-08-03T16:09:00.000-05:00

The Human Powered Submarine team I'm a part of, here at UofM, became US National Champions 2006! Ok, so my contribution was minimal to say the least, but what the heck!

Well done, guys. Break more records next year!

The Hacker Manifesto

2006-07-31T20:36:00.000-05:00

An interesting foreword by Blake Ross, co-creator of the Firefox browser, in the book Hacking Firefox.

If software is an art - and I think it is - then I must be the only artist in the world who advocates defacing his own work. But if ever there was a product designed for hacking, Firefox is it. Because Firefox is an open-source project, it's lifeblood - its source code- is available to hackers the world over. And i do mean hackers. These guys ship software before they put on pants.

What separates Firefox from other open-source projects is that it isn't designed for a technical community. Products like Linux are generally regarded as being "by geeks, for geeks", but with Firefox it's more like "by geeks, for grandmas". We focus obessively on the user experience so that everything just works, right out of the box. Indeed, you may find that when you first start Firefox, you don't need to hack it. This odd sensation will be accompanied by symptoms of hacker withdrawal, including, in severe cases, a sudden willingness to go outside. You'll find yourself scoffing at certain parts of Firefox just to feel as if you have something to hack ("Pfft, I could hack a much cuter fox for their logo").

No worries: Shortly thereafter, your geeky sense will begin tingling again. Think back to The Matrix. Where most of the world saw a vibrant 3-D reality, Neo and his crew saw an endless stream of flashing green code. Okay, so real life (if this is real life) isn't quite that cool, but you and I see technology through a different lens than Grandma. She isn' t going to notice - or care - if her toolbar buttons are five pixels apart instead of seven, but I am, and I want to fix it. Because we are empowered to change anything, we notice everything.

Besides, hacking isn't just about fixing what's wrong. It's about what already works work for you. Sure, traditional rectangular contextual menus work well enough, but wouldn't pie menus work better? And yeah, it's easy enough to click that back button, but it's ever so far... Why can't I make a quick gesture with my mouse to go back, wherever it happens to be? Well enough, good enough - "enough" does not exist in the hacker vocabulary. There is only an escalating sense of "better".

I began work on Firefox two years ago, when I was 17, and I'm still hacking on it right now in another window. Firefox is not a business. It is a passion. It is the product of a global community of developers fueled by their own drive to create, and no matter how hard we try to polish it for Grandma, our roots shine through. We urge you to join us; our art is yours.

My favourite quote: "Because we are empowered to change anything, we notice everything."

Grad Student Life

2006-07-31T03:54:00.000-05:00

I've been helping new incoming Indian students at the University of Michigan get from the airport to home, a job which is keeping me awake at nights (and has made me neglect the blog for criminally long).

Some of them asked me what it's like over here. Well, the story is dead by repetition, but here it is in a nutshell. Grad school.

Looking Forward to America!

First Days of Class

Going to Profs with Ideas

How Profs Treat Ideas

Classes

In The Middle Of An All-Nighter

Weekday Mornings

Weekends

Weekends' End

Roomies (on the bad days)

Free Food!

Exams Comin' Atcha!

What Research Ass's Do

At The End Of It All

Hoobastank Baby!

2006-07-23T06:41:00.000-05:00

Yup, the Stank were in town for a mini-concert for Borders, and we were there!

Boy are they bad at answering interview questions, though. This radio jockey was there to cover the event live and all his questions got monosyllabic answers.

Radio RJ: "You really seem to be enjoying your performance here today. Tell me, did the band have its start in acoustic forms like this, or were you into out-and-out rock?"
Douglas Robb: "Umm, no."

RJ: "You're doing these little appearances all over the country this coming month, tell me, how do you like getting up close and personal with the fans?"
DR: "Umm, yeah, we do!"

... and so on.

By now the whole celebrity interview has become so clichéd, that one can reasonably expect them to be prepared with stock answers. Nothing wrong with a little spontaneity, but when the person in front of you is being a rerun, you can too.

If you're a celebrity, here are some things you should be able to answer in your sleep:

How do you feel?
What was your inspiration?
What do you think about (rival)'s latest statement?
What are your plans in the near future?
Did you really sleep with ___?

But of course, none of that helps if something out of the blue hits you. Once, when I used to live in Indore, Juhi Chawla was there for a show. There was the usual press conference, and for some reason a reporter shot sweet little Juhi with the question, "What are your views on women's liberation?"

"Uhhh, what?"

"Liberation. Women's liberation."

"Ah uh, sorry, I don't know about that."

I never saw any of her movies ever again.

Here's my favourite story on interview bloopers.

And here's how to handle nonsensical questions during your own interviews.

A Little Responsiblilty

2006-07-19T03:18:00.000-05:00

I love a good game of catch-22.

On one hand, the Indian government works hard to rid our Internet skies of the scourge of terror websites. You've heard the story by now, probably commented on a couple of blogs about the injustice of it all. Freedom of speech, communists, whatnot.

In another part of the world, attempts are being made to draw more women to the IT industry with a glamour calendar! Perhaps borrowing from the spirit of the industry (as immortalized in the adage "Programming's a waste, trust only Copy-Paste") the images in the calendar are 'inspired' by movie goddesses old and new.

Those perpetrators have been facing some tough problems too, what with furore among the sponsors and media, and coordinated denial-of-service attacks from the US. Guess what... the site survived. And the controversy is only adding to its popularity.

A similar fate probably awaits the government initiative (if that's what one can call it).

It has more or less been understood now that CERT-IN, the agency in question, was only trying to ban a few confirmed terrorist websites. Okay, who wouldn't? Which country in the world wants its citizens reading stuff like "Making Bombs in 30 minutes", "Top 10 reasons why You should join the Fidayeen", or "Suicide Bomber Digest"? This isn't within the context of freedom of speech- it's a real threat to the nation's security.

The ISPs were the ones that screwed up.

"Maybe no one will notice?"

In retrospect, this just goes to show you a few things.

1.. "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity".
As Scott Adams would've said, ISPs are staffed with people who couldn't get janitor jobs at the local phone company. Asking them to do this was like giving a kid some lego bricks and going "There you go sonny boy, now build me an airplane!"

2.. 99% of the government is still clueless about this new Internet thingamajig. Did anyone stop to think whether this ban on certain blogs would be (a) feasible (b) useful in the war against terror?

(Note: blocking specific sites, even when IP addresses are all the same, is possible with the new Cisco routers. If one knows how to work them, that is.)

Instead, I offer the following likely scenario: One day Laloo and Manmohan were talking over tea.

MMS: "Laaloo jee, yeh Google kya hota hai?"

LPY: "Are budbak! Woh Anil Kumble ka bahut hi ispesal ball hai. Us naam ka usne compooterwa pe khel bhi nikala hai".

MMS: "Achhaaaa, isiliye itne saare log aajkal computer pe Google karte hain. Magar Laloo jee, phir yeh Blog kya hota hai?"

LPY: "Jab Pakistan ka ballebaaj Kumble ki ball samajh nahi pata hai, to woh use bat ke badle haath-pair se rokne lagta hai. Use blog (block) karna kehte hain."

MMS: "Aisi baat hai? Dayanidhi paape, yeh Blog aaj se ban kar do!"

3.. When it comes to crying foul, the Indian bloggers are as vicious as the rest of them. Now that the bans are being rolled back, the mood in Blogosphere is one of self-congratulation and merriment. We did it! Our voices were heard!

Did it occur to anyone that this was a case of crying Wolf, and when the wolf never came we said we scared it away?

I think some people do realize this. Consider this prime specimen. When the hue & cry over censorship was at its peak, this guy was leading the bandwagon, waving his online shirt about like a Ganguly. Now he becomes a quiet doe-eyed journalist, leaving out any hint of personal opinion from his posts altogether.

Bloggers have learnt, just as newspapers did centuries ago, that controversies are a great way to increase circulation. When something like this happens, you should aim to write a sarcastic / controversial / world-is-going-to-the-dogs post and publish it ASAP. Then, draws people's attention to it by commenting on other blogs. And then sit back as the virus spreads.

Blogosphere is so tightly interlinked (inbred?) that good news spreads fast, bad news spreads faster, and controversial news spreads at the speed of light. Each new blog quotes other blogs as references, which quote yet others... in a snake-biting-its-own-tail sort of madness. And of course, if you're late to the story you have to make up for it by being extra sarcastic.

All in all, the whole censorship issue was dealt with in a very tabloid-news kind of way: criticize first, think later. We Bloggers could really do with some lessons in journalistic ethics.

One final thought on a claim that came up during the commotion: that we have now joined China, Pakistan, Morocco and Cuba in the elite club of government-controlled media.

I believe that we haven't yet joined this club thanks to one single institution: the Indian Judiciary. If you track back to all the controversial decisions taken by the government, it is our courts (led by the SC) that have spanked these unruly politicians on their fat bottoms.

This year alone we had the reservation issue. Banning The DaVinci Code. Attempts to free convicted felons/activists by Mulayam and the Kerala government. Prasar Bharti's unfair treatment of private TV channels in India (no matter who gets the exclusive rights to a sports event, they have to share it with DD).

Who has righted all these wrongs? That’s right- our courts. Corrupt governments have tried to ignore them (read this) or even pass laws preventing them from intervening altogether (read this). But the judiciary won't go away so easily- and with them, nor will our rights at the hands of power-crazed politicians.

In sharp contrast, consider Pakistan's case: "The Supreme Court, on March 1 2006, directed the government to block internet sites displaying sacrilegious cartoons and called for an explanation from authorities as to why these sites had not been blocked earlier."

I guess we know who's going to the dogs and who isn't.

Soldier Blogs

2006-07-17T23:25:00.000-05:00

The power of blogs unleashed yet again. Blogs by U.S. soldiers now create a stir.

A few mentioned in this article-

We The People

2006-07-16T00:51:00.000-05:00

One week after the Mumbai bomb blasts, the terrorists stay at large with the police ~~still clueless~~ finally making headway. If the Lashqar-e-Qahhar hadn't claimed responsibility for the attack (yep, I too went "who?"), they'd still be clueless ten years from now- with nobody indicted on any charges.

I am very interested in seeing the ramifications of this declaration by the LeQ (affiliated with the Lashqar-e-Taiba, which in turn has now been exposed to be the masterminds of the attack). Specifically, since both the Shiv Sena and SIMI have presumably been proven innocent, the politicians have run out of accusations, and now have to take cohesive action against a known enemy.

Luckily for them, they probably won't have to. Mumbai's spirit and its media seem to have moved on to other things. I particularly enjoyed these snippets:

Farce #1: A brilliant piece of investigative journalism from the Times Of India.

(about the Vile Parle bomb scare)... "The station is never so empty on working days, but everyone ran helter-skelter after police asked people to leave," said bhelpuri seller Basant Kumar.

... Mumbaikars who were returning home from work as well as those who had stepped out for a quick round of shopping, poured onto the streets and scrambled into the already-packed BEST buses. Working women clutching their tiffin boxes waited at bus stops, trying to hitch a ride on passing vehicles.

Farce #2: Another human interest story brought to you by the People's Champion, ToI.

14-year old fears to travel in Mumbai trains

"I do not want to travel by Mumbai trains anymore. I do not even want to go near them," says Mohammed Mahroof, a 14-year old worker in a local bakery.

... His dad is a casual labourer in the Gulf and his stepmother is in his native village in Sultanpur district of Uttar Pradesh. "I have four brothers and two sisters and want to get back to them as soon as possible," he said.

Farce #3: Good old Manmohan Singh is headed to the G-8 summit with one slogan: "Isolate and condemn terrorism! Zero tolerance for violence!"

Manmohan's watch seems to have stopped permanently at 12:00 these days. His infamous address to the nation after the blasts is already well documented... in terms of sheer incompetence, it ranks alongside Bush's school-room reaction to 9/11. Now when the need of the hour is to crack down on terrorists, show them that they can't get away with such heinous crimes in India, why does Manmohan go begging for international shoulders to cry on? What will "diplomatic gains" really achieve for India?

I'd venture a guess at the G-8's reaction: "Yawn. Been there. Heard that. At least when Bush said it pre-Iraq, we knew he meant serious business." Manmohan's message is simply too cliched and too hollow, and so will be the responses.

Incidentally, what are Bush & Blair busy doing at the G-8? Sharing concerns about the Middle East crisis, where fire is met with retaliatory fire.

Farce #4: The vote-bank power play. Arjun Singh, the master of Parseltongue, gets at it again. On another side, Mulayam Singh still tries to defend SIMI with mind-bending logic hitherto only seen in a Mithun movie. How low can these men sink?

Farce #5: Bomb hoaxes at India Gate, Vile Parle & Dadar stations and other places in Mumbai, and a Madurai prison.

... And so, life goes on, right?

Hail the Mumbai spirit? Give me a break.

I have always been cynical of the so-called spirit of Indian people, Mumbai or elsewhere. Aside from the proactive actions of Mumbaikars on the blast day, and the empathy shown by some of them, the city has pretty much said "Ok, Back to Business". This smacks not of spirit, but of apathy.

In an earlier post I had mentioned that our system works, despite its massive flaws, because the ordinary people simply accept those flaws as their lot. "What can anyone do? It's been like this always." With this impotent cry we accept bad governance, lack of infrastructure, poverty and corruption with equal aplomb. "Chalta hai". Is this spirit?

Mumbai promptly got back on its feet because it simply had to. The daily wage labourer went to work because if he didn't, he wouldn't be able to feed his family. The taxi driver and the thelawala had to do the same. Low-income blue collar workers couldn't afford to stay home if the factory was open- their masters can replace them in a snap. What was happening was not about spirit, but a sheer survival instinct.

True spirit means a sense of pride in self and community. When such a thing as 7/11 happens, true spirit lies not only in helping the victims, but also in rising with indignity against whoever tries to take advantage of the community's distress. Be it local leaders inciting communal riots (police arrested 2 of them), or Modi-Mulayam-Arjun extracting political mileage, or even Rajdeep Sardesai's despicable antics... a spirited city would've wrung their proverbial necks. A spirited nation would've lambasted the helplessness of our PM's office in crisis. Can you imagine the response in USA if Bush had just sat back after 9/11 and asked the world to condemn terrorism?

What Bush eventually did may have been wrong on many levels but it was right in spirit. You cannot just let these things happen to you- as a proud people, you have to take action. You have to be a strong nation from within.

Instead, when the #1 fear after the blasts is of communal tensions everywhere, it just says what has become of us. We have let our leaders tell us how to think as a society... and as a consequence, the rifts will just grow further.

I say this as a warning, because of three things:

It was what the terrorists wanted- to divide the country along communal lines.
It is what some vested interests want- gives them political leverage.
This has happened before- in Spain, after the Madrid bombings.

A little history.

Mumbai 7/11 comes in a long string of attacks on major cities starting with New York (9/11/2001), Madrid (3/11/2004) and London (7/7/2005). There are startling similarities between all the attacks-

The theme is communication. Train lines in Mumbai, London & Madrid; local bus in London; airplanes in USA.

In London, "Forensic examiners had originally determined the explosives to have been military grade plastic explosive, and... that timed detonators of equivalent sophistication were employed. This all changed as the real story emerged."

In Mumbai's case too, despite an initial guess on RDX, nobody knows yet.

All the attacks were intricately planned with "knowledge of the terrain". i.e. plenty of inside support.

A cautionary observation: In London, two weeks after the July 7th attacks, a second bomb attack was attempted on the 21st July. Luckily the bombs never exploded- only the detonators on them did. Can this happen in India too? Is there a link between all the bomb scares and a second attempt?

One clue as to the possibility: the 9/11 attacks were planned in coordination with simultaneous airplane crashes into London's Westminster Abbey and Tower Bridge (Wikipedia article- look under Other Planned Attacks). Those attacks didn't materialize, but that doesn't mean they may not in the future. We would do well to stay alert.

What about the aftermath?
The bombings in Madrid have led to a sharp political and social fracture in Spain. This result stands in sharp contrast to other large scale terrorist attacks such as those of New York and London, which galvanized society and political forces.

Perhaps the worst examples of Spain's political division are the extremely serious accusations launched by members of the Partido Popular and a number of conservative media outlets regarding the responsibility for the bombings.

History thus says that in US & UK, where strong positive steps were taken to nail the bad guys, the society has stood united and prospered as a result. On the other hand, weak-willed attempts in Spain combined with vested interests have torn the society apart.

Which way will India go? I seriously believe that the decision lies squarely on our- the people's- shoulders. Politicians will try to sway us, communal leaders will try to flare our sentiments, all in the hope of diverting attention from the true culprits and pursuing their agendas. Will we bite the bait?

Or will we demand from them what is our right-Security, Responsibility, and Justice.

[Update]
Has it started already? Read the comments on this story.

[Update #2]
As predicted, Lashqar-e-Qahar warns of more blasts. Bluff?

Knotting Hill

2006-07-15T23:05:00.000-05:00

For those who never became Boy Scouts... this should be a good way to learn knots.

Syd Barrett (1946-2006)

2006-07-14T21:02:00.000-05:00

I only just found out that Syd Barrett died last Friday of diabetes complications. (BBC Obit).

As one who discovered Pink Floyd only in his late teens, I still haven't become immune to the band's magic. The lyrics and imagery carry me away every single time. Barrett was the band's first artistic flame, and his death is another reminder that the good old days of music are over. Shine on, you crazy diamond. We mourn you.

Nobody knows where you are
how near or how far.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Pile on many more layers and I'll be joining you there.

And we'll bask in the shadow of yesterday's triumph,
sail on the steel breeze.
Come on you boy child, you winner and loser,
come on you miner for truth and delusion, and shine!

Great Websites

2006-07-13T22:15:00.000-05:00

An old guilty pleasure: looking through award winning websites.

Web Standard Awards (scroll to the bottom of their page)

American Design Awards (try the April 2006 section)

Webby Awards

It's quite like scanning through glossy magazines. The glitz & glamour, the talent & effort, all shine through to give you a brilliant package.

One that I particularly like for their navigation- XRS Nowe Media.

The Joys of Photography

2006-07-12T13:02:00.000-05:00

I've been a photography nut ever since laying hands on my dad's copy of John Hedgecoe's Complete Guide to Photography. So excuse me if I get a bit poetic.

The joy of photography is to find beauty in what you observe. It's a pure mix of art and technique, and asks of its practitioner the highest aesthetic judgement. One must always be on the lookout for something interesting- a 'moment', a 'face', a story.

Photo: Jennifer Maiser

For the longest time, though, photography was an expensive mistress. Expensive SLRs, limited films and high developing costs nipped most people's desire in the bud. And when Digital came along, everyone went straight for the convenience of compact point-and-shoot cameras.

The result of all this cost-cutting is that people approach camerawork like a ~~hoo%@# approaches $*!~~ housewife approaches the dishes... a mindless chore to be done with the least possible cost/effort.

Well, that won't do for me! I've bought myself an SLR!

Okay, not this SLR.

A digital SLR (single lens reflex) camera is the holy grail of the photography enthusiast. Mastering it requires developing your judgement, understanding the inner workings of the camera, and getting a sense of timing. And of course, conquering the skill of Photoshop editing :P

SLRs are disadvantageous in some ways... they're bulky, extremely expensive, and you cannot take pictures by looking at the LCD- only through the viewfinder on top. In other words, they're not for the faint of heart.

Why SLR then?

For the same reason someone would drive a Ferrari. Or write with a Mont Blanc fountain pen, or buy an impressionist painting. Sure, you have excellent automatic cameras available- cheap & easy. But the automatic is plug-and-play. It's made for convenience, dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. The SLR, on the other hand, is like a Harley Davidson. Not everyone can handle it, but for those who accept the nature of the beast, it becomes a part of their soul.

Now if I've convinced you about the benefits of an SLR, do two things.

Get the book on SLR photography I've just uploaded here.

Second, let's take a look at the best value-for-money deals out there.

1. Nikon D50

In my view, the best dSLR for beginners. It has amazing optics and a power-packed feature set. To give you a taste -

6.1 Megapixels
0.2 sec power-on to click time (no annoying wait like in a compact)
3D color matrix metering
5-sensor, multi-area Autofocus
0.1 sec shutter-click lag time (you notice considerable lags in a compact)
Shutter speed control: 30 to 1/4000 sec
400 (alternate flash) to 2000 (no flash) clicks before you need to recharge the battery

It has garnered outstanding reviews (#1,#2,#3). The D50 is supposed to be a 'lite' version of the D70, but turns out to be the better of the two. Most importantly-

It is SD card-compatible.
Its in-camera noise reduction software is superb.

With 28-80mm lens: $595
With 18-55mm lens: $699

I'm considering the 18-55mm lens kit because of-

(a) Cost. 18mm is a wide-angle lens, good for scenic/architecture shots. Wide angle lenses are terribly expensive to buy separately: almost $700+. Telephoto lenses like the 80mm (good for wildlife, sports, action etc) are cheaper to buy separately: $150+ for a 55-200mm lens.

(b) The Multiplication factor. Due to the nature of a dSLR sensor, focal lengths get shortened from that in a film camera. In the D50 the factor is 1.5x, which means that a 20mm lens would be equivalent to 30mm on a film camera. While this is great for telephoto (200 goes to 300), it's bad for wide-angle lenses. So the wider you buy first, the better.

2. Canon Digital Rebel XT

The D50's main rival. Canon was the company that first brought low-cost dSLR's to market with the Digital Rebel series, and this baby is among the best.

The D50, D70 and Rebel XT are compared here, the main differences for the Rebel XT being-

8 Megapixels.
CMOS sensor (till some time ago, considered the inferior solution to CCD)
Allows ISO 100 sensitivity, the standard in compacts (the Nikons begin at ISO 200)
Allows White Balance control (none in D50)

With 18-55mm lens: $780

I still prefer the Nikon despite the 2 megapixel deficit. Firstly because of the cost difference. Second, as Digital Review says-

Overall, the Nikon D70 provides the richer feature and function set, while the Digital Rebel XT offers a smaller, lighter 8MP solution, and the benefit of Canon's latest DIGIC II image processor.

While many potential buyers might be drawn by the 8 megapixel power of the Canon EOS Rebel XT, it is important to remember that resolution is not the end all in terms of image quality. The difference in print quality that the 8MP resolution offers is for all intents and purposes barely noticeable at an 11" x 14" print size compared to the same shot taken at 6.1 MP. The advantage of the 8MP resolution sensor lies mainly in the ability to crop an image while preserving more detail.

When comparing the respective standard kit lens packages, the Nikon DX 18-70mm offers superior performance... The higher Nikon kit price versus the Canon Rebel XT kit is mainly reflected in the value of the lens.

3. Sony, Fujifilm

Too expensive for my taste.

4. Konica Minolta

Nothing special.

5. Olympus EVOLT E-500

Now this is a SERIOUS competitor. Even though Nikon and Canon are the market leaders, consider what this one has to offer. Features include -

8 megapixels
Supersonic Wave filter
Zuiko smart lenses, designed specifically for Digital cams.
FourThirds type CCD
2.5" LCD display (v/s 2" D50, 1.8" Rebel XT)
21 Scene modes (v/s 20 D50, 9 Rebel XT)
RGB Histogram display (v/s monotone in the D50). You know what this means if you know Photoshop.

Now back the truck up... you want to know what that Supersonic Wave filter is, right?

In any SLR, whenever you are changing lenses, the sensor body is actually exposed to the open air. This frequently leaves dust settled on the sensor, causing black spots/grains in each & every picture. It's very hard to remove- especially the micro-fine dust.

Now I don't know how professional photographers handle this problem, but for a newbie (and a careless slob) like me it is a big issue. And it seems that all camera manufacturers have been sweeping this problem under the rug.

Enter Olympus. Their patented technology sends a high-frequency vibration through the sensor area that shakes off dust & dirt, onto a sticky side trap. Ergo, all pictures are spanky clean. Nice, isn't it? (see a video)

With a 14-45mm Zuiko lens: $689.88.
With a 14-45mm & a 40-150mm Zuiko lens: $774.99
With an 18-180mm ultra zoom Zuiko lens: $1050

Potential problems with the camera are-

No SD Card support (takes xD/CompactFlash cards)
No separate control panel display... the LCD has to double up to show aperture, focus, exposure etc etc.
Most seriously, the viewfinder lens is extremely small. As mentioned before, you can only take pictures in an SLR by looking through the viewfinder. This one makes focusing very difficult, and the overall experience less rewarding.
Due to the Supersonic Wave filter, it takes about 1.7 - 2.5 seconds to startup (v/s 0.2 sec in others). And it runs the filter every single time you power on. Annoying.
Irritatingly soft controls make for a weird feel.

6. Ricoh, Kodak

Donot make SLRs- at least noneworth mentioning.

7. Pentax *ist DL

Perhaps the smallest SLR around, and older than its competitors. Almost $150 cheaper than the Nikon. And it doesn't lose too much in terms of features... they're mostly just simplified.

The only problem is that the processor is average-quality, some information is lost in most of the pictures... or, as I like to put it, "It's just not a Nikon".

But at a price like this, you might be able to buy a spiffy new lens! Is the tradeoff worth it?

With an 18-55mm lens: $530

Now I'm not going to tell you which camera I bought. But hopefully the info was useful to you, for when you decide to get one. Here are the things I considered-

Optics & Processor quality
Design, usability & 'feel'
Cost of new lenses
Resale value
Maintenance issues
Accessory costs

Photo: Jennifer Maiser

References:

Some of my favourite photo blogs:

Life Begins at 30

Mumbai Blasts: Helpline

2006-07-11T10:35:00.000-05:00

If you need to call Mumbai right now, here are the emergency telephone numbers, courtesy Mumbai Help.

Constant updates at Mumbai Help, BBC, and NDTV.

Aaj Tak seems to be down, and TOI is asking people to "send us pics of the blast". Avoid.

The Perfect Sunday

2006-07-10T01:30:00.000-05:00

Days like today come once in a blue moon. Oh, what a Sunday this was!

It was Huron river day... and for $10, me and a friend went on a canoe trip from Delhi (pr."Dellh-eye") to Ann Arbor. Six hours of near-continuous rowing (that's right ladies, little Energizer bunny right here), crossing through some of the most amazingly beautiful stretches of water in Michigan.

Like all beautiful things, the river too had its treacheries. A near-death experience occured when we were walking the canoe through some rocks in the water and landed into an unepectedly deep area. But it was such a beautiful day and our spirits were so high, that even as the water was going over neck high we were laughing about it- "arre yeh kay ho gaya yaar? Hahahaha!" Close by, a newlywed couple got their canoe upturned- and we went like superheroes to the water rescue. The effort wasn't without sacrifices. Two cameras and a cellphone were drowned in the process, out of my pockets and away, to lay forever in the uncharted depths of Lake Erie.

Interesting sights along the way:

Owls, gulls, herons, swans, water lilies, ducks (which swam mockingly right past us as we heave-ho!-ed in pathetic fashion)
Dams, bridges, fly fishermen, strange rock piles that looked Red Indian in design.
A peculiar couple in a canoe- strong young Asian girl and fat old American. I say peculiar, because the girl was doing all the rowing (and in shallow waters where we all got stuck, all the getting-out-and-tugging-the-canoe), while the F.O.A. sat in lazily saying "I don't want to get my shoes wet." Now call me biased, but my hypothesis is that the old guy was a prof, and the girl was his research assistant. "Funding mangta hai na? Slave away!"

No pictures to show for it all, of course. Such a shame.

Anyhoo. With perfect timing, we docked and entered a Subway outlet just as the final penalty kicks were being lined up. You know what happened... Go Azzurri! Go Buffon! And Zizou, may tonight be forgotten and your sublime skills enshrined in our memories.

Yet more goodies... the Wimbledon Men's finals today. Federer was magical, perhaps like Zizou at his peak. Long live the king!

And if all this wasn't enough, after a nice snooze to heal the aches, the movie for the night was Mithun Chakraborty's all time classic Gunda, rated by IMDB at 9.5/10. This was my first viewing, believe it or not, dear reader. I still rate his Diya aur Toofan (more on this later) and Loha (B-grade star power) higher, but this is undoubtedly a class act.

Now if you have ever had a day like this, I'd really like to know.

What's In A Language?

2006-07-06T17:19:00.000-05:00

"To God I speak Spanish, to women Italian, to men French, and to my horse-- German." - Jason Chamberlain.

Peer-to-peer networking has been, to my mind, probably the greatest development from the internet. It's what really makes the world a global village.

The only trouble is: the villagers don't all speak the same language.

For the third time in this week alone, my Emule filesharing software has downloaded a movie that turned out to be dubbed in some incoherent east European language.

If you have used this kind of software before, you know this: it's frustrating. Things take forever to download, there are constant fears of virus attacks, and you never know when your seeder might go offline. It's even worse for me because I am that freak of nature: a download junkie.

Downloading a new file is like getting ready to become a parent. Consider this... finishing an 800MB file at 1kbps, interruptions et al, sometimes literally takes nine months. Like a good would-be-parent, you watch over it. You nurture it. You give it all the right ingredients - broadband connection, constant connectivity, lots of hard disk space to grow. Your heart flutters every time the download speed blips. You shed a tear every time a part is corrupted and has to be thrown out. Your anticipation grows as the filesize grows. And then one day... yes! Praise the Lord!! It's done!!!

Now imagine what happens when you realize that the end product speaks a language not your own. People who've seen Me, Myself & Irene will know and sympathize- remember the scene with the wife and the limo driver? It's kinda like that.

And like in the movie, I am left with a bunch of idiot children from this whole ungodly affair-

Batman Begins in German.
Lethal Weapon in god-knows-what.
Frasier (the one where Daphne marries Niles) in what can only be mumblican. Even the laughter is half-dubbed.
Baseketball in Spanish. It is distinctly un-funny when the beautiful "Dood! Dood!" set of exchanges between Matt Stone and Trey Parker is reduced to "¡tipo!"

A friend (former junkie and now a sympathizer) told me to look at the bright side- at least you're learning more languages this way. Bright guy.

Now that's not such bad advice. Learning a new language is fun AND makes financial sense. From Bhavnagar to Bangalore, knowing the local language saves you from being cheated by vendors and autowallas. And in the past, I've had my fair share of fun with unknown lingos:

In the no-cable-TV days of yore, deciphered the plot of a Telegu murder mystery simply from the twists & turns of the background score.
Decoded the entire Russian alphabet from a fashion magazine by connecting names with familiar faces.
Seen Anniyan in Tamil, mostly without translating aids, and laughed loud at the hero's immortal pickup line "Yo baybee, we supposed to be in love... let's go to the park and do the yo-yo, man!"

But somewhere the line has to be drawn. Like a great man said, "If you can't do it in English, don't do it at all."

"To have another language is to possess a second soul." - Charlemagne.

(# More on file sharing & liability)

Fourth of July Images

2006-07-06T09:55:00.001-05:00

(1) Says a father to his son: "Now there's one of life's lessons for you boy-"

"it's always better to be sitting on the horse..."

"... than be walking behind it."

(2) Who needs Gabbar or Osama to scare the kids at night?

This Goth witch will do.

(3) Parade Agenda Numero Uno

(4) "Veterans for Peace", a stance that can only come from hindsight.

Will Arjun Singh someday parade with a sign "Arjun Singh for primary education"?

New Uploads

2006-07-05T14:05:00.000-05:00

Have uploaded some new pdfs on economics (Game theory), web design, and a couple of Amartya Sen's articles. Please see under My Uploads on the sidebar for links.

Wikipedia: The Undisputed Truth?

2006-07-03T14:23:00.000-05:00

Sam Vaknik posts on the six sins of Wikipedia.

While his views are rather extreme (and probably justified, considering the way they've treated him), I do agree that Wikipedia has some inherent weaknesses.

Bad Genes. The W believes in an idealistic notion: that every contributor wants to work for the common good. And when this temple-child meets the big bad world, conflicts are bound to occur. As Vaknik points out, who is to keep out vested interests- political agents, publicity managers, biased academicians, even (conceivably) extremist groups- from the system? How can they stop the rotten apples from spoiling the whole bushel?

Keeping out wrong information isn't a context-search thing: it can't be automated. The effort must require a very dedicated, very knowledgeable task force. As far as I see, there are two parties that can do this:

(a)The W staff. To monitor a database that size, they'd have to be plugged into the system like Agents in The Matrix. They ain't that cool! It's easier to picture them sitting in their cubicles, cross-checking every new entry against their copy of The Encyclopaedia Britannica... a scenario that contradicts the whole point of Wikipedia's existence. Point to ponder: If the Britannica were free, W wouldn't exist.

(b) That leaves John Q Public to act as vigilantes for a higher ideal. Now they really do a very good job of it. For instance, this week each Wimbledon player's profile is updated with their latest match results almost instantaneously. But the fundamental flaw remains here too...

Diffuse Responsibility. The term means that "If everyone is responsible for a job, then actually no one is responsible". Or as Douglas Adams put it, the job is Somebody Else's Problem.

Reader's POV: As a reader with zero knowledge, I am in no position to detect/correct any bias or error in the article. I don't question the author, nor take the trouble of verifying the sources. Perhaps worst of all, once armed with this knowledge, I will act like a vector carrier myself: spread wrong information (Old saying: bad news travels fast).

Sometimes it happens that I read an article, quote it, and the article is modified. Who is at fault for the misquote?

Contributor's POV: Unless the article is written by an expert in the field (and any expert worth his salt won't be wasting his time monitoring entries) the accepted practice is to quote your source. Usually this source is a publication by an established authority. Again, there is no way to know if the source being quoted is correct, or if it presents a one-sided perspective on a matter.

Unbalanced Flow of Information. In some ways, Wikipedia's information flow is akin to a Madrasah- Islamic religious school (I'd ask you not to take the comparision literally). Information can be changed/polarized at will, there is no unbiased standards body, and the public doesn't know any better. Unlike other online public forums (blogs, say) where discussion and sharing of perspectives is the norm, information is presented in a bottom-line kind of way.

Still, I don't believe W will crash under its faults like Vaknik suggests- the good in W heavily outweighs the potential bad. On obscure topics it remains much more comprehensible and readable than your average dictionary or academic textbook. "Even my grandmother could..."

As long as she remembers that W is far from "The Undisputed Truth".

Why Smart Executives Fail

2006-07-03T12:59:00.000-05:00


A reference to the term Diffuse Responsibility, used by the speaker in this seminar.

(See "Wikipedia: Undisputed truth?" above)

Simon & Garfunkel

2006-07-03T12:12:00.000-05:00

The Times of India may be as newsworthy as a roll of used toilet paper left out in a rainstorm, but the UK variety sure knows how to do its job.

Here's an article involving 3 of my favourite things: Scarlett Johansson, Simon and Garfunkel. Don't you love quality journalism?

Britannia Aao, Khud Jaan Jao!

2006-07-02T02:56:00.000-05:00

Why do Pommie football fans' brains go boink the moment they're out of their country? (#1, #2) The sun must bring out some mutant violent strain in them, I guess. Thank God England is as wet as a dog's nose.

How many German cops went "Oh no, here we go again" the moment Cristiano Ronaldo slotted in the winner yesterday? If you guessed All of them, bingo.

I think that most British folk know the dangers of their own ilk. That's why they make sure that it never reaches the upper echelons. For instance, if you want to become a member of the British Parliament, you have to prove that you are not a football fan. That you'd rather listen to Prince Charles describing his morning ablutions than watch Liverpool-Juventus on the telly. This ensures that whenever some British player gets red carded, the Prime Minister doesn't accidentally nuke the offending country.

They also keep FHM magazine out of reach. An article in this month's issue carries some advice from professional hooligans:

Embrace the hate. "The foundations are there for hooligans in America... I sensed a real hatred, which means there's hope."
Don't bother training. "99% of us wouldn't have a clue what to do in a boxing ring."
Be prepared. "I know people who refuse to drink before a big game to stay sharp."
Choose a worthy opponent. "You don't fight 'shirts', or dads with kids."
Leave knives at home. "Stabbing is a coward's way of fighting."
Outwit the fuzz. "A good trick (to avoid cops) is hiding under a car."

The good thing about us Indians is that we don't revert to hooliganism except in matters of national importance (like South Indian filmstars get kidnapped or dying). Oh wait a minute... I'm forgetting the famous Eden Gardens incident! Now didn't I tell you there's some mysterious connection between Bongs and Brits? (IOKIYAB)

What to say da, I'm a genius.

The Immigration Debate

2006-07-02T02:32:00.000-05:00

Getting Older

2006-06-30T18:52:00.000-05:00

If you're following Wimbledon these days and saw the Agassi-Seppi match, you'd have clearly seen the writing on the wall. Okay, Agassi's 36 years old, but it's about motivation! The man was clearly playing on autopilot for the first half of the game. In the second, young Seppi finally overcame the aura of the champ and started playing well... which forced Agassi to face the facts and pull himself up. It was like an old engine revving to life, rather painful to watch. Made you wonder how far it'd go before busting a nut.

That's the problem with having "arrived" or having "done it all"... you take your position for granted. Agassi was probably dreaming about a final showdown with Federer before Seppi brought him back to reality.

There's a story about Marlon Brando in his older years (source: Ebert) which goes like this.

Brando does a scene twice- once really putting his soul into it, the second time using only technique. He waits to see if the director can tell the difference between the two takes. If the director fails the test, Brando just walks through the rest of the movie.

Do all old people do the same? One remembers P.G.Wodehouse, who wrote until his dying day and never let up on the passion, and wonders- how did he do it?

Berkeley report: U.S. Still Heaven

2006-06-30T09:08:00.000-05:00

A UC Berkeley study about the relative wages of different jobs in U.S. and India.

Moral: as an employee, where would you rather be? The States! Yessiree, step up to the Visa counter, please.

That is, until the time they outsource all possible jobs to India. Hopefully by that time I'll be a gold-collar worker, or even (Amen) self-employed, a part of the bourgeoisie. Then I'll gleefully do some outsourcing of my own. Even have reservations for the minority (read Hindus). Who knows? That might be the start of a political career.

God bless Amerika.

What Am I Gonna do Next?

2006-06-28T19:53:00.000-05:00

I love this site. Really cool.

The Class Clown Syndrome

2006-06-28T14:07:00.000-05:00

Ever since the success of Blogosphere became common knowledge, a rite of entry that every new blogger goes through is to choose his own unique writing style.

Writing something original is hard work as it is. But after Google Ads, the challenge now is to direct more and more traffic to your blog. Not surprisingly, a niche "coaching classes" market has opened up, see Blogging for Fun and Profit. They use pseudo-scientific terms ("Social Marketing Optimization"), and thanks to the magic of Chinese mathematics, I'm guessing they have netted a sizeable number of victims by now.

The majority of new bloggers, though, rely on the good old method of Imitate The Master. I think this is a big mistake.

A quick look at Blogmasters. They come in two varieties:

1. The Famous Blogger. Someone whose claim to fame comes from Blogosphere. This may be due to their writing styles (Bangalore Torpedo comes to mind), their content (Ze Frank), or their recognized knowledge-leadership in a field, which in the corporate world would net them six figure sums for an hour of wisdom. Sometimes this person wasn't famous before he started blogging... that only adds to the aura.

e.g. Tim O'Reilly, Jerome Thomas, Ze Frank.

2. The Famous Blogger. Someone who was famous before he/she started blogging... the only existential purpose of the blog is to perpetuate their fame, allow them to keep doing what they are famous for.

e.g. Scott Adams, Guy Kawasaki, music bands like Franz Ferdinand.

Obviously, not all of us can be hotshot experts or bestselling authors. So a vast majority of new bloggers tend to catch the Class Clown Syndrome: packaging their own experiences into entertaining snippets for the audience. They forget that while this works for someone like Scott Adams (he has his own reasons: read here) it's not the best thing for them.

I believe this is bad for three reasons. First, since blogs need to be updated frequently, the writer comes under undue pressure to be entertaining. Attempts are made to be overly (a) funny (b) profound. Output gets trashy.

Here's an example... a website called Rum & Monkey which started out nicely, but then got bogged into inane philosophical discussions. The latest article discusses how each piece in a chess game is a reflection of real life. At one point, the author wants to marshall the pawns together to form a "Coalition of the Little"! Now that is mindless writing.

Second, it makes all blogs feel like clones. How many anecdotes can you read about total strangers, all with similar tone & almost the same content? Like watching Reality TV, it's funny at first, but soon you want to reach for a beer and and an ice pack for your headache.

The most important argument against "borrowing" another's style is this: you can get stereotyped. People come to expect a certain form of writing from you, and it's hard to turn back later and say "Now I'm gonna write about something I believe in". The audience will balk, they will shake their heads and close their browsers saying "He's lost the touch".

For instance, whenever the Torpedoes write something less than 100% sarcastic, people leave them comments such as "Please keep the level of humour/sarcasm high". As if asking for more ketchup on their burger. No matter what the writers want, I feel their audience often bullies them into some things. Remember Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead?

It is my personal mission to avoid these pitfalls. I really want to take the time to decide what it is I really want to say. Like Steve Jobs said, "Stay Hungry. Stay foolish". And once I have arrived... watch out, Scotty boy!

It's OK If You're A Bong

2006-06-27T15:48:00.000-05:00

It is a rare honour for a non-member to be invited to a Bengali-only dinner party. I am glad to say, dear reader, that I was accorded this honour last weekend. And survived to tell the tale.

Now those of you in the know might suspect how the evening went... for others, I recommend a viewing of Lost in Translation. Remember the little Chinese guy in Ocean's Eleven (and Twelve), the one who never spoke a word of English? It's kinda like that. The others will take care of you, make sure you have a good time, even let you in on some of the jokes. And the camaraderie makes you feel like one of them.

So off went my head spinning theories on what constitutes a Bong.

External sources were useless. Paeans have been written about the Bengali love of food, of music, poetry and the arts. But that somehow didn't capture it.

Ok, so most of India's Nobel Laureates, Oscar winners and sports champs have been from Bengal. They have made notable contributions to every sphere of Indian activity. Even counting their heroes in art, science, literature, music etc is a worthy exercise. But that wasn't it.

There was a funny, insightful Bong-on-Bongs by Manish at Sepia Mutiny, but that didn't tell the whole story either.

I began by looking into something that stood out about the party (apart from the good food)- the Bong love of a good conversation. They talk about politics. About sports. About their coworkers, their siblings and spouses. Perhaps the only time they will all simultaneously shut up is if Robindro Shongeet is playing on the gramophone/tape/CD.

My first working postulate was that Bongs are born with a mutant Babel fish in their ear... that if they stop talking or listening, the Babel fish starts twisting and turning inside, giving them that distinctly uncomfortable look during a lull in conversation.

But there was more. Another insight: Bongs love to talk about Bongs. When all other conversation fails, they turn to that- and derive a particularly narcissistic pleasure from making fun of their own habits.

There is only one other creature on this planet that follows the same pattern: the Brit. Let's do a quick comparision. Both Bongs & Brits are a bit quirky. Both are great conversationalists, and patrons of the arts. Both have an aversion to physical exercise, priding themselves instead on the intellect. Perhaps most importantly, both have a kind of inherent self-love that makes them feel naturally superior to others. They don't do it to snub anyone... it's just a fact to them. A law of nature, like how the Sun revolves around the Earth.

That is possibly the only flaw in a Bong- he takes himself too seriously. To him the mind is a weapon to be perpetually sharpened. That gives him the famous wit, but also limits his ability to let go and act silly every once in a while. Maybe that is why Bengali cinema is so incredibly boring... Satyajit Ray may be a genius but he sure didn't have them rolling in the aisles. Mithunda aside, I would find it hard to believe that Bongs can seriously make/take a masala movie.

All things considered, I have arrived at one seemingly accurate hypothesis. Are you ready?

The Bong, in pure essence, is a sensual creature. His primary joy in life comes from feasting the senses. Chingri Malai curry, soft music and a good book are heaven. You can keep your efficiency and your hard work... Bengali is about style. Like it says in this definition from the Urban Dictionary:

Bengali is a state of mind. It is an attitude that strives for maximum entropy with maximum order. It is a pandora's box of amazing paradoxes, a talent for debating, a vision in cribbing, and a sense for the finer things in life.

Agreed, this sort of thing leads all the men to turn into Tinky Winky the purple Teletubby at age 40, but the women do have a certain something. A joie de vivre maybe, a primal attraction that can't be explained... picture Vidya Balan in Parineeta and you'll know what I mean.

In more ways than one, I have been Bonglomerated. What can I say? IOKIYAB.

Personal Advice #1: Never imitate a Bong accent for any reason whatsoever. Remember Jackie Shroff in Devdas going "Aye Bondhoo"?? Don't do that. They'll accept you as you are without you committing this sin.

Personal Advice #2: Never fall for a Bong woman. It's like being in the Mafia. Seems attractive from the outside... but once you're in, you'll never be able to get out with your bones intact.

Does She Drink From It?

2006-06-27T00:20:00.000-05:00

I first came across the name Gene Siskel in a Calvin & Hobbes joke, where Calvin goes "Meet my dad, the Gene Siskel of afternoon television". Siskel was one of the most popular and successful movie reviewers ever. He wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and had a weekly TV show where his reviews could make or break a film at the box office. Unfortunately, Siskel passed away in 1999.

It turns out that his partner in the weekly show- Roger Ebert- still does reviews for the Chicago Sunday Times, and commands as much respect in Hollywood as some directors.

I read Ebert's reviews on almost all the movies I watch. Not because he is always right, but for the same reason that I'd want to hear Navjot Sidhu describing a scintillating cricket shot. It's more fun that way.

This is a little gem I found: he'd reviewed Taal! The take is hilarious, a must-read for all Ebert fans, and a nice phoren POV on a Bollywood movie.

Yeeeeehaaaa!!!

2006-06-26T14:26:00.000-05:00

These American kids are crazy. Toc Toc Toc!!!

... but the girls are nice :)

... Ultimately, the rich doods have all the fun. Look at that sailboat!

(from my trip to South Haven)

War

2006-06-26T00:51:00.000-05:00

Saw Mel Gibson's We Were Soldiers yesterday, that inspired me to look up some other famous battles in history.

An interesting read is this list of military disasters. Digging deeeper into all the famous WWII battles (Stalingrad, Battle of England, Guadalcanal, etc) is even more exciting.

The more I read accounts of these wars, their motivations and outcomes, the more I realized that a storyteller's perspective is as important as the actual events themselves. Did you know, for example, that a book called History's Greatest Tyrants by some firang lists Tipu Sultan among its pages, for the murder of British soldiers?

It then occured to me that my own knowledge of India's wars is limited to a few history lessons in school, and a few J.P.Dutta movies (which are tragedies in themselves, and rather pathetic to watch).

There is a lot that good old J.P. didn't tell us: for instance, that in both the '65 and '71 wars, Pakistan had serious U.S. backing, even to the point of a Nuclear threat to us. Nixon had his own angle in supporting Pakistan: he was hoping to open Chinese markets to U.S. trade by driving a Pak-shaped wedge between them and the pro-India Soviet Union... something he hoped would take him to a second Presidential term. Now that is something they don't teach us in school, a real eye-opener into Cold War politics and how it affected us. God bless Wikipedia.

Anyway, after Wikiing for a couple of hours on this subject, a few things stand out.

(a) India's military brass completely lacks the killer instinct. Consider this excerpt on the 1965 war-

... when the Security Council was pressing for a ceasefire, the Indian Prime Minister asked the commanding Gen. Chaudhuri if India could possibly win the war, were he to hold off accepting the ceasefire for a while longer. The general replied that most of India's frontline ammunition had been used up and the Indian Army had suffered considerable tank loss. It was found later that only 14% of India's frontline ammunition had been fired and India still held twice the number of tanks than Pakistan did. By this time, the Pakistani Army itself had used close to 80% of its ammunition.

(b) Both nations have pathetic Intelligence agencies. In simple Intel terms, the history of Indo-Pak war sounds like a retelling of Dumb & Dumber.

While there's a whole section in Wiki devoted to Intelligence failures, the best anecdote for me was that information from a local shepherd was what led to the discovery of Paki intrusion into Kargil. I guess the guys looking down from our spy satellites had switched their monitors to watch KBC?

(c) The only thing that saves us is the bravery of our soldiers. Time and time again. Read the stories, they're inspiring.

I have often wondered what kind of thoughts go through a soldier in war... what kind of rationale he gives himself so as to be able to think "If I kill 3 of them before getting killed myself, that's a good thing" (this is from an actual Vietnam soldier's diary). Maybe some day they'll make a movie that is true to that idea.

Armeniapedia!!!

2006-06-25T17:43:00.000-05:00

Someone made an Armenia Encyclopedia "that anyone can edit" that boasts some really good articles. Rather nice, although it feels like I've seen the page layout elsewhere.

Now who's gonna take the lead in making Indipedia?

[update: this is from a friend who knows better]

the software (and the default layout) behind Wikipedia is called MediaWiki, and LOT of people use it to power their wikis. If you dont change the layout, etc, it looks like wikipedia : which does not say anything about the originality of the website. And here's Indipedia.

Begging your pardon...

2006-06-25T00:54:00.000-05:00

Before we begin this story, you have to know two things about me. That I (a) hate beggars, (b) have seen enough Hollywood movies to know that when a 6-foot-6 Black guy with a big beard and unkempt clothes sneaks up behind you, things are going to get ugly.

So yesterday, when I was stopped on a shady sidewalk by this guy Johnson who wanted to shake my hand (imagine Shaquille O'Neal in a beard and raggedy clothes and you have Johnson), my state of mind was that of a rabbit caught in the headlights of an 18-wheeler. (Imagine Elmer Fudd in a body suit and you have me.)

He wasn't a mugger. He was, in fact, a homeless guy who wanted to squeeze me for a meal. But the way he went about the whole thing was beautiful. Very politely introduced himself. Asked my name, shook hands. Then brought up the topic of the weather, what I do for a living, etc etc... and only then came to the point of a dinner. Out of force of habit I refused, automatically, upon which he smiled and left with a "Nice meeting you" and a "God bless you". All in all, barring the God-bless bit, it was entirely the approach I take when coming on to hot chicks at parties.

The thing left me shaken. I mean, if there is a one-to-ten scale of such things, this was the absolute tops! The elevator sales pitch of beseeching. And for someone who is accustomed to desi beggars and their "encourage pity/embarass them/create a scene" approach, it was nice to see a man who was poor, starving, and yet had enough dignity not to target my pity. I felt really sorry later for not giving him a buck or two.

Politeness counts for something, doesn't it? A friend tells me that in a Readers Digest survey in 35 countries, ranking them in order of politeness in society, Bombay came in... guess... 35th. Okay, the test is simplistic and doesn't account for many things (respect for elders, taking care of parents in their old age, etc etc) but we really are self-absorbed, self-serving. And many of us are as guilty as apna Arjun (although not on such a large scale) in lacking empathy for people around us.

Kasparov's Legacy

2006-06-11T20:40:00.000-05:00

Someone once said (I think it was a character in Atlas Shrugged) that there is an incredible loneliness in being the best.

Garry Kasparov, the greatest of them all, retired last year stating that he had no personal goals left to achieve. It's a sad way to go, for sure. We will never get to see him at his sharpest and best, only because he so outdistanced his competitors. Pity. Here are some problems from his games.

Kasparov's later career was a testament to the fact that in sports today, TV is the great equalizer. Chess was never lucky enough to attract television's gracious eye, perhaps because there aren't enough colorful characters in the game. Even the unbelievably-not-for-TV game of Poker has now been converted into primetime entertainment by manipulating the right elements- high stakes, suspense, bizarre characters, and good commentary. But not chess. The one high point of its glory was in the Kasparov-Deep Blue era, due to the interest in the implications of a machine victory.

Incidentally, it is worth noting the lengths to which IBM went to ensure Kasparov's loss. He wasn't given any of Deep Blue's previous games. IBM experts were allowed to reprogram Deep Blue after every match, based on their insights into Kasparov's relative strengths. The matches were played on consecutive days, with no chance for recuperation. In short, the match conditions were biased totally towards the machine's strengths. IBM officials also reportedly drummed up media hype to put more pressure on GK.

Television knows that all great champions need a rivalry. They have special methods to take care of such things. Especially gifted individuals are labeled as having an "unfair advantage", and cut down to size in the name of ratings.

In golf, course designers learnt to "Tiger-proof" their creations. Tennis balls are being made bigger so that the spectator can see more rallies, never mind the death of the most exciting tennis player of all, the serve-and-volleyer. Bernie Ecclestone did all he could to somehow end Schumacher's dominance. ICC comes up with bizarre rules to turn cricket into BASEketball.

Sure, it makes for great TV. But somewhere something is lost. Artificial competition, like reservation, can only lead to degrading the overall quality of the talent pool.

The Unremarkable Birth of Bob Simmons

2006-06-08T08:24:00.000-05:00

They say that if you repeat the same messages often enough, even a rat starts to recognize patterns. With rats, of course, the message is an electric shock to the private parts. With me, it's movie storylines. Given how many movies I've watched in the last two weeks, it had to be a cinematic theme this time.

We have to begin with Fanaa. Hate the movie. Hate, hate, hate. Oh God, what a hack. Surely this was a Mithun Chakraborty movie when conceived? In a Mithunda movie, the thinner-than-Shanti-Sagar's-tomato-soup character development would have been forgiven. In a Mithunda movie, we'd have understood the blatant "tributes" to the last fifty years of Bollywood, Hollywood and Tollywood. But oh God, it's an Aamir-Kajol movie. Talented people haven't underperformed this badly since the match fixing days.

(Aamir is getting OLD!)

Yet the film is notable for a few important things. Most of all, the return of the aankhon-ki-patti bit, long gone from Indian cinema. For me, that was hilarious enough to condone the fact that Zooni's blindness is pointless to the plot. Then there's the largest ever set of A-list extras ever seen in a hindi movie. Nearly every secondary character is someone you have seen somewhere on TV or screen- which is all the pity, because all this talent goes nowhere. Jaspal Bhatti's jokes are lame-o, Tabu keeps telling her kid to eat custard, Lara Dutta makes a slam-bam-thankya-ma'm cameo. So many characters make 2-line appearances, it reminds you of Munnabhai's "Bhai, yeh to shuru hote hi khatam ho gaya yaar!"

SO many stereotypes. Saccharine parents that dish out romance advice. Cardboard cutout saheliyan. The conversation where the hero goes "I don't believe in love", while yet spouting shayari like Sidhu spouts similes. The one hit song that plays over and over and over. Mindless patriotic jingoism. The psychedelic colors of the dance, sponsored by Sun TV's late night brigade. A chachajan-villain forever on the verge of going "Mogambo khush hua" and twirling his mustache. And oh, those stomach-turning blind references! At one point Lillette Dubey's character tells Zooni "What's the point of sightseeing when you can't see?"

Even flawed scripts can be salvaged by a little bit of finesse from the actors. In Kal Ho Na Ho, SRK's character has to do the same about-face as Aamir in this movie: from loverboy to a man forced by circumstances to turn away. SKR gets you sobbing for the selfless fellow trying to spread love- and ignore the point that he was the one who lit the pyar ki agarbatti in the first place- in one scene where he describes his helplessness to his mom. He even flirts in a brash, abrasive manner that makes the illusion of a man with a secret perfect. What you get in Fanaa is chocolatey-sweet Aamir, then brutal killer Aamir, joined at the hip by an explanatory monologue that he delivers staring at a Loony Zooni's photo. Sheesh!

Ultimately, what makes the film impossible to digest is the lack of motive for any of the characters. No one seems to have a deep personal motive for what they're doing- and it hurts.

Speaking of motives, perhaps the hardest kind of movie to set a motive for is the superhero sequel, of which I've seen quite a few recently.

There used to be a time when audiences would settle for bigger-is-better... James Bond movies come to mind, each sequel imbued with the same genetic material as its predecessors, the only things changing were the gadgets, the villain's plans, and the women were all getting bigger.

Not so anymore. We want a humanized hero. We want to be able to connect. We want to leave the theatre feeling good about ourselves by the thought that even a superhero has the same problems in life that we do. At the very least, that he was something like ourselves when he started off.

So we have Batman Begins. James Bond Begins (oops! Casino Royale, sorry). The new Pink Panther explored how Closeau got his start. Spiderman II and Legend of Zorro have the heroes struggling with themselves, looking at a normal life with fondness. The best of the genre, I think, was The Incredibles where superheroes were sent into retirement, struggling with diapers and mortgage payments.

To me, it's all a bit depressing. I don't want to see a humanized hero... I want to see larger-than-life characters who enjoy what they do best: kick ass. It's more inspiring that way, and by God it's more entertaining. Ask Quentin Tarantino. The Bride may just be the last superhero(ine) of our times.

Among second acts, the one I like best is Frank Herbert's Dune Messiah. (uploaded the files onto eSnips... please find it here). It deals with real issues- the hero still remains the hero, his problems are not those of trying to maintain an alter ego but to maintain the ideals with which he first began. It's a must-read, and a great lesson in strategic thinking.

Now there's something you can happily bite into.

p.s.- Bob Simmons, in case you wondered, was the first guy to play James Bond in the gunbarrel opening sequence. Not Sean Connery.

War in Iraq aims a Bullet at the Heart of the Economy

2006-06-02T20:09:00.000-05:00

Found this article by James Kenneth Galbraith in the LA Times, April 26 2004. I have a fascination with macroeconomics, and a thorough analysis of events from an economist's perspective is always interesting.

There's no indication that Bush thought through the potential for far-reaching fiscal damage.

However badly the war is going in Iraq, on the home front it is still a good thing for George Bush - so far.

A year ago, the push to Baghdad doubled the economic growth rate and got a recovery started. Now, the literally untold billions in military payrolls and equipment purchases that keep the war going also help to propel our economy along.

This is normal. All wars bring cheerful economic news at first. They stimulate production. They raise capacity utilization, which helps business cover costs and improve earnings. This is good for the stock market. Wars create jobs and also usually draw young men and women away from the labor force, cutting unemployment. (So far, this war has been fought by a handful of overstretched professional soldiers, so the job effects have been small. That could change, especially if the draft is resurrected, as some would like.)

But the good news doesn't last.

Soon enough, profiteers see their chances. Bottlenecks happen. Prices go up. Long before unemployment disappears, wars generate inflation. Indeed, inflation - and the depreciation of private wealth and public debt that it brings - is the ages-old way in which governments pay for
war.

Wars upset the trade balance. They gobble imports. And they tend to pull critical resources - scientific talent and key materials - away from exports. Our trade deficit is already staggering. As the economy grows, it will get worse. Under wartime conditions, it will get worse still.

Wars aggravate the national external debt. Already we borrow half a trillion dollars yearly from abroad. How long will Japan and China keep sending us goods and piling up uncashed IOUs in return? No one knows.

And what do we get for our blood and treasure? Security is priceless, of course - if, in fact, you get it. But in material terms, do we get, for instance, cheaper oil from our Saudi ally? Certainly not at the moment. Bob Woodward does tell us that Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., has arranged a few months of relief for his friend, George W. Bush, this coming fall.

But don't expect that largess to outlast the election.

The U.S. had one good economic experience with war. World War II conquered theDepression, reindustrialized the country and built the middle class. But that was special. The U.S. fought WWII with full mobilization, super-high taxes, super-low interest rates, big deficits, price controls and rationing. Iraq isn't going to be like World War II.

Economically, the Iraq war is more like Vietnam: insidiously underestimated, sold to the public and Congress on false premises, improperly budgeted and inadequately taxed. During the Vietnam years, there was also economic growth at first. But then came creeping inflation, followed by worldwide commodity shocks, the oil crisis of 1973, international monetary disorder and a decade of economic troubles.

Could it happen again? Yes, it could.

Did Team Bush think through the economics of a long and costly war? There is no evidence it did. It counted on the war being quick, cheap and self-financing. If it thought about the long-range economics, there seems to have been only one goal: control of oil.

Spain's Philip II believed that control of the gold of Peru and silver of Mexico would guarantee his nation's predominance in Europe. Elizabeth I and Sir Francis Drake disagreed. Louis XIV and Napoleon I trusted in conquest to enrich France. Their ministers - Turgot and Talleyrand - knew better. Winston Churchill vowed not to preside over the end of the British Empire. But his
successors gave it up when they couldn't afford it anymore. Luckily, the U.S. was there to take over, and we had the support of the free world. But that was then.

By going into Iraq with few allies, we've assumed the entire economic cost. The home-front damage is small now, but it will build over time. And it will take time and effort to repair. The future American economy will especially need a new energy direction, emphasizing conservation and renewable energy, and concerted investment in the world's next generation of technologies - both to reduce our oil dependence and to help balance our trade deficits.

Let's hope Sen. John F. Kerry makes this point on his manufacturing tour this week.

And let's hope that Americans understand. Real security begins at home.

Reservation? Who cares?

2006-06-01T03:40:00.000-05:00

While India goes up in flames over reservations, and my inbox floods with requests to support fallen doctors by passing the parcel (honestly, do victims of e-mail hoaxes never learn?) it ill befits a proud Indian to not voice his two cents over the issue.

We won't spend much time on the obvious. This set of articles at Rediff (that most TOI-esque of websites, and something like a metaphor for India for having one of the biggest subscriber lists to the most backward e-mail service ever) says it all. Instead, we will play the cynical observer, and try to learn some lessons for future use.

OK, brief recap.

Politicians did their thing. Doctors and students protested, some died of hunger. My Weekend Warrior buddies had their day of fun in the rallies, proclaimed their social conscience, and promptly went back to their IT offices to scrap about it. Manmohan Singh, "pained to see the agonising experience the youth of the country are undergoing", called for the agitations to stop in exchange for the chance to have dinner & a dance with him.

E-mails were forwarded.

The few remaining protesters have probably realized by now that (a) they're not going to win, (b) it's not really their problem, they're getting their degrees/paycheques soon... and (c) that they miss a good old plate of idli vada at the canteen. Like my friend said, "Dude, it's a lost battle."

Ours is a true democracy. The majority always wins, no matter how senseless it is. But lest one forgets, a majority is a mob. Ruling by majority is mob rule... and there, no sense of decency applies.

Oh well.

One: The Politics

Speaking in terms of political tactics, hit-the-weak-spot is the simplest and most obvious of them all. Progress is by nature a slow process, and anything that one government can do in a 5-year term leaves plenty of gap between bat & pad.

Look at Chandrababu Naidu. Caught at slip, having transformed Hyderabad, by opponents who claimed he cares not for the poor farmers. Ditto in Nimma Bengaluru, where the roads rot to hell because the incumbent government came to power promising money to rural areas. S.M.Krishna, Bangalore lover, clean bowled.

Reservation is just right. Good enough to get you to the next election, and juicy enough for all concerned to be unopposed to it. Well played, Arjun Singh.

Our lesson is that in politics, as in all warfare, Rule no.1 is to not get defeated. The greater good comes later, first protect all your bases. Learn from Lalu Yadav, M.A. in Political Science. For years he has managed to draw power to him based on this principle, and finally ended up doing some measure of good. Bihar may now be lost, but he has moved onto greener pastures. IIM-A and other institutes want to study his ways now, O Hilarity.

Two: The Protests

The doctors did it all wrong. Half a brain, and a short course in history, would tell you that the masses are only heard when they speak out in large numbers, loudly and doggedly. Hunger strikes and casual protesters were never going to last... what we needed were some powerful, influential leaders and speakers to lead the war cry. We needed critical mass. In this case the rocket fizzled out on the ground, the kindling died without lighting the wood. TV, though powerful at spreading the virus, can only flog a dead horse for so long.

I have half a hope that when all the talented young doctors, scientists & engineers leave the country, and the rest are all starving in poverty & disease, some sense will come to our populace about what the long-term good constitutes. An Atlas Shrugged solution, if you will.

I also wish that the nincompoops who started all the "support our doctors by forwarding this email" crap stopped for a moment to think and realize that our politicians donot read email.

For future reference, if you ever need to organize a protest, read up on African American history to see how they did it... understand the powers at play. If you cannot see critical mass, then know that the protest is useless. Stay at home, drink beer, read a blog. And in case you really do care, then make sure you have critical mass before ordering the placards.

Three: The Nation

"Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms."

- Earl Warren, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, USA

For any nation trying to be the best, meritocracy is the way to go. Even Nehru, for his numerous faux pas, said as much. Unfortunately in our country, interests are divided enough that standing a non-polarised ground is political suicide. The courts are our only hope, in my view. In American history, court decisions that went against powerful vested interests were the major driving force of social change. In India, the Supreme Court has been a government watchdog for as long as one can remember. Let's pray they have enough power to stop this madness.

Of course, like another friend of mine said, it doesn't matter. "We are resilient enough that these things don't affect us."

One last I-Wish before we're done.

In the movie Little Nicky by Adam Sandler, there's this scene in hell where the devil has Hitler wear a French maid's dress and shoves a huge prickly pineapple up his ass. I wish I could do the same to Arjun Singh, Uday Raj, people from the RSS, the Bajrang Dal and most of all that unspeakable filth, Bal Thackeray.

Top Gear Evermore

2006-05-22T21:24:00.000-05:00

Whoever is putting these things up is doing me a huge favor. Enjoy.

Bring The Drunk Back Home

2006-05-21T16:30:00.000-05:00

Something stupidly addictive.

Eloisa To Abelard

2006-05-19T23:21:00.000-05:00

See if you can read the whole thing.
If you can, see if you can find the point of the whole exercise.

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns;
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
Yet, yet I love! — From Abelard it came,
And Eloisa yet must kiss the name.

Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd.
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where mix'd with God's, his lov'd idea lies:
O write it not, my hand — the name appears
Already written — wash it out, my tears!
In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays,
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.

Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains
Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains:
Ye rugged rocks! which holy knees have worn;
Ye grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid thorn!
Shrines! where their vigils pale-ey'd virgins keep,
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep!
Though cold like you, unmov'd, and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.
All is not Heav'n's while Abelard has part,
Still rebel nature holds out half my heart;
Nor pray'rs nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain,
Nor tears, for ages, taught to flow in vain.

Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,
That well-known name awakens all my woes.
Oh name for ever sad! for ever dear!
Still breath'd in sighs, still usher'd with a tear.
I tremble too, where'er my own I find,
Some dire misfortune follows close behind.
Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,
Led through a sad variety of woe:
Now warm in love, now with'ring in thy bloom,
Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!
There stern religion quench'd th' unwilling flame,
There died the best of passions, love and fame.

Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join
Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine.
Nor foes nor fortune take this pow'r away;
And is my Abelard less kind than they?
Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare,
Love but demands what else were shed in pray'r;
No happier task these faded eyes pursue;
To read and weep is all they now can do.

Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;
Ah, more than share it! give me all thy grief.
Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid;
They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,
The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.

Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame,
When Love approach'd me under Friendship's name;
My fancy form'd thee of angelic kind,
Some emanation of th' all-beauteous Mind.
Those smiling eyes, attemp'ring ev'ry day,
Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day.
Guiltless I gaz'd; heav'n listen'd while you sung;
And truths divine came mended from that tongue.
From lips like those what precept fail'd to move?
Too soon they taught me 'twas no sin to love.
Back through the paths of pleasing sense I ran,
Nor wish'd an Angel whom I lov'd a Man.
Dim and remote the joys of saints I see;
Nor envy them, that heav'n I lose for thee.

How oft, when press'd to marriage, have I said,
Curse on all laws but those which love has made!
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies,
Let wealth, let honour, wait the wedded dame,
August her deed, and sacred be her fame;
Before true passion all those views remove,
Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to Love?
The jealous God, when we profane his fires,
Those restless passions in revenge inspires;
And bids them make mistaken mortals groan,
Who seek in love for aught but love alone.
Should at my feet the world's great master fall,
Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scorn 'em all:
Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove;
No, make me mistress to the man I love;
If there be yet another name more free,
More fond than mistress, make me that to thee!
Oh happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law:
All then is full, possessing, and possess'd,
No craving void left aching in the breast:
Ev'n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part,
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.
This sure is bliss (if bliss on earth there be)
And once the lot of Abelard and me.

Alas, how chang'd! what sudden horrors rise!
A naked lover bound and bleeding lies!
Where, where was Eloise? her voice, her hand,
Her poniard, had oppos'd the dire command.
Barbarian, stay! that bloody stroke restrain;
The crime was common, common be the pain.
I can no more; by shame, by rage suppress'd,
Let tears, and burning blushes speak the rest.

Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day,
When victims at yon altar's foot we lay?
Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell,
When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell?
As with cold lips I kiss'd the sacred veil,
The shrines all trembl'd, and the lamps grew pale:
Heav'n scarce believ'd the conquest it survey'd,
And saints with wonder heard the vows I made.
Yet then, to those dread altars as I drew,
Not on the Cross my eyes were fix'd, but you:
Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.
Come! with thy looks, thy words, relieve my woe;
Those still at least are left thee to bestow.
Still on that breast enamour'd let me lie,
Still drink delicious poison from thy eye,
Pant on thy lip, and to thy heart be press'd;
Give all thou canst — and let me dream the rest.
Ah no! instruct me other joys to prize,
With other beauties charm my partial eyes,
Full in my view set all the bright abode,
And make my soul quit Abelard for God.

Ah, think at least thy flock deserves thy care,
Plants of thy hand, and children of thy pray'r.
From the false world in early youth they fled,
By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led.
You rais'd these hallow'd walls; the desert smil'd,
And Paradise was open'd in the wild.
No weeping orphan saw his father's stores
Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors;
No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n,
Here brib'd the rage of ill-requited heav'n:
But such plain roofs as piety could raise,
And only vocal with the Maker's praise.
In these lone walls (their days eternal bound)
These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crown'd,
Where awful arches make a noonday night,
And the dim windows shed a solemn light;
Thy eyes diffus'd a reconciling ray,
And gleams of glory brighten'd all the day.
But now no face divine contentment wears,
'Tis all blank sadness, or continual tears.
See how the force of others' pray'rs I try,
(O pious fraud of am'rous charity!)
But why should I on others' pray'rs depend?
Come thou, my father, brother, husband, friend!
Ah let thy handmaid, sister, daughter move,
And all those tender names in one, thy love!
The darksome pines that o'er yon rocks reclin'd
Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind,
The wand'ring streams that shine between the hills,
The grots that echo to the tinkling rills,
The dying gales that pant upon the trees,
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze;
No more these scenes my meditation aid,
Or lull to rest the visionary maid.
But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves,
Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods.

Yet here for ever, ever must I stay;
Sad proof how well a lover can obey!
Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;
And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain,
Here all its frailties, all its flames resign,
And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine.

Ah wretch! believ'd the spouse of God in vain,
Confess'd within the slave of love and man.
Assist me, Heav'n! but whence arose that pray'r?
Sprung it from piety, or from despair?
Ev'n here, where frozen chastity retires,
Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.
I ought to grieve, but cannot what I ought;
I mourn the lover, not lament the fault;
I view my crime, but kindle at the view,
Repent old pleasures, and solicit new;
Now turn'd to Heav'n, I weep my past offence,
Now think of thee, and curse my innocence.
Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
'Tis sure the hardest science to forget!
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,
And love th' offender, yet detest th' offence?
How the dear object from the crime remove,
Or how distinguish penitence from love?
Unequal task! a passion to resign,
For hearts so touch'd, so pierc'd, so lost as mine.
Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
How often must it love, how often hate!
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain — do all things but forget.
But let Heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fir'd;
Not touch'd, but rapt; not waken'd, but inspir'd!
Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself — and you.
Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.

Far other dreams my erring soul employ,
Far other raptures, of unholy joy:
When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day,
Fancy restores what vengeance snatch'd away,
Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free,
All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee.
Oh curs'd, dear horrors of all-conscious night!
How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!
Provoking Daemons all restraint remove,
And stir within me every source of love.
I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms,
And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms.
I wake — no more I hear, no more I view,
The phantom flies me, as unkind as you.
I call aloud; it hears not what I say;
I stretch my empty arms; it glides away.
To dream once more I close my willing eyes;
Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise!
Alas, no more — methinks we wand'ring go
Through dreary wastes, and weep each other's woe,
Where round some mould'ring tower pale ivy creeps,
And low-brow'd rocks hang nodding o'er the deeps.
Sudden you mount, you beckon from the skies;
Clouds interpose, waves roar, and winds arise.
I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find,
And wake to all the griefs I left behind.

For thee the fates, severely kind, ordain
A cool suspense from pleasure and from pain;
Thy life a long, dead calm of fix'd repose;
No pulse that riots, and no blood that glows.
Still as the sea, ere winds were taught to blow,
Or moving spirit bade the waters flow;
Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiv'n,
And mild as opening gleams of promis'd heav'n.

Come, Abelard! for what hast thou to dread?
The torch of Venus burns not for the dead.
Nature stands check'd; Religion disapproves;
Ev'n thou art cold — yet Eloisa loves.
Ah hopeless, lasting flames! like those that burn
To light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn.

What scenes appear where'er I turn my view?
The dear ideas, where I fly, pursue,
Rise in the grove, before the altar rise,
Stain all my soul, and wanton in my eyes.
I waste the matin lamp in sighs for thee,
Thy image steals between my God and me,
Thy voice I seem in ev'ry hymn to hear,
With ev'ry bead I drop too soft a tear.
When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll,
And swelling organs lift the rising soul,
One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight,
Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight:
In seas of flame my plunging soul is drown'd,
While altars blaze, and angels tremble round.

While prostrate here in humble grief I lie,
Kind, virtuous drops just gath'ring in my eye,
While praying, trembling, in the dust I roll,
And dawning grace is op'ning on my soul:
Come, if thou dar'st, all charming as thou art!
Oppose thyself to Heav'n; dispute my heart;
Come, with one glance of those deluding eyes
Blot out each bright idea of the skies;
Take back that grace, those sorrows, and those tears;
Take back my fruitless penitence and pray'rs;
Snatch me, just mounting, from the blest abode;
Assist the fiends, and tear me from my God!

No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole;
Rise Alps between us! and whole oceans roll!
Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me,
Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee.
Thy oaths I quit, thy memory resign;
Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine.
Fair eyes, and tempting looks (which yet I view!)
Long lov'd, ador'd ideas, all adieu!
Oh Grace serene! oh virtue heav'nly fair!
Divine oblivion of low-thoughted care!
Fresh blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky!
And faith, our early immortality!
Enter, each mild, each amicable guest;
Receive, and wrap me in eternal rest!

See in her cell sad Eloisa spread,
Propp'd on some tomb, a neighbour of the dead.
In each low wind methinks a spirit calls,
And more than echoes talk along the walls.
Here, as I watch'd the dying lamps around,
From yonder shrine I heard a hollow sound.
"Come, sister, come!" (it said, or seem'd to say)
"Thy place is here, sad sister, come away!
Once like thyself, I trembled, wept, and pray'd,
Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid:
But all is calm in this eternal sleep;
Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep,
Ev'n superstition loses ev'ry fear:
For God, not man, absolves our frailties here."

I come, I come! prepare your roseate bow'rs,
Celestial palms, and ever-blooming flow'rs.
Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,
Where flames refin'd in breasts seraphic glow:
Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,
And smooth my passage to the realms of day;
See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll,
Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul!
Ah no — in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,
The hallow'd taper trembling in thy hand,
Present the cross before my lifted eye,
Teach me at once, and learn of me to die.
Ah then, thy once-lov'd Eloisa see!
It will be then no crime to gaze on me.
See from my cheek the transient roses fly!
See the last sparkle languish in my eye!
Till ev'ry motion, pulse, and breath be o'er;
And ev'n my Abelard be lov'd no more.
O Death all-eloquent! you only prove
What dust we dote on, when 'tis man we love.

Then too, when fate shall thy fair frame destroy,
(That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy)
In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drown'd,
Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round,
From op'ning skies may streaming glories shine,
And saints embrace thee with a love like mine.

May one kind grave unite each hapless name,
And graft my love immortal on thy fame!
Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er,
When this rebellious heart shall beat no more;
If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,
O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads,
And drink the falling tears each other sheds;
Then sadly say, with mutual pity mov'd,
"Oh may we never love as these have lov'd!"

From the full choir when loud Hosannas rise,
And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,
Amid that scene if some relenting eye
Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie,
Devotion's self shall steal a thought from Heav'n,
One human tear shall drop and be forgiv'n.
And sure, if fate some future bard shall join
In sad similitude of griefs to mine,
Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more;
Such if there be, who loves so long, so well;
Let him our sad, our tender story tell;
The well-sung woes will soothe my pensive ghost;
He best can paint 'em, who shall feel 'em most.

Loss - III

2006-05-17T11:33:00.000-05:00

But we were not here to talk about success... we were here to talk about loss. About failure.

To have loved and lost is easy. As I said before- if you love something, you never can really lose it... you just have to learn to let go.

But to have desired and lost... to have failed... that is true loss. That is when it hurts. It is the death of hope.

There is a subtle difference between loss and regret. Never having had a thing- that is regret. That is when you know you can never have children. But true loss is having carried a child nine months and then having it stillborn. It is to have almost-had. To have come so close that you almost won, but then lost.

Regret is being blind. Loss is when your vision becomes a mirage. When your sight has failed. And you know that the more you chase it, the farther away it will hide from you.

The reason I mention this difference is because regret is the thing to fear.

It starts with the failure. When you discover that you cannot have what you had wanted- nay- desired. It's anguish. There is the fear, and self-doubt, as when a man with sight suddenly has his eyes taken from him... the same frantic groping around in the hope that somehow he can regain his sight.

And then there is the realization that hope is dead. And you truly feel your loss.

Now comes the danger. Some men will accept their loss at once, and be at peace... but they were never going to win anyway. One who can accept defeat as his fate can never really win. But the danger lies if you are the man who cannot accept defeat as his destiny. Who knew he should have won, who endured all the suffering in order to walk the path and knew the goal was just a step away. And you ask yourself- I did everything as it should have been done. How then could I have lost? Where was the error? Who is at fault?

"Who is at fault?" is the beginning of the fall. The seed of self-doubt. What was supposed to bring you happiness now brings you pain. And hence you turn against yourself. The things you used to walk the path- confidence, energy, hope- become the cause of pain. And you deaden them. That is the body's first reaction to pain, is it not? To deaden pain. So a man full of hope becomes a nihilist. Ambition withers. Desire to walk the path turns to fear of movement. Fear of rejection is born as you learn to distrust your strengths. And hope dies.

It is good to let the hope die. If hope is alive while your strengths are gone, then that leads to malice. "If I can't have it, no one else can". Jealousy. Nihilism. Yes... it is best that the hope die- hope for that particular object. Give up the vision. The more you hold on, the more it will blacken your heart and poison your mind.

"Who is at fault?" Believe it or not, the answer is you, yourself. Always. The achievement of something is such a complex matter! So much depends on luck, on timing. But errors are made too. If you donot understand this, try and understand the nature of desire.

Desire is a double-edged sword, a dangerous weapon. While it has the power to motivate, to inspire, to make a man grow beyond his limitations, it has a dark side too. Desire the noun, tends to become desire the verb. The weapon moulds the object- the goal. Quest for wealth becomes a fight for money- desire turns to greed. Desire helps you focus, but the focus also makes you short-sighted. It makes you beholden to the path you have chosen, the goal you have chosen, the strengths you use to walk the path. It makes you believe that what you see is the only path... what you desire is the goal... what you use is the only way to obtain what you want. And you forget the need to step back once in a while. You forget that your object may have changed while your vision remains the same.

You see the danger? That is where you fail. To desire something too much is dangerous. Instead of the object being your goal, your goal becomes the object. In chess terms, where you started with strategy, you get hung up on a particular set of tactics. And you lose your fluidity. You become too attached. Attachment, the Bhagavad Gita teaches, leads to downfall. This happens in marriages when the couple focuses on the nitty-gritty of their daily lives so much that they lose the very love they begin with. The reason? Inability to go with the flow. To change with change. To be one with the ultimate object (a Zen thing). To... let go.

I see only one way to emerge from loss. The first is to let go... but you can truly let go only if you loved something. So examine if you really, truly loved the object. If you did, loss should be easier to bear and letting go is easier. But what of desire? What if you have tried and failed? And cannot emerge from your self-inflicted prison?

There is only one way. Give up the vision... but maintain your strengths. It will hurt, because at first the only visions you will have will be the one that has been imprinted on your consciousness for so long. But you will see more sights as you learn to separate the vision from the strengths. It will hurt, but learn to use your strengths again. If it helps, pursue some short-term benefits that will help you relearn the strength in your muscles again, to become familiar with yourself. To remove the poisons that have accumulated. Beware at all times of using crutches- artificial things that bring you pleasure (or relief from pain, at least)- at any cost rebuild your strength internally.

Move on.

In time, things will brighten. You will be strong again, you will be happy again. There will be other goals to pursue. Bigger ones. And you will be glad of the lessons you learnt from your past experiences- but only if you took the pains to learn from them. And you will treasure that which helped you know yourself.

Loss - II

2006-05-16T20:53:00.000-05:00

Inevitably there will be obstacles. Any true quest has obstacles. Your current situation maybe. Social conventions and customs, maybe. Your imagined abilities, perhaps. Donot fear them. In fact, if your desire is strong enough, the obstacles wiill become a riddle to solve, not a ghost you cannot get rid of. However, beware of this trap: donot think that the goal is to overcome the obstacles. Remember that the goal lies beyond the obstacles, so donot lie down and relax once you've cleared them. Keep your eyes on the finishing line- and have a well thought out finishing line in mind. If your goal is to be wealthy, donot rest after your first million. If your goal is education, donot stop as soon as you get your degree. Those are not the goal. Those are milestones.

Your destiny chooses you. But it will not recognize you. It will not make the choices for you. You may know you are perfect for a job, but donot expect to be recognized as such. You still have to fight your way to the end. To show them you are the one- to prove it. You not only walk the path- you enlighten it for everyone to see.

Never give up. Donot take no from people who donot recognize your worth- only try harder to show them. And if they be right, if you still lack what it takes, then go and become what it takes.

If you have done this well, then success is for the taking. That is love at first sight- you will know when you have found your goal. You recognize your goal and it will recognize you (this is equally important). And you will have arrived.

Loss - I

2006-05-15T08:56:00.000-05:00

Let us talk about loss. About failure. Disillusionment. I want to talk about the good, and then move to the dark side.

In the beginning, there is desire. Desire is the root of all loss. While this in itself is well known, desire is by no means a bad thing. It has the power to motivate. To inspire. It gives birth to confidence. Confidence in turn begets faith, because it is nothing but a conscious estimate in your ability to gain the object of your desire.

In the quest to achieve something, the first thing you do is weigh the cost to the benefits. What will it cost you to attain your goal? Will it be worth it? Once you have it, will you be happy? Will it reaffirm all else that you also love and have already? The object of a successful quest, must give a yes to all the above questions. Because unless you have a clear idea of what obstacles you are facing, and how you will overcome them, you will never be able to expand your faculties to get what you desire. Instead, the first problem that comes your way will make your knees wobble and your desire wane. You will say, "Not worth it" or "I can't do it. It's impossible". Your desire should make your heart lift, your spirits soar. No matter your current situation, you will know that when you have what you desire, you will be happy. The efforts, the battle scars will be worth it because when you get what you want, the rest won't matter. That is why your choice of object (conquest) should be well chosen. Not something that leaves you empty- but the lack of which makes you twist and turn in agony. The desire to have it wills you to spend every waking hour and every ounce of strength in you in its pursuit. Note that the key word here is desire. Not love. You can only love something that you own, that is yours. That is what makes the saying, "If you truly love something, set it free... love it for its own sake, be happy for it", true. That is why old couples find it easier to let go of their loved one when one dies. That is why a man of wealth can happily give it away to worthy causes. That is love. Desire, on the other hand, is what you feel when you donot have it yet. That is not the time to let go. It is the time to be focused- even a bit selfish, perhaps. The test of when your quest has succeeded, is when your desire turns to love. When you can happily let go of what you spent so much energy in winning. That is the true test. And that is why it is very very important to define your final aim correctly. There are men who have desired wealth, yet become satisfied with the first fraction of what they were capable of earning. Hence they never earned that much. There are men who desired a woman so much, yet erred in their definition of what they wanted. They never were happy. So define your aims well. And donot give up, or get complacent, until you know that you have achieved your aim. The aim is not wealth, or power, or the love of a woman. The aim is to see your own desire turn to love.

2006-05-13T18:47:00.000-05:00

This is from William Gibson's Neuromancer, published 1984.

Her destination was one of the dubious software rental complexes that lined Memory Lane. There was a stillness, a hush. Booths lined a central hall. The clientele were young, few of them out of their teens. They all seemed to have carbon sockets planted behind the left ear, but she didn't focus on them. The counters that fronted the booths displayed hundreds of slivers of microsoft, angular fragments of colored silicon mounted under oblong transparent bubbles on squares of white cardboard. Molly went to the seventh booth along the south wall. Behind the counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly into space, a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the socket behind his ear.

"Larry, you in, man?" She positioned herself in front of him. The boy's eyes focused. He sat up in his chair and pried a bright magenta splinter from his socket with a dirty thumbnail.

"Hey, Larry."
"Molly." He nodded.
"I have some work for some of your friends, Larry."

Larry took a flat plastic case from the pocket of his red sport shirt and flicked it open, slotting the microsoft beside a dozen others. His hand hovered, selected a glossy black chip that was slightly longer than the rest, and inserted it smoothly into his head. His eyes narrowed. "Molly's got a rider," he said, "and Larry doesn't like that."

"Hey," she said, "I didn't know you were so . . . sensitive. I'm impressed. Costs a lot, to get that sensitive."

Microsoft was founded 1975, and just getting famous around the early 1980's. Funny how things work. By the way, Microsoft makes you... sensitive. Take that, Leopard.

How to Write a Sci-Fi Bestseller

2006-05-08T01:28:00.000-05:00

Those of you who played ye ol'e game Dune on your Windows 98, or (God forbid) watched the movie, would do well to remember the adage "never judge a book by its movie or its game".

Reading Frank Herbert's original cult masterpiece. Seriously, you can tell how successful a book is going to be from the number of "deep" blurbs per chapter. I've hardly gone through ten pages and already there has been this:

"to be conscious by choice . . . blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions . . . one does not obtain food-safety-freedom by instinct alone . . . animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct . . . the animal destroys and does not produce . . . animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual . . . the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe . . . focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid . . . bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs . . . all things/cells/beings are impermanent . . . strive for flowpermanence within . . ."

"Teaching is one thing, the basic ingredient is another. We shall see."

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

"You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind... We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans."

There is a certain method to this didactic madness, though. The whole effect is one where a secret is being revealed- not only to the protagonist, but also the audience. It achieves two specific aims-

It draws the audience in. There's a magnetic power to this whole teacher-student scenario. You can see it everywhere-

Matrix. (you only start getting involved when Neo's training begins)
Star Wars. (Luke's Jedi training)
Hitchhiker's Guide. (didn't you put yourself in Arthur's shoes first?)
Self-help books. (Monk& the Ferrari, yech)
Articles that start with How to or The art of. (see Guy Kawasaki)
Dan Brown books. (don't even get me started)

It's also great at getting the reader into a particularly malleable frame of mind. H.G.Wells said that "to write believable SF, the trick is to first make a whole lot of logical arguments, and then slip in one tiny lie. This lie, though small, will constitute the leap of faith that the reader must make before he can enter your fictional world. Hence the rest of your book stands upon how well you can tell the lie."

So, my young Padawans, go forth armed with this knowledge. Firstly, beware of any SF work that tries to draw you in with these wiles. Then, when you start on your James Cameronian destiny, use these tricks on unsuspecting induhviduals and make your money.

Chernev's Chess Problems

2006-05-07T20:53:00.000-05:00

Beautiful little combo. Black to play.

Simple and pretty. White to play.

Star Lords now??

2006-05-05T15:28:00.000-05:00

The spate of movie spoofs seems to be growing. After Titanic Two, now comes Star Lords. And this time they're not alone- there are five trailers.

Heck, this inspires me to make my own "borrowed" scripts. How about these...

Dil Chahta Hai meets Reservoir Dogs:

"Three good friends teamed up for the perfect vacation. But something went wrong. One of them is gay, a man who secretly calls himself Mr.Pink. But who?"

Sholay meets Kill Bill: "Basanti's revenge"

Basanti (who is pregnant) and Veeru are about to get married. The pheras, however, are interrupted by Gabbar (escaped from prison) and his cronies. Gabbar lops off Veeru's arms, and to add insult to injury, makes fun of Basanti by asking "Kitne aadmi the?"

Now Basanti must travel to the mystic land of Tollywood to find legendary fight master Vijaycan't, and train to become an avenging angel of death.

(p.s. I was hoping to crack a joke about Dhanno pulling the Pussy Wagon, but it was a bit creepy.)

Bodybuilding and The Nature of Men

2006-05-05T14:19:00.000-05:00

They've just obtained a copy of Pumping Iron at the Media Library here. Ah-nold's first movie ever. And as any serious Bodybuilding enthusiast would, I jumped at my first chance to see it. (I once traded in a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird for two issues of Flex magazine. You can't get more serious than that.)

Not that Ahnold would have known his future at the time, but some of the things he says & does could've seriously dented his vote bank.

On the psychology of winning: "If the other guy is less prepared than I am, then that's OK. If he's better prepared, has the better build, that's OK too because I can just get into a hotel room with them the night before the contest, and talk them into losing. You can do that- talk someone into losing. And if that tool is available to you, might as well use it."

Leading by example: "Nothing must distract you before a competition. You have to stay focused. If you have something on your mind it'll show up in your performance. I remember, two months before a competition, my father died. And my mother called, from Austria, and said your father has died, you have to come. And I just said sorry, I'm not coming. You have to be cold, in a sense, in order to be a champion."

Celebrating: First scene after his victory speech on stage - smoking a marijuana cig and looking smug as Hitler just after he'd conquered Poland. To rub it in, he leads the chorus to "Happy Birthday to you" for Lou Ferrigno, his main competitor in the show. Lou, the poor dog, was clinically taken apart by Ahnold before the show. And got so badly demoralized by the loss that he gave up competing altogether.

California can probably rest assured that while their economy falters, their Guv'nor will be talking Arizona and Nevada into doing worse.

You can tell an actor's true nature from his first film. You can know a writer's true heart from his first book. An artist's style from his first painting. This, then, is a look into the mind of a megalomaiac.

Ann Arbor in Springtime

2006-05-05T00:48:00.000-05:00

Spent four hours taking pictures of Ann Arbor today... here are some of the results.

The town is just waking up slowly after Graduation egress. Stores are putting up fresh signs, undergrads are sunbathing on the lawns, and beggars have upped the going rate from one dollar to "cuppla bucks". Some people, though, never learn. Went to Pita Kabob Grill for the second time this week, hoping to catch sight of the totally hot counter girl from last time. Of course, in her place was this unshaved Mexican fellow who looked like Al Pacino in Scarface. Lost my appetite- which made the $4 spent on a Cajun Pita a total waste.

Such is life.

Moustache Power!

2006-05-03T13:47:00.000-05:00

Enough said.

(Thanks, Sharan)

Get a Mac Ads

2006-05-03T12:16:00.000-05:00

In the hood, some people would call this dissing. Remember the Cola war ads?

Aliens Lost in VR

2006-05-03T12:15:00.001-05:00

A story on "Why we haven't met any aliens".

Scott Adams said that human invention would stop the day we made a realistic Virtual Reality machine, because all the scientists would be in their VR engines getting massaged by Cindy Crawford and her simulated twin, and never ever come out.

Bill Watterson said that the surest sign that ET intelligence exists in this universe is that it hasn't tried to contact us.

My favorite take on the whole thing is that video by (who was it again?) where those little green furry aliens land on earth, holding up tiny "Hello" signs with friendly hopeful smiles on their faces, and nobody cares to look down and notice them. Kinda sums it up, really. Even if something were out there, we'd hardly care.

Sig9

2006-05-03T12:15:00.000-05:00

Interesting.

Grooking for Treasure

2006-05-03T12:14:00.000-05:00

Piet Hein's amazing Grooks... found this site that has them all.

My favourite:

I am a humble artist
moulding my earthly clod,
adding my labour to nature's,
simply assisting God.

Not that my effort is needed;
yet somehow, I understand,
my maker has willed it that I too should have
unmoulded clay in my hand.

Sand Dunes & Monks

2006-05-03T12:12:00.001-05:00

My first sojourn into the wonderful natural beauty that is America.

Went to Warren Sand Dunes, a park on the shores of Lake Michigan. The 3-hour journey was uneventful, except for me trying to battle an upset stomach and a crazed lust to drive the car at the same time. Instead, had to sit in the back seat cursing my damn luck. To pass the time, read The Monk who sold his Ferrari. Yuck.

Interesting fact: in Africa about 25% of the land is uninhabited by humans. In US the figure is close to 35%. The open country spaces make freeways a thing of beauty in themselves, and a man alone on the road may attain the same state of solitude as when sitting in a Zen garden.

On the 3-hour journey we did all the things one is supposed to do on a road trip like this- eating at Taco Bell, bungling our way at gas stations ("it says diesel filling station ahead... will they have petrol also?"), getting lost a few times... but with beautiful weather and a stock full of popcorn & Coke Zero, nobody was complaining.

The beach was amazing. The lake was a majestic, ice-cold, treacherous behemoth- our frisbee accidentally landed in ankle-deep water, and in ten seconds the currents had drawn it ten feet deep. The surf barely came in more than a yard at a time, but the fine sand and the abundant smooth pebbles hint at the power of this serene giant. Interestingly, the sand made "wailing" noises if you ground it under your heel. Something I've never seen anywhere else.

I have perfected the art of making stones skip on the water surface. Top score: 9.

On the other side of the beach are these amazingly high dunes made completely of fine sand. The tallest dune must've been about the size of a six-storey building... at such steep inclines as to make you wonder what dark magic must've put them in place. We climbed one of them right to the top, a straight 60 degree ascent through pure sand. Success was a cocktail of ecstacy and exhaustion, and a view that extended miles in all directions. Apparently they use this place for sand-surfing during peak season, the maniacs.

To me, that was the high point of the journey... there was a 5-mile hike back to the car, a picnic at a "designated" spot, and then back on the road home. A rather disappointing end to a promising trip. The fly in the ointment was that it was, well, too organized.

You see, America the tourist haven is as much a packaged-&-marketed product as a Happy Meal. Every part of the journey is so easy, so well-managed that it was a bit soulless. There is lack of a sense of adventure, of a feeling that something amazing might happen, that you might meet some cool new people on the way. My heritage is one that made me write essays on "An Hour at the Railway Station" and suchlike. On a journey I expect the call of the unknown, the unusual. Even if that unknown is a mother trying to control her unruly football-team-family in the next compartment, or getting into fistfights with beggars, or crooked taxi drivers leaving you stranded in the middle of nowhere.

America simply lacks that third-world charm. It's too homogenized. You can enjoy its natural beauty, but not its people.

Last of the Ninjas

2006-05-03T12:12:00.000-05:00

So it has come to this. The Ninjas are dying out. A link to the story of the last one.

Resident Evil

2006-05-03T12:11:00.000-05:00

Was driving around at 2 o'clock in the night, completely dazed & sleepy, when in the middle of a U-turn my navigator told me to take a left turn instead.

Took the left, drove along for 5 minutes, nobody speaking a word... until we both realized that I was driving on the LEFT side of the road!

Thankfully no cops, or no cars full of kids happened to come along. Prison would've been hell for me, what with my delicate features.

I'm taking my driving test next week. Better remove all traces of Indian driving training before that!

Bugatti Veyron is Back!!!

2006-05-03T12:08:00.000-05:00

Someone's put the Bugatti Veyron episode from Top Gear back up on Google Video. Catch it before they take it down. Better yet, download the thing. A word of warning though- the Google Video Player sucks.

The Veyron was seriously a miracle. One thousand bhp. 400kph. Ten radiators. And oooh, the look of the thing. Enough to give even God the goosebumps. Read what Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Enright have to say about it.

Some say that making this car was madness. That's true... the Veyron is on that fine line between genius and lunacy. But then it's also true that our madness is what makes us men. Here's hoping that someone is mad enough to make something even better.

Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay

2006-05-03T12:07:00.000-05:00

Hard to study when the view outside your window is like this. The breeze makes you want to go flying, and the earth looks as enchanting as a young woman stepping out of a lake up in the mountains.

Not that I would know, of course. Final exam tomorrow... that uniquely idealistic University concept, a take-home exam. Redemption on Wednesday.

Hmm. The way life is right now, I feel a song coming on.

Sittin' in the mornin' sun
I'll be sittin' when the evenin' come
Watching the ships roll in
And then I watch 'em roll away again, yeah

I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay
Watching the tide roll away
Ooo, I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time

Titanic Two & The Internet

2006-05-03T12:06:00.000-05:00

So, was reading Alex Halavais' latest blog entries when I found this.

He's posted this trailer of Titanic: Two The Surface on his site. Clearly the video is a hoax, DiCaprio's bits & pieces are lifted from other films. (of course, if you are a self-respecting person you won't have seen too many DiCaprio movies, so you can't tell at once). But for five minutes after I realized it was a hoax, I was seriously scared.

Here's why. Halavais is a well respected & followed figure, a University professor... if he could be fooled with something he read over the internet... what hope is there for simple Joes like us to find some truth in this world? The irony, of course, was that Halavais himself had played a hoax on Wikipedia, something he called the Isuzu Experiment. That was funny. I just hope he knows that this is, too (with Profs you can never tell...).

Anyway, the good thing of course is that it's getting harder & harder to do anything anonymously over the internet. Case in point: Orkut just added a feature to let you know who's been seeing your profile lately.

If you've noticed, it's becoming increasingly hard to use the web anonymously, like in the old days. You can't do anything remotely worthwhile unless you log in here, or register there, or confirm passwords every 2 minutes. For someone who loves to work incognito (yeah, I love spy movies) this is rather frustrating. It has its funny moments, like when a hundred people wished me Happy Birthday on April 9 based on my (fake) Orkut profile. But in general, you do see the old-world structure creeping into the internet. Security, authentication, boundaries (e.g.- you can't post on my blog unless you're on Yahoo), a sense of elitism (e.g.- Facebook's restrictions on who can enter).

In general, this is a good thing because it makes my transactions more secure, filters out the bad element from communities (like Orkut), and overall makes the Web a clean, safe world to be in. On the other hand, it kinda bends the original idea of the Web- complete openness.

Okay, you can never have a perfectly open system- that breeds hackers, frauds, sexual predators, viruses, data piracy etc. But I think it's rather sad that we couldn't invent a new way of bringing order to the Web. Instead, we rely on the same old method that has been around forever in society: Big Brother. Cops, people keeping tabs on other people, and above all- the Government. I was shocked when Yahoo & MSN turned in their user data under judicial subpoena (and government arm-twisting). God bless Google for taking a stand, even if it was just for publicity.

In the next few years, as more people & businesses go online, they may discover that things aren't dazzlingly different. The Web experience will have turned into something very much like our day-to-day ones. And the virtual world will hardly be any different from the real one.

Like they said in The Matrix, there are some things in this world that never change. Damn.

Angry Women

2006-05-03T12:05:00.000-05:00

Women are like cats. They're good company, fun to be with, but you never know when they'll turn around and bite you. Believe you me.

On second thoughts, a woman are like an old Fiat. Nine days out of ten she's fine... and then suddenly for no reason, you're stranded on the highway. And there's nothing you can do or say to prevent the same thing from happening again... except buying expensive accessories to help delay it. One way or another, you just can't fathom them.

Marriage & Perseverance

2006-05-03T12:03:00.001-05:00

Interesting story about how Steve Wozniak decided to get married.

He first met his future wife through a prank call service that he used to run. Alice called in once, and Woz picked up... after chatting a while, he bet that he could hang up faster than her- and promptly banged the phone down.

Notwithstanding this jarring note, the calls continued, and finally became a date. A relationship grew.

Some time later, Woz was still not sure whether to get married and give up the joys of bachelorhood, so he came up with this plan: he would toss three coins in the air. If they all came up heads, he would pop the question. Otherwise he'd continue on his lone way.

He tossed... and continued tossing until finally they all came out heads. And he proposed.

I'm reading a book called Accidental Millionaire, about Steve Jobs. While most people believe that Steve cheated his way into Apple computer and abused Wozniak's brilliance for his own ends, it must be said that without Jobs' persistence & vision, Woz would've never had it in him to start Apple Computer. He was a happy-go-lucky fellow, content in his job at HP, more interested in being an engineer than a businessman. Woz made the Apple computer, but Jobs created the Apple Computer Company. That in my eyes makes Jobs as valuable as Woz, if not more.

To end, a small snippet. Sylvester Stallone's Rocky script was rejected a total of thirty two times before one studio finally picked it up. Even then, he had to struggle to keep himself as the lead role (the studio wanted to bring in Robert Redford). He persisted, and Rocky was made.

Just goes to show you the value of persistence. You have to fight for your role in life's theatre.

Genius

2006-05-03T12:03:00.000-05:00

George Dantzig and William James Sidis. I am humbled. Dantzig was apparently the inspiration for Good Will Hunting, one of my favourite movies.

100 Photographs That Changed The World

2006-05-03T12:02:00.000-05:00

Life Magazine had some of the best photographers ever. Here is a collection of their best. And here's some more.

Scientology

2006-05-03T11:58:00.000-05:00

Okay, what's the hullabaloo? Investigative reporter VeeBee finds out.

So there was this guy L. Ron Hubbard, whose fiction writings actually form the basis of the Church of Scientology. (This itself should turn any self-respecting theist off, but if it hasn't, carry on.) The Church is controversial not just for its weird teachings and celebrity line-up of members, but also the fact that it's damn rich, and it has reputation for badly hounding its detractors.

(People who've read Da Vinci Code should be getting flashbacks right now of how the early Christian Church was started... lots of powerful followers, lots of clout, controversy, coming down hard on naysayers... the beginning of a whole new religion.)

Seriously, how can you establish a faith on the teachings of someone who wrote books titled "The Brainwashing Manual" or "Battlefield Earth"? Here's one section from The Brainwashing Manual, written in the 50's.. see if you like it.

Today, Russian culture has evoked more certain and definite methods of aligning and securing the loyalties of persons and populaces, and of enforcing obedience upon them. This modern out growth of old practices is called Psychopolitics.

The stupidity and narrowness of nations not blessed with Russian reasoning has caused them to rely upon practices which are today too ancient and outmoded for the rapid and heroic pace of our time. And in view of the tremendous advance of Russian Culture in the field of mental technologies, begun with the glorious work of Pavlov and carried forward so ably by later Russians, it would be strange that an art and science would not evolve totally devoted to the aligning of loyalties and extracting the obedience of individuals and multitudes.

Here's another juicy part, reeking of Communism.

It has been said, with truth, that one-tenth of a man's life is concerned with politics and nine-tenths with economics. Without food, the individual dies. Without clothing, he freezes. Without houses and weapons, he is prey to the starving wolves. The acquisition of sufficient items to answer these necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, in reason, is the natural right of a member of an enlightened State. An excess of such items brings about unrest and disquiet. The presence of luxury items and materials, and the artificial creation and whetting of appetites, as in Capitalist advertising, are certain to accentuate the less desirable characteristics of Man.

When the individual has more food than he can eat, more clothes than he needs to protect him, he then enters upon a certain idleness which dulls his wits and awareness, and makes him prey to difficulties which, in a less toxic state, he would have foreseen and avoided. Thus, we have a glut being a menace to the individual. It is no less different in a group. The maintaining of a balance between gluttony and need is the province of Economics proper, and is the fit subject and concern of the Communist State.

Desire and want are a state of mind. Individuals can be educated into desiring and wanting more than they can ever possibly obtain, and such individuals are unhappy. Most of the self-willed characteristics of the Capitalists come entirely from greed. He exploits the worker far beyond any necessity on his own part, as a Capitalist, to need.

In a nation where economic balances are not controlled, the appetite of the individual is unduly whetted by enchanting and fanciful persuasions to desire, and a type of insanity ensues, where each individual is persuaded to possess more than he can use, and to possess it even at the expense of his fellows.

If one, by the technologies of Psychopolitics, were to dull this excesssive greed in the few who possess it, the worker would be freed to seek a more natural balance.

Creepy. I once downloaded a pdf from somewhere that was from a Soviet University, from a graduate course on Psychopolitics. The horrors therein had to be read to be believed. Frankly, this sounds a lot like that, if only wrapped in a less direct language.

Anyway, apart from Hubbard, what makes Scientology famous today is the little skit played out by Matt Stone, Trey Parker, Isaac Hayes & Tom Cruise. And, of course, the Church's teachings include some really icky stuff (check out their views on birth & infant care on Wikipedia) which helps keep the media tuned in.

Here is my favourite take on the whole thing.

Straight out, the whole issue shows you the exact nature of religion. Man-made fiction that just make sense to a lot of people. Rich people. Famous too, if possible. The virus just spreads from there.

My mother used to say that some day they might make Gandhi a demi-God, and worship him. After all, even Christianity didn't take off until about 400 years after the death of Jesus. I'd say naah, Gandhi's too boring. It's more likely to be Ayn Rand, or the Matrix heroes... even Homer Simpson perhaps. Their messages are way easier to relate to. And besides, I'd like my God to be funny rather than paranoid.

Something to Motivate

2006-05-03T11:57:00.000-05:00

Another round in the series of second-hand work on this blog, while I continue reading stuff totally tangential to the exams next week.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle. -Plato
Prayer is not asking, it is a longing of the soul. -Gandhi
Every man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any. -Plato
Cherish your visions and dreams as if they were the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate achievements. -Napoleon Hill
The strongest oak in the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It is the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun. -Napoleon Hill
Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Stand where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along. -Napoleon Hill
Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater. -Einstein
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity. -Robert Heinlein
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. -Marcus Aurelius
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated. -M.C. Reed
Learning Zen is a phenomenon of gold and dung. Before you understand it, it's like gold; after you understand it, it's like dung. -Zen master
One moon shows in every pool; in every pool, one moon. -Zen saying
Without hindrances the mind that seeks enlightenment may be burnt out. Attain deliverance in disturbances. -Zen master
If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are. -Zen saying
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. -Francois Rene Auguste Chateaubriand
One who knows enough is enough will always have enough. -Lao Tsu
To love someone deeply gives you strength. To be loved by someone deeply gives you courage.
The way to do is to be.
It is better to do one's own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.
The Way of Heaven does not compete, and yet it skillfully achieves victory. It does not speak, yet it skillfully responds to think. It comes to you without your invitation. -Lao Tzu
Superior leaders get things done with very little motion. They impart instruction not through many words, but through a few deeds. They keep informed about everything but interfere hardly at all. They are catalysts, and though things would not get done as well if they were not there, when they succeed they take no credit. And, because they take no credit, credit never leaves them. -Lao Tzu
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials. -Lin Yutang
By three methods we may learn wisdom- First, by reflection, which is noblest. Second, by imitation, which is easiest. Third by experience, which is the bitterest. -Confucius
A chief event of life is the day when we have encountered a mind that startled us. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
We judge of man's wisdom by his hope.
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but a lifelong attempt to acquire it. -Einstein
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom. -Stephen Benet
Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, better to bruise than to polish.
All human wisdom is summed up in two words- wait and hope. -Alexander Dumas
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. -Robert Heinlein
Man's maturity; to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play. -Nietzsche
The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die for a cause; the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. -Wilhelm Stekel
Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper and loss of self-control. -Abraham Lincoln
If you go to work on your goals, they will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build, end up building us. - Jim Rohn
Study while others are sleeping; work while others are loafing; prepare while others are playing; and dream while others are wishing. -William Ward
Listen a hundered times, ponder a thousand times, speak only once.
It's kind of fun to do the impossible. -Walt Disney
Fatigue makes cowards of us all. -Vince Lombardi
The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender. -Lombardi
The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of thier chosen field of excellence. -Lombardi
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards. -Benjamin Franklin
The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly. -Nietzsche
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. -Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
When a distinguished elderly scientist says that something is possible, he is almost cetainly right. When he says it is impossible, he is very probably wrong. -Arthur C. Clarke
A faith that cannot survive collisions with the truth is not worth many regrets. -Arthur C. Clarke
Courage is rarely reckless or foolish... courage usually involves a highly realistic estimate of the odds that must be faced. -Margaret Truman
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark places where it leads. -Erica Jong
Courage consists of the power of self-recovery. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts. -Charles Dickens
Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be. -Kurt Vonnegut
There is no reason why good cannot triumph over evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are any such thins as angels, hope that they are oranized along the lines of the Mafia. -Kurt Vonnegut
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you muyst look at the skies, that is why you must sing, dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life. -J.Krishhnamurti
Men always want to be a woman's first love- women like to be a man's last romance. -Oscar Wilde
Something was dead in each of us, and what was dead was Hope. -Oscar Wilde
Every great man has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography. -Oscar Wilde
Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success. -Wilde
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: that is the ideal life. -Twain
Never tell the truth to the people who are not worthy of it. -Mark Twain
Lack of money is the root of all evil. -G.B.Shaw
Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days? -G.B.Shaw
Always read stuff that wil make you look good if you die in the middle of it. -P.J.o'Rourke
The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with green hair and three rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person. -P.J.o'Rourke
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for these kinds of people. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. -Apple Computer Advertisement

The Matrix Lectures - V

2006-05-03T11:55:00.000-05:00

I Escaped The Matrix, and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

There are a few final connections to be made. There are a few dangling threads. The Wachowskis have spun a yarn and its fibers reach into the past and future, all the while wrapped around the present. But a lot of fans came out of the theater and they didn't really understand what they saw; as a result of that misunderstanding they felt that the Brothers lost control over the story. Too many unanswered questions. But everyone had unanswered questions, even characters in the story. Remember the Merovingian? It is his business to know things, and even he didn't know how Neo's mind separated from his body.

We have been looking at "The Passion of Neo" -- the last twenty minutes or so where Neo sacrifices himself and at the same time the major threads of the film experienced resolution. Smith's miserable position is articulated and defeated once and for all. Neo is able to fulfill the prophecy and end the war. It is an apocalyptic confrontation, it is the end of the world, the transformation of life as we know it. The wheels of life revolve, and we find revolutions and revelations.

We find revolutions because peace is revolutionary. Yes, there are many paradigms of peace and conflict. One party can initiate aggressions against another. One party can be dominant over the other. And on and on. In the trilogy, we find two parties that have been at war for a very long time.

How do you resolve that tension? Who is going to put their guns down first? Who is going to walk away from the paradox of mutual annihilation? Can you picture a lasting peace in Ireland? Can you picture a lasting peace in the Middle East?

We find revelations because if we are willing to open our mind we just may see things in a new way. We find Revelations, because like the name suggests, it is the end of the world and the beginning of a new age.

Do you want to know what the Matrix trilogy is? The Matrix trilogy is a myth. It is all around you. It is a system of symbols and ideas that already have a meaning. It is a constellation of preloaded and reloaded terms and definitions. It is the constellation of concepts, each containing a world in itself. Most myths have their own story. The Matrix is its own story, but it is built on pieces that were already there. And so every character is a reference to philosophy (Lock), or religion (Trinity), or some other epic legend (Roland). The gift of this technique is that the Matrix builds its own symbols out of symbols that already exist. Its variables have already been assigned values. And therefore when you watch the Matrix, it has the narrative technology to reach you on many different levels. It reaches into the deepest recesses of your mind where your beliefs have been buried.

Because this is a myth, so many different people can read their interpretations into it. Every person I know has brought their own psychological tapestry to the film. Hindu, Baha'i, Buddhist, New Age, each one has argued, and convincingly, that the Matrix is their story. It is Myth. Only Myth has that kind of flexibility. If you want to see it as science fiction, you can. If you want to see it as action, you can.

It is a Myth that addresses our situation. It is artistic recreation of life as we know it at the end of the twentieth century. It is a metaphorical virtual reality. It is a psychological construct program that describes the systemic problems we find within society's institutions. Most myths set themselves in the past, like Tolkein. But Tolkein's world never existed and he was describing the evil of his age. Or maybe like Star Wars, which is purportedly in the past (a long time ago in a galaxy far away) but remains futuristic. The Matrix is a mythology for the present age.

Because it is a myth, maybe even a parable, it should not be allegorized. In an allegory, each symbol matches to one referent. Remember Orwell's Animal Farm? This allegory was very specific. One character represents Stalin. Another might represent Trotsky. Maybe another represents Lenin. It's a one to one translation. Not so for the Matrix. There are so many symbols that it maps out one to many. My hope has been to draw out some of the Christian themes, particularly because of the way the Passion of Christ is so present in our culture's consciousness right now, particularly because one depiction of the symbol was so well received (Gibson's) and the other so rejected (the Wachowskis were rejected by the critics).

Let me just give a few examples. Who is the "devil" figure? Is it Cypher? Is it Smith? Is it the Merovingian in Club Hel? Is it the Architect? All of these characters step into and out of this role from time to time. That's because we are dealing with metaphor and the symbolic meaning changes all the time. There's no reason to try to force a simplistic overlay on top of such a rich texture of myth and meaning.

If things are allegorized too closely, we limit the meaning of the Matrix by the framework of what we know. Because we think that Neo represents Christ, we might force values or interpretations on him reserved for the Deity. Because we have certain, fixed beliefs about the nature of God, for example, we might refuse to see God in the black women who played the Oracle. Try to open your mind. Maybe the Oracle represents an aspect of God. Maybe Neo is a certain quality of Christ. We don't have to lock our understanding of a fictitious movie by our desire to protect a doctrine. Or maybe we transpose a narrative sequence over the movies. How could the resurrection (first movie) precede the crucifixion (third movie)? This is only a problem if you are trying to create an allegory. I don't think the Wachowski hired Keanu to smuggle the entire gospel narrative into the culture.

The advantage of this is that we can explore new thoughts. Ancient people were offended by early Christians who said the Almighty Creator was reduced to a man. They couldn't see their fixed concept of God in a new form. They couldn't accept that God had human qualities, such as vulnerability or weakness. We do this whenever we refuse to accept new possibilities for a God who is beyond the limits of human understanding. Maybe God allowed God's own person to be destroyed or over-powered or vulnerable or human. Or whatever. Who knows? Perhaps your imagination can deepen your faith, instead of your faith limiting your imagination.

Neo is not Christ. Not by a longshot. But Neo is a Christ-figure. And movies and literature have often employed Christ-figures. The Green Mile and Cool Hand Luke are solid examples. It was never my contention that Christianity is the key to the trilogy. I only wanted to provide enough of a religious and philosophical structure to support my interpretation. That also includes a little background of Christianity. Some basic knowledge can make the symbols more meaningful. Because the symbology of the end of Revolutions is so heavily Christian, an extended excursis is necessary for the uninitiated.

There are three "problems" that a lot of fans were troubled with that produced the feeling of being cheated that I refer to in the subtitle of this piece. They tend to be clustered around the following points. 1) The majority of people are still in the Matrix. 2) Neo dies, and if Neo is a Christ-figure, there is no resurrection. 3) Fulfilling the prophecy and ending the war is not as satisfying, cool, or as Hollywood as would have been desired. Where's the happily ever after? Using the language of myth, I believe that Matrix Revolutions does solve all of these things.

From the top, let's tackle the people still in the Matrix. Part of us wanted to see the machines get completely destroyed and humanity be completely freed. This would have been good if the movie were just science fiction, like Terminator 3, but this movie is myth. We get a huge clue to this problem from the Animatrix (a series of Matrix cartoons and back story released to video over the summer) in "The Second Renaissance." This story was written by the Wachowskis. Part I of "The Second Renaissance" describes a time of harmony between humanity and machinery. This harmony is likened to perfection before the Fall. The Fall is an important mythical concept here. Christianity suggests that Christ is God's response to the Fall. However, even though Christians believe this, we still continue to live in a fallen world. Why should it be any different for the Matrix? Neo has fulfilled the prophecy, but people are still in a fallen state unless they choose to wake up. The Matrix represents the complexity of our sin and the problems we create to try to solve our problems. These problems remain. And from a metaphoric point of view, let's imagine Neo did destroy the Matrix. Does that describe our situation? Or do we continue to live in a society of illusion and control?

The next problem is the death of Neo. More than any other source of scripture, the Wachowskis seem to have relied on the Gospel of Mark when they wanted to sneak scripture into the movie. Remember the name plate of the Nebuchadnezzar? There is a verse from Mark there, and most fans know this. Every hovercraft has such a name plate. They didn't all make it into the movie, but you can find them on the official site. There's also a plate in Zion. The Gospel of Mark has a much darker ending than any other gospel. In fact, the earliest manuscripts end with the women discovering the empty tomb. That's it. No explanation, no nothing. Just empty tomb. Mark is the greatest stylist of the gospel writers and he was trying to create the effect that Jesus had not only left the tomb, but was absent from the pages themselves. Where is Mark's resurrected Jesus? Not in the tomb and not in the book. Alive. Gone off. On the move. We get this kind of ending in Revolutions. And the Oracle suggests we will see Neo again which should be enough of a promise. And this is why some fans have seen pictures of Neo in the Matrix Online trailer. There is the resurrection. Some fans think it's cheating to bring Neo back in the game, but they are missing the mythic quality. Historically speaking, early Christians got to interact with the resurrected Jesus for 50 days before Jesus left altogether. Expect more of Neo. But don't expect a fourth movie with Neo. For 2000 years, we have lived in the absence of Christ (now not completely, but until the second coming). We, as Christians, continue to live in the fallen world even though Christ's work was completed on the cross.

The last problem is the prophecy. Let me urge you: don't be fooled by the Architect. The Architect has no capacity to appreciate this. And don't be fooled by the "mini-resurrection" in the first movie. The first movie had its own reasons to include that as a complete film. The principal work of Christ is the fulfillment of the prophecy and the reconciliation between God and humanity. Neo also achieves reconciliation, and to review that please read Matrix Resolutions if necessary. We see a lot of lesser miracles along the way, but the big one is ending the war. We don't like to think of ourselves at war against God, but this is one place where the mythology (and the Christian tradition) goes. The Wachowskis offer another expression where the nuances of Christian mythology can be explored. By the way, a lot of people have the Architect's response to the work of Christ. What difference does it make? It's such a huge sacrifice. What does it accomplish? On the one hand, it accomplished nothing. We still live and die in a broken world. But on the other hand, everything has been accomplished and even secular society concedes that Christ has been the singularly most influential person in Western Civilization. Toppling and supplanting the Roman Empire was no small feat, and that was just the first revolution on the wheels of societal evolution.

So that's it. In five articles (weren't there five before Neo?) we explore the mythology and symbology behind "The Passion of Neo." There's a lot more to be said about the entire trilogy, this series just covers the last twenty minutes of Revolutions. I do think it's a valid ending and worthy of the original. I believe that it offers a lot of intriguing points of departure for religion and philosophy. I believe that this trilogy fails as a literalist's recreation of Christianity, but I think the movies succeed as Myth. As Myth, you are invited to explore your own philosophy and faith. How far are you willing to go? That's up to you, but the Wachowskis are willing to go as far as you are.

I hope that you have enjoyed this series. I believe that this series offers exactly the things fans were looking for as they left the theater. I hope you feel free to comment. Some of you have said these articles are hard to find, so I hope you will post links to them in other Matrix communities. Please do so. I have different articles all over the net, and I can be found anywhere. I'm starting a new column with the online game, and I hope to post more articles here. I try to collect them all on my site. Thank you for your time.

The Matrix has you.

- Stephen Faller

The Matrix Lectures - IV

2006-05-03T11:54:00.000-05:00

Matrix Evolutions

Talking about the Dialectic was a dangerous move. It’s always a risk to introduce a new philosophical apparatus into a self-contained system of thought. Such an instrument is like a scalpel, that can cure or kill. And the Dialectic is sharper than Occam’s Razor. There’s no mention of the term in any of the movies, but I feel that the movies are deeply enmeshed in Western Philosophy enough such that the Dialectic is fair game.

I may have lost some readers so let me review and make sure we’re on more or less the same page. The Dialectic is not simply “rational thought” or the scientific-method; the fault for any misunderstanding is mine. Like “dialogue” suggests, the “dialectic” refers to the relationship between two points of view. Things are said to be in “dialectical tension” usually when you have competing truths. It’s not logic itself, but one of the basic elemental atoms of logic.

There are many examples of this kind of tension throughout the trilogy. Is it Neo or Mr. Anderson? The Architect or the Oracle? Choice or purpose? Lock or Morpheus? Smith or Neo? Neo or Bane? Red or blue pill? Causality or choice? Humans or machines? Reality or illusion? And there are a dozen more.

To sum up the last article, the major fork in the plot of Reloaded is how the war will end. There are other, smaller forks. But as Reloaded ends, the primary question is who is going to win the war? Can the humans win with Neo, or will the machines overtake Zion? By using the Super Burly Brawl to end the war, the Wachowskis say something about peace and the nature of philosophy itself. Through intense choice and passion and living, we can overcome the limits of human existence and logic. Don’t try to pick that apart too hard. The argument is not that logic doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s not that this is the only true statement we can make about peace. But by establishing this particular war as the fundamental paradox, and then by using Neo to overcome that paradox, we see how embodied choice can trump even the most limiting dialectical tension.

Now that we have the dialectic in our arsenal, there’s one specific dialectic we need to understand the Passion of Neo: the dialectic between Smith and Neo. The Oracle tells us they are linked, so let’s look at the link. We need to examine that tension and how they are opposites. And in order to do that we have to look at the Evolution of Revolutions -- we need to look at the evolution of Smith’s philosophical position.

In the original Matrix, we get Smith’s soliloquy at the interrogation of Morpheus. Here we start with a pure philosophy of evolution. Smith talks about the domination of one species over another, like the humans against the dinosaurs. In this view, humans are the disease and machines are the cure. It is important to note that this evolutionary thought is simply Hegel’s dialectic as applied to the laws of biology and nature. Darwin gets the credit for this. But soon after Darwin came social Darwinism, which was the cut-throat application of evolution to human survival and the social survival of the fittest (and this is related to why the Agents are all cast as white, male yuppies). The idea has even been applied to psychology, which is probably why the Brothers required Keanu to read about evolutionary psychology before playing Neo.

Before we shift to Smith’s evolution in Reloaded, it is important to notice how imprisoned Smith is by this evolutionary philosophy. He’s miserable. He hates everything about his existence, especially the smell, and he wants to only escape the Matrix. Did you notice that even when he escapes the Matrix in Reloaded he’s still miserable? That’s because he takes his world view with him. He creates his own miserable reality with him wherever he goes. He creates his own Matrix. He is determined, philosophically and otherwise, that his glass shall be eternally half-empty.

In Reloaded we see Smith persist as a tortured soul, and it is no wonder that he find satisfaction in self-mutilation. The dominant theme in this movie is how his narcissism festers and becomes infected. “Oh God,” cries Bane. "Smith will suffice" because he is his own god, and has become completely self-absorbed. Most miserable people are narcissistic because they believe if they can just make themselves good enough, they will no longer hate themselves. So they are always looking at themselves in the mirror, trying to be pretty while feeling ugly. They add to themselves. They try to get other people to be like them, and narcissists see themselves in everyone. So it’s quite appropriate that Smith takes so much delight in his new weapon of cloning himself. It’s a very satanic weapon. Satan’s influence grows as more and more people conform to that image. And all they can think of is, “More!”

By Revolutions, Smith can now articulate his position as full-blown nihilism. We saw hints of this in Reloaded when his only purpose is to try to rob Neo of Neo’s sense of purpose. It is a type of extreme jealousy. But by Revolutions, Smith is no longer satisfied with Neo’s purpose. He now threatens to be the destroyer of everything (perhaps as suggested by the Bible verse on his car). He now sees death as the “inevitable” culmination of everything. The purpose of all life is to end.

We also see that his is absolutely mired in speculation and conjecture. His life force is stuck in logical paradoxes that prevent him from action and movement. When he confronts the Oracle, he gets stuck in the philosophy of predestination in a humorous bit with the cookies. She practically has to coach him through the violence against her.

This all leads to the choice that he cannot see beyond. Once he overtakes the Oracle, he has her power and is able to see the end of the movie. This is why he laughs. But he doesn’t see the whole thing because he can’t see beyond Neo’s choice. How do I know that? Because he continually asks Neo to explain himself. “Why?! Why?!” For Smith, because life is ultimately mortal, nothing matters. Life, freedom, and especially love (there’s the Trinity-factor) are meaningless illusions created through the needs of evolutionary psychology to try to invent some purpose for life. Any of these sums are swallowed up into nothingness when divided by the eternity and infinity of death. At least for Smith, anyway.

What is Neo’s choice that he doesn’t understand? What is it that Neo chooses to do? Neo becomes and commits to being Choice itself. Where Smith gets paralyzed by all of his cogitations, Neo becomes the essence of action and commitment and choice. And the only way to have that much commitment is to stake your life on it. The only way to be infinitely alive is to risk the eternity of death for it. You can begin to see the Christian overtones. It is possible to be so alive that one never dies.

And for the first time, Smith calls Neo by the right name (maybe with a little help from the Oracle). And Neo sees. And Neo realizes and remembers. And he chooses to die. This, of course, terrifies Smith because it is completely outside of his thought. Surrender never occurs to him. He can’t conceive of it, because he is driven by the need for control. It doesn’t mesh with his philosophy.

To be sure, questions remain. What about Neo’s death? What about the fragile peace? What about everybody else in the Matrix? To be sure, resolutions will follow.

- Stephen Faller

The Matrix Lectures - III

2006-05-03T11:52:00.000-05:00

The Matrix Resolutions

Hollywood has a particular formula for storytelling, and society is pretty well trained to receive its stories in that way. We don’t have loose threads or unnecessary characters. If there’s a camera shot of a shoe throughout a movie, then we will expect to know what happens with the shoe as the movie ends. We like things to be all wrapped up. We like to leave the theater with a sense of having mastered and comprehended whatever we just saw. This is a fine way to make a blockbuster, but a terrible way to create a myth.

In a movie about Ragnarok, no one should stop and ask Thor how his hammer came to have special powers (Roland’s hovercraft, by the way, is named for Thor’s hammer and the battle at the dock just may be Ragnarok). The Wachowskis understand this and they were not afraid to leave loose threads. We don’t know exactly what the deal is with the Oracle and candy. We don’t know the backstory behind the Merovingian, or why he refers to Seraph as Judas. We don’t have all the answers, and this is why a lot of people left the theater feeling that things were unresolved.

But things can unanswered and still be principally resolved. In fact, when we try to search myth for objective answers, we destroy myth. This is the sad journey that human spirituality makes when it goes from a sense of epiphany to literalism. I believe that the Super Burly Brawl does resolve the story. And remarkably, it does so on a number of different levels at once, certainly religiously and philosophically. I believe that this scene holds the meaning of the entire trilogy. I believe that Revolutions offers the resolution that people were looking for -- if they can give up control of the story and the need for easy answers. In this third section of “The Passion of Neo,” we will examine the resolution that Neo offers.

If we’re going to explore resolution, then we need to understand what it means for something to be resolved. Something is resolved when its tension is released. And as soon as we mention tension, the category of the Dialectic is introduced because tension is necessarily dialectical. The Dialectic is a key concept of Western Philosophy, and not surprisingly, it is manifested throughout the trilogy even though it is never named. If Part #2 of this series seemed more religious than philosophical, expect this installment to be more philosophical than religious.

Perhaps Socrates is the best place to turn for an introduction to the Dialectic (and fitting too, for the way that the first movie made such a large gesture to Plato’s story about Socrates called “The Allegory of the Cave”). The word “Dialectic” has pretty much disappeared from casual discourse, but this is what people are referring to when they mention the “socratic method.” Socrates never wrote essays. But he would engage people in dialogue. By pretending to be ignorant, he would take the opposite point of view and force the other person to explain themself. Socrates took one side (often veiled in ignorance) and the poor sucker would take the other. By the end of the dialogue, Socrates’ opponent was invariable forced to concede that the truth is somewhere in the middle. This is the essence of the Dialectic.

The Dialectic is foundational to Western Philosophy and science itself. It’s what we listen to every time we try to tune in to the truth. A little to the left. No. A little more. A little to the right. No -- somewhere in the middle. We constantly pair opposites together until we find something that fits better.

It’s worth it to stop for a minute. It’s worth it to try to appreciate how much this approach completely saturates our ability to know anything. Logic itself exists on this marriage of opposites. The binary logic of computers exists only in 1’s and 0’s. On or off. Black or white. It’s incredible. It’s breathtaking.

But the Dialectic is not without its problems. It’s not an unqualified good, because many of the classical problems of philosophy also exist because of the Dialectic. Hegel popularized the notion of Thesis, Antithesis, New Idea. And from then on humanism became implausibly optimistic. We began to think that New Ideas just kept getting better and closer to the Absolute Truth. Nationalism and Marxism spawned forth. We should have known better. Zeno’s Paradox showed us that if you only go half the distance with every step, you’ll never get anywhere.

One of the biggest problems in philosophy is known as the mind/body problem -- and this is core to Descartes and the central ideas of the Matrix. Exactly where is the mind? And how does my mind connect to the outside world? How do I know the outside world is real? Like all dualities, the mind/body problem exists because of the Dialectic.

It’s also worth noting that the Dialectic exists in religion. We are reminded of that every time we see the Oracle with her Yin/Yang earrings. The world exists in balance. And we find the Dialectic hard at work in the history of Western Religion. From the earliest Church Councils on forward, Christians have been trying to faithfully approximate their way to understanding the Gospel. We think this is faithful; that is heretical. And so on and so on. The Catholic Church became the dominant voice in the West, but then other voices emerged. Calvinists came along and said, “You guys are emphasizing choice too much, we are going to emphasize prophecy and destiny.” The Anglicans then came along and epitomized the Dialectic itself. They said, “We are going to be the middle way between the Catholics and Protestants.” Something in-between. Something that can’t be named. But it was named, and they called it the via media, or middle-way.

Of course, the Dialectic in religion is just as dangerous as it is in philosophy. People get caught up in notions of right and wrong and forget about God. They look at myth, maybe like the Garden of Eden and come away with strange ideas that men are good and women are bad.

Throughout the Matrix trilogy, the Dialectic itself is treated dialectically. That is to say, the idea of dialectical approximation is itself held in tension. On the one hand, we know things are not as they seem. We know that people and things are not who they appear to be. It is a complicated world and simplistic categories of black and white will not effectively describe the Matrix. But a world without absolutes is subject to the slippery slope of moral relativism.

On the other hand, everything begins with choice. We know that our choices do matter. Occasionally we go through watershed moments after which everything is changed. It is either the red pill, or the blue. No middle ground. Either/or. This should echo to some of Soren Kierkegaard who emphasized the importance of choice in his book Either/Or. (He is also the basis for the character Captain Soren.) And it won’t surprise anyone that he was opposed to Hegel and the idea that philosophy is almost automatically self-improving.

This brings us to the Resolution of Revolutions. Do you remember the beginning of Reloaded? Do you remember the “Final Flight of Osiris?” The machines were digging. By the end of Reloaded, there was only one of two possibilities. Either Neo and the Neb crew would find some way to destroy the machines from within (and this is what Morpheus believed), or the machines would destroy Zion (the eventuality Lock was preparing for). The Wachowskis defined their ultimate Dialectic precisely this way: It was Morpheus or Lock, hackers or machines. Everything was set in motion like the two tractor trailers in the head-on collision.

But what happened? Neo flew in and changed everything.

Through self-sacrifice Neo was able to offer a third way. Something in between. Something new. Neo is the prefix for new, no? He broke the Dialectic and the Wachowskis got to say something true about peace. Peace requires a middle-way to the dialectic of mutual annihilation. As long as two parties believe their survival depends on the destruction of the other, there can never be peace. The anomaly is fully expressed and the Dialectic is broken.Let me underscore how this fits in with the Christian metaphor of “The Passion of Neo.” Human beings encounter the Dialectic because that is the nature of human limitation. We are male or female, alive or dead, and so on. By dying on the cross and then being resurrected, Jesus showed early Christians that there was a way beyond the Dialectic of sin and death. Beyond conquering mortality itself, Jesus also conquers the dialectical logic of a limited existence -- Jesus shows that a life in God has no limits. Similarly, beyond fulfilling the prophecy of ending the war, Neo achieves his original purpose of showing us “a life without rules, boundaries, or control.” Or something like that.

- Stephen Faller

The Matrix Lectures - II

2006-05-03T11:49:00.001-05:00

The Theology of the Matrix

Theology is sort of a word for “religious philosophy.” Sometimes it has the connotation of a system of thought, like what we believe about God. These systems can be quite complex, arranging angels and devils alike, or arranging doctrine and dogma like a rigid legal code. Literally, the word means “language about God” or “God-language.”

Immediately we should see philosophical red flags and warnings. Whatever God is, most people believe God is that which is beyond the feeble constructs of human language. So it becomes pretty hard to talk about that which is categorically beyond language altogether. One way that human beings have struggled to articulate these things is through myth and story.

The focus of this installment of “The Passion of Neo” is to sketch out some of the theological elements of Revolutions. Again, this isn’t to say that Christianity is the only backdrop against which to watch the Wachowski masterpiece trilogy. I’ve read interesting articles exploring Hinduism and even the Baha‘i faith. But in terms of Christianity, there are some terms and concepts that the average viewer may find helpful.

When you use a narrative to explore theology, every detail of the belief system will impact the way that the story itself is told. This is very obvious in Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. Mel’s beliefs about Christ absolutely permeate the story he tells. His movie starts in the garden of Gethsemane, and the viewer gets a very stylized interpretation. Mel’s Jesus, for example, has no doubts about why he’s going to do the terrible task ahead of him. He’s doing it to defeat evil once and for all, and this is depicted dramatically with serpent crushed under foot. But this kind of cosmic confidence is much more akin to what history records in the Gospel of John than in the Gospel of Mark (I’ll explain in the final article why I think the Wachowskis were most heavily influenced by Mark). Mark’s Jesus, by all accounts Divine, remains more in the human uncertainty and agony.

So in the space that remains here, let me uplift a few of the scenes that illuminate the theology of Revolutions.

With so much obvious emphasis on Neo, it is easy to overlook the Oracle. The Oracle is certainly a figure of the Divine, although in a form that we are less likely to recognize. Artists have more traditionally depicted the Almighty in a guise similar to the Architect. But the Wachowskis use minority against majority, stereotype against archetype. Others have commented how the Oracle and Architect complement each other in a gnostic schema. Without saying absolutely everything that has been said on the Oracle as God-figure, suffice it to say that the Oracle simply is such a figure representing both God and faith itself. And as such, it’s extremely significant that she too risks herself. Neo asks her how far she is willing to go. She answers that she is willing to go all of the way. One of the classic problems of Christian thought is that it becomes very hard to remember that it is God on the cross. In Revolutions, we have an expression where we can clearly appreciate God’s own self-risk. On the DVD you’ll be able to see it clearly: that absolutely is the Oracle lying in the puddle.

The rest of the discussion centers around the theology of the “Atonement” (Matrix fans can substitute that word for “Super Burly Brawl”). This is the Christian doctrine where Christ dies on the cross in exchange for the forgiveness of sins for the rest of the world. The core of the doctrine goes all the way back to Anselm, back to Scripture, and even before Scripture to the role of the sacrifice in Hebrew spirituality. This idea is perhaps the loudest of all in Gibson’s movie. It’s a very difficult idea, because every little nuance of how the story is told has ripple effects on the beliefs that are extracted from it. It is true that Christians believe the Crucifixion to be the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. But if the story is told in such a way that the prophecy is over-emphasized, then this creates philosophical problems for the category of free-will. If this was always “the plan,” then the principle players had no choice. And if you also hold the doctrine that Jesus freely chose this sacrifice then the prophecy can conflict with free-will. It makes it very hard to be a storyteller. Over the course of Western Christianity, different factions have stood up and emphasized different pieces of the tradition, almost always each group was sure they had the definitive view.

The relationship between Smith and Neo is very important to analyze for its spiritual and religious implications. In fact, Smith’s philosophy will be the entire focus of an article. There are many points of comparison. For example, Smith represents “the many” over and against “the One.” We may think of the scene from the Bible where Jesus faced off against the Garasene demoniac whose name was “Legion” (remember Reloaded where Smith tries to possess Neo). But to focus in on the Super Burly Brawl, I think there’s a very interesting expression of “Jesus taking on the sins of the world.” Neo literally absorbs, and is absorbed by, the evil of the world. Stepping back from the myth and mystery for a moment. and stepping into the realm of science fiction plot, this is necessary because the Deus Ex Machina needs to have direct access to the Smith program in order to destroy it. By allowing himself to be taken over, Neo becomes the link between Smith and the machine god.

Another key aspect of Revolutions theology is the aspect of choice. Neo chooses to go to the machine world. Neo chooses to jack in to face Smith. And finally, Neo chooses to be overtaken by Smith. “Because I choose to,” says Neo. And that is the key to the last fifteen minutes of the film. Neo chooses to sacrifice himself. We’ll explore this choice in more depth later, because Smith -- and so many fans -- cannot see past this choice that is not understood.

The last theological detail is the idea of complete victory through complete defeat. So it’s significant to point out that Neo is completely defeated. This disappointed many fans. We all wanted to see Neo beat Smith, beat the Merovingian, and even defeat the machines in the machine world. But we didn’t get this. We got a very mortal hero. We got a hero who is disfigured and blinded. This is also similar to the early Christian community who wanted a powerful political leader, and this is in part why they turned on Jesus: Jesus wasn’t the hero that they would have chosen. This is also one of the key components of classical Christian debates. Some early Christians could not get their minds around the idea that Jesus was really, really defeated. And so they believed that Jesus was only pretending. This became one of the many heresies, this one known as Docetism.

This is sort of the difference between Yoda in Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones. In Empire Strikes Back we meet a feeble form with a powerful ally in the Force. In Attack of the Clones, we have a Yoda as action hero.

Does it matter? Is there anything wrong with a hero who is powerful outright? Maybe there’s not anything wrong with it. This is the kind of hero that Spider-Man is. He’s a super character with super powers. Okay. But when you’re talking about myth and mystery, and capital-T Truth, I think the Wachowskis have it right. That which is truly good doesn’t need worldly power to be victorious.

- Stephen Faller

The Matrix Lectures - I

2006-05-03T11:48:00.000-05:00

The first step to revelation as to what the Matrix was all about, for me, was this series of articles by Stephen Faller. I present them to you, hoping that he won't mind, and that his idea in writing these was to enlighten.

The Passion of Neo #1

Here we go. What follows is the first of five articles around the theme “The Passion of Neo.” It’s a set of articles that focus on the end of Matrix: Revolutions. Over the next few days, expect a serious look at the theology and symbology behind Revolutions, and expect the full explanation you’ve been waiting for. It’s not a hard argument to make that Revolutions was one of the most widely razzed, misunderstood, and criticized movies of 2003. Just a few months afterwards came Gibson’s controversial film The Passion of the Christ. And that thing is still breaking records. Now, admittedly, Gibson’s story is the myth-proper and the Wachowskis employed Christianity as metaphor, but I am one fan who found it strange that one would be so widely embraced, and the other so widely rejected.

Let me introduce myself and then we’ll get started. I think that’s fair to you as the reader. My name is Stephen Faller and also the author of Beyond the Matrix: Revolutions and Revelations. I even have a website at http://beyondthematrix.stephen-faller.com/ if you want to learn more about me or the book. In this space that I have been graciously afforded by “The Last Free City” [and MatrixFans ], I want to talk about Revolutions specifically. There were many things that I didn’t want to explain in greater depth for a variety of reasons, but now the opportunity is here. And as Holy Week and Easter are fast approaching – along with the Revolutions DVD, I thought it was high time to set the record straight (fans will remember that the original Matrix came out Easter weekend in ’99).

One more disclosure about myself and then I’ll disappear and we can have an honest discussion. I’m a Christian and I have a couple of degrees in theology. But I don’t want to do here what has been done so poorly elsewhere; that is, appropriate the beautiful work of the Wachowskis as Christian propaganda. Let’s just agree that Revolutions uses a lot of Christian symbology and mythology, and to really get the most out of that it will help if any commentator, such as me, is versed in these things. But I hope the feeling is more Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth than some type of over-simplistic diatribe.

To be fair, some movie reviewers did their homework and uplifted themes of gnosticism and dualism and all of the philosophy from the trilogy. Most did not. Most people didn’t get it and then jumped on the doggie-pile the way we go after a celebrity or politician caught in a scandal. Life imitated Gibson’s art, and reading the reviews felt like watching hecklers at the Crucifixion. Review after review went like this: “I don’t know why I didn’t like it. It just wasn’t fun. It must have been overloaded on the effects.” My eyes popped out of my head every time. It’s their job to name that certain something which makes of breaks a film. But they didn’t even bother.

Let’s make some concessions. Revolutions isn’t as “super-perfect” as the Matrix was (although even the Matrix had gaps – remember how they never developed the cut scene around the Oracle’s cookies). Personally, I really thought the chemistry was off between Carrie-Anne and Keanu, and I think this damaged their scenes. Simply, they were more magnetic when they were trying to get together than when they were actually united.

For that matter, Gibson’s movie has some genuine points of criticism. He adds a lot of things to the story of which there is no account. And his desire to shock the viewer sometimes overpowers his desire to transmit the tradition. But let’s be honest. There is far more opposition to the film coming from outside the Christian community than from within. The Hollywood of today would never have made this movie or any movie like that. And there is a reason for that.

I’m not going to tell you that I think there is some anti-Christian conspiracy. That’s just silly.

Don’t forget that the Wachowskis worked very hard to create a myth that was as religiously deep as philosophical. I think this is where the problem came in. Hollywood is increasingly comfortable with movies about general spirituality. But spirituality is different from religion. Spirituality is sort of a general human impulse. Religion tends to be particular. Religion tends to be tied up in myth and meaning. Hollywood is comfortable creating a new kind of spirituality (half a dozen movies will say things like angels are aliens like a cult of baby-cloners) but religion is more personal. Religion tends to probe myth and ritual that are personally meaningful. Movie spirituality is addressed to the culture. Religion in movies is addressed to you. Maybe it’s how a religion has hurt people. Maybe it’s how it has helped them. But it’s personal and tends to rely on layers and layers of symbol and meaning.

The Wachowskis wove religion throughout the entire fabric of the trilogy. To me, it is most recognizable as Christian, but anyone can see the Taoism (the Path), Buddhism (spoon boy), and the Hinduism (reincarnation). But probably with a name like Wachowski, the guys were most familiar with Christianity – and we can see this in their decisions to put Bible verses on license plates and on the plaques of each hovercraft (most visible on the Neb, but you can see others on the official website).

Ultimately, Revolutions was too religious. Look at the crosses in the explosions. Look at Neo in the Christ-pose, and as any Italian pieta. Look at his sacrifice and Crucifixion. Listen to the words of the Deus Ex Machina, “It is done,” which ought to remind a lot of people of Jesus’ last words on the cross, “It is finished.”

I’ll close with one thought. Maybe the Matrix trilogy is a Christian parable. It’s not too hard to see Neo as the savior who has come to fill the prophecy. If so, I don’t think the Wachowskis told this parable to advance the cause of organized Christianity. These guys are way too anti-establishment for that. But I will suggest that they chose to tell a parable with the religious resonance of their own culture. Their parable is one that suggests new hope and possibility. It also suggests that religion and philosophy have something to give you, and that philosophy and religion want you to get it. And historically, this is a very dangerous message. As Gibson points out, this is a message that at worst can get you killed and at best, get you rejected.

Secrets of Abstinence

2006-05-03T11:42:00.000-05:00

When you go grocery shopping, do you feel that irresistible need to buy that extra bag of chips, that 2-lt bottle of Coke, the bar of chocolate? Welcome to my world. I'm a junk food junkie, and an experienced man in the field of losing and gaining the pounds.

Like all great things, the beginnings of this story Things were quite okay till I came to America. But what with all the free pizza, door-to-door transportation, lifestyle of a with the lifestyle in this place, I'm pretty sure in a year's time, I'll look like that pink piggy on Pink Floyd albums.

Anyway, awareness is the first step to recovery. Some observations.

Total abstinence is never the solution. No way you're gonna give up an addiction completely, for life, in a day just like every other day. If you do give it up like that, you'll be back at it in a week/month/season.

There is no single-sided solution. It requires an overall change of daily habits.
Get an interesting exercise, do it 3-4 times a week. None of that stay-in-one-place treadmills & stuff. That does more to put you to sleep than anything. I prefer cycling- perfect combo of exercise and sightseeing. Never gets monotonous. Taking up a new sport- taking it up seriously (i.e. with an intention of getting really good at it) is good too. Tennis, for example, was my way.
Eat some junk food... sometimes... but mix it with other good stuff too.
When you go shopping, eat beforehand. Going into the frozen snacks aisle when you're hungry is an invitation to trigger all those old habits again.
Binges come when you're nervous. Work harder, do your job better, and it relaxes you.
When you do treat yourself, really treat yourself. Go out & dine well. Occasionally.
If nothing else works, check this out. If you ever wanna be with women like these, get in shape!

Moviemaking

2006-05-03T11:41:00.000-05:00

Mmm. A lazy weekend, well spent, is finally over.

Watched a LOT of TV, played pool, read a couple of books.

First there was Norman Mailer's The Fight. While it had a few moments of brilliance, hardly was it the "best book on sports ever written". And what's with the consistent reference to Black as if they were a completely alien species or something? The book has a feel of the 1970's, and the way a white Mailer would feel in a place like Zaire. Clearly, the "magic of the land" he speaks of didn't touch him- he just put it in the book for the reader's benefit.

Then there was Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm, about marketing in the high-tech industry. The main thought he starts with is that at different times in the life of a high-tech product, the mainstream customers are different, and require different marketing strategy. He makes a good point that neglecting these differences can make or break a fledgeling company. More on that later... still not done.

Finally, re-read The Da Vinci Code in expectation of watching the movie this May. And after reading it, I must say, this is one hard book to turn into a motion picture.

How do you ensure the audience "gets" the clues at the same time the movie character does? How do you follow their mental processes, in a book that's all about thoughts and ideas and discussions?

Frankly, there is only one way... dumb it down. If you've seen The Thomas Crown Affair (the older, Steve McQueen version) you'll remember that. Eddy Malone goes "Oh yeah! I could get the telephone records... and run them through a computer!" as if he had just discovered a new planet or something. I expect we'll see Tom Hanks' eyes light up the same way, with an I've-had-an-epiphany look, every time some clue hits him. Then he'll turn around to Sophie (Audrey Watzername) and start talking it in a strange tone of voice. All in all, a shoddy replication of those Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. Ugh.

In my opinion, that's not really the way to build a classic movie. A classic thriller keeps the clues hidden... plays with the audience... and lets the audience figure it out on its own. And if you've seen the trailers, it looks to me like that's nowhere near the case.

Truly great thrillers have fans discussing the movie months, even years after the posters have been taken down. The trick is to not answer all the questions that the movie raises... leave them hanging in the air. Like the final scene in Godfather, or Citizen Kane's "Rosebud", or the fate of the lovers in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The movies get enriched by making each audience member's interpretation a part of the storytelling experience.

The best example, however, is my all-time favourite, The Matrix trilogy. So many people misunderstood the movie that it actually makes me sad. So, as part of my educational campaign, there will soon be a Matrix tutorial series on the blog.

Now however, it's time to go do homework. Sigh.

The Last Bug

2006-05-03T11:39:00.000-05:00

"But what does it matter?"
They said with a shrug.
"The customer's happy.
What's one little bug?"

But he was determined.
The others went home.
He spread out the program
Deserted....alone.

The cleaning man came.
The whole room was cluttered
With punch cards, core dumps,
"I'm close," he muttered.

His mumbling grew louder,
"Simple deduction!
I've got it! It's right!
Just change one instruction!"

It still wasn't right,
As year followed year,
And strangers would query,
"Is that nut still here?"

He died at his console
Of hunger and thirst.
They buried him next day
Face down - nine edge first.

The last bug in sight,
One small ant passing by,
Saluted his tombstone
And whispered, "Nice try."

http://www.taimeng.com/thought.htm

How Many Fish Will They Catch?

2006-05-03T11:37:00.000-05:00

An old joke goes like this:

A man was driving to work on the freeway when he was pulled over by the
police. The cop said he was being fined for driving over the speed limit.

"But officer," the man said, "look around- everybody is
driving over the limit! Why fine me?"

"Ever gone
fishing?" the policeman asked.

"Yes, why?"

"Ever caught all the fish in the sea?"

That's the story of what the music recording industry is trying to do these days. By going down hard on individual cases (read here), they're trying to scare people into stopping illegal MP3 downloads.

Vigilante Justice, the RIAA way:

Take an army of lawyers, hand them Uzis & AK-47s.
Blindfold them.
Take them to the youth-populated locations in town. College campuses are especially juicy targets.
Tell them, "They're ALL bloody criminals. Fire away, boys!"

Q1) How many small fry will RIAA have to catch before the tide of illegal downloads begins to turn?

Q2) Is it really fair to come down hard on a few petty offenders, just to make an example out of them? That's like grabbing a German foot soldier and shooting him in the hopes of making Hitler submit.

Q3) (most important) What if you or I got caught? Would arguments of logic or compassion sway the RIAA? From what the article says, it seems not. Big business doesn't care how many lives they ruin with their pigheaded policies, as long as they get their point across to the public. Oh yeah, I'm scared.

In truth, media corporations aren't in trouble because of piracy or Napsterism. They're in trouble because of their own stupidity. See this. With tens of rehash movies, hundreds of repetitive TV shows, and thousands of insipid music albums with the stale lyrics, what did they expect?

Add to that the beauty that is Hollywood accounting, driving away any self-respecting artist. (Can you imagine Forrest Gump being written off as a FLOP??)

Add further, their insane prices. It costs $22 for two movie tickets in America... and $8 for the popcorn! That's about a fortnight's worth of groceries. Who's gonna want to watch a movie in theatres?

Clearly, Napsterism is just a symptom, not the disease.

Of course, none of this will help if you get caught in their judicial jaws. A desperate media industry is out to find scapegoats... You, me and Cassi Hunt are just roadkill along the way.

(More on Internet censorship)

2 Things to Share Today

2006-05-03T11:33:00.000-05:00

First, the picture. Wonder where the cameraman was standing.

Second, Yahoo has domain names available for $2.99 a year- which looked really tempting to me. Did a quick search for my name- yes, it's available. It also suggested the following alternate domain names-

BardoBill (sounds eerily like that villain from Silence of the Lambs)
SuperBardoloi (yeah! flying around in red undies and a cape, eh?)
BardoJustice (naah, sounds more like the sidekick than the real hero)
CandyBardoloi (does Yahoo think I putt from the rough?)
BardoThangLoi (Kung Pow chicken and ThangLoi. Yummm! )
YourLoiThai (as in YourLoiThai love you long time?)
SuperLoiSiana (leave that for when I run for Senator)
BestLoiUsi (best left unsaid)

If you consider the difference between how Yahoo! and Google's search algorithms, and then look at what they come up with, you have to wonder what the world is coming to. And really, why all these Oriental-sounding nicknames?

Exam Time

2006-05-03T11:32:00.000-05:00

Time to study... be back Friday!

Honestly, though, it feels kinda stupid to carry a school bag & wait at the bus stop everyday, when all your friends are earning big bucks sitting in swanky corporate offices.

Vista in Action

2006-05-03T11:29:00.000-05:00

Someone brought a laptop running Windows Vista Beta 1 to class today, and we had a chance to see it at work.

The Beta version (for IT administrators & developers only) was out in late 2005, but there hasn't been much talk about it outside industry circles.

First glances show lots of interesting things at work...

The Defender is a constant bother- even opening Task Manager requires you to respond to a warning.
What's so special about desktop search, again? Besides, the US govt. just issued a warning to people against putting Google Desktop on machines with sensitive data.
Whereas the ads say "Clear, Confident, Connected", you really will need to probe & prod your way around the new stuff. Especially around the Control Panel & Mobility options. Of course, in some cases the features aren't even new, just renamed to make them sound sophisticated.
There's a whole XBox-y feel to it. Microsoft has actively tried to make Vista a great gaming platform, too.
IE 7 is very, very good. Atleast compared to IE 6. There's an RSS reader in-built into the interface. The tabs are a had-to-be-there feature, but the multiple-page view is a nice touch. Macs had that feature for their desktops since the early 90's, but whatever.
Widgets. Again, a borrowed concept. Yahoo, I tell you, is really leading the tech revolution.

Overall, it feels like Vista's trying to do too much for too many people. There's feature bloat everywhere, and unless you're a person who loves long menus, you'll beg for simplicity.

Greatest Hoaxes in History

2006-05-03T11:26:00.000-05:00

Abe Aamidor says that 'Pulling off a hoax is no mean achievement. For a good hoax to succeed, people have to first think, "Well, it could be true".'

Here are some of the best.

No. 5: The perpetual motion machine

What if you could invent a machine that, once started, would run forever?

There have been many examples of the perpetual motion machine; one was the "hydro-pneumatic pulsating vacuo engine," also known as the "vibratory engine." A prototype circa 1874 was said to produce enough energy from a quart of water to move a loaded train from New York to Philadelphia, according to the Museum of Unworkable Devices.

No such machine can work as advertised, though. Why? Moving parts in any machine will generate friction, and that represents a loss of energy, which will have to be replaced with new energy inputs.

No. 4: Roswell, New Mexico

It's 1947, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is on in earnest, and a rancher in Roswell, N.M., finds some debris out on the range. Obviously, a flying saucer had crashed.

According to Infoplease, what lent credibility to the reports of a government cover-up was the fact that there probably was a government cover-up, but of high-altitude spy balloons, not flying saucers.

For years, people reported seeing flying saucers, and in the 1990s, TV's "The X-Files" propelled the myth to new heights.

No. 3: Invasion from Mars

Orson Welles once hosted a radio program, and on Oct. 30, 1938, he and his fellow players read from an adaptation of the classic sci-fi novel "The War of the Worlds." Welles and company did the performance as if it were a straight news story.

One fake journalist on the program, quoted on transparencynow.com, described the Martians this way: "Good heavens, something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now it's another one, and another. They look like tentacles to me."

No. 2: Vishal Bardoloi's Birthday

As part of his policy never to give out personal information online, Vishal once arbitrarily typed out his birthday on Orkut as April 9, 1981. Unfortunately for him, most of his friends believed Orkut's calendar to be the upholder of all wisdom and knowledge.

According to close sources, the perpetrator has been quoted as saying "This just goes to prove that you cannot always believe what you see over the Internet. Even in a world as digital as ours, a simple phone call or face-to-face conversation is sometimes much better." When contacted by this newspaper, he refused to apologize for playing tricks on his friends, and maintains that "the more birthday wishes I get, the more it proves my point".

Experts disagree on the validity of his so-called point, but are unanimous on two things-

1. The fellow will go down in history as either a saint or a butcher. Nothing in between.
2. He is an A-class dimwit, as all those who fell for the gag will testify. They say that as punishment for his prank, he should be made to change his official date of birth to April 9.

No. 1: Swiss spaghetti harvest

According to the Museum of Hoaxes, this is the greatest hoax of all time. "In 1957," reports the museum, "the respected BBC news show 'Panorama' announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees."

Personally, my favourite hoaxes are the Google ones, simply because so many people fall for them. This year's Google Romance was particularly effective, and their apology to the poor sods who tried it was even better!

Howzzat??!

2006-05-03T11:24:00.001-05:00

Thanks a lot to Jayanth for this... an article by Harold Pinter. God bless cricket, the best thing about it is the anecdotes.

Bradman, in his autobiography, tells the story of the time his Australian team went on a tour of the US to promote the game. Obviously, the teams they faced were amateurs. In one instance, the Aussie bowler had just taken a dolly of a return catch, when he noticed that the non-striker was out of his crease. In a flash he threw down the stumps at the bowler's end.

"How's that, umpire?" he asked. The poor fellow replied, "I don't know, it was too fast for me!"

I've gone through a lot of good cricket writings in the past- by the greats Sir Neville Cardus, Benaud, Swanton... biographies of Don Bradman, Keith Miller, Gavaskar, and my absolute favourite Gary Sobers. Sobers' biography was so good that I made him my hero just based on that book- without ever having seen him play!

But the best sports book ever is supposed to be Norman Mailer's The Fight, about the 1974 Ali-Frasier "Rumble in the Jungle". The book was impossible to find in India, and I just found it online after coming here. Can't wait to get my hands on it!

Wish there were books & movies that captured more of such moments... because really, all sport is a story of blood, sweat and outstanding endeavour, mixed with the humour and the friendships that make it worthwhile. Most people think success is a major part of the story. It's not. Read Rope Burns by F.X.Toole (now republished as Million Dollar Baby) to understand.

To end, here's a classic email joke.

Cricket, as explained to an American: You have 2 sides- one out in the field and one in. Each person that is in the side that’s in goes out, and when he's out, he comes in, and the next person goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in, and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get people still in and not out. When both sides have been in and out, including the not-outs, that’s the end of the game.

(p.s.- more cricket stuff- the Bodyline series, and Cricinfo's collection of articles.)

Accidental Millionaires

2006-05-03T11:24:00.000-05:00

Casablanca has been voted the best movie script ever. Not funny, when you consider that the writers admit to have simply hashed together a story as quickly as they could. They were the most surprised of all at the movie's success.

Next assignment: finding other half-assed jobs in history that became runaway successes.

Bad Pool 2

2006-05-03T11:22:00.000-05:00

I have it on good authority that swimming pools in most European countries are "community". i.e. not only are the shower stalls public, but the pool area is... (what's the word here)... unisex-public, if you get my drift.

Ah, Europe. Land of the 4-day work week, community pools, French bistros, and Alizee. If I hadn't fallen for the whole American dream thing, I'd be writing this with French subtitles right now. (p.s.- did the picture fool ya?)

Katrina v/s Mumbai Floods: false national prode

2006-05-03T11:19:00.000-05:00

Finally! I've been trying to research the truth in the following email that's been doing the rounds:

HERE ARE SOME INTERESTING COMPARISONS:-

inches of rain in New Orleans due to hurricane Katrina... 18
inches of rain in Mumbai (July 27th).... 37.1 inches of rain

population of New Orleans... 484,674
population of Mumbai.... 12,622,500

deaths in New Orleans within 48 hours of Katrina...100
deaths in Mumbai within 48hours of rain.. 37

number of people to be evacuated in New Orleans...entire city..whoa!
number of people evacuated in Mumbai...10,000

Cases of shooting and violence in New Orleans...Countless
Cases of shooting and violence in Mumbai.. NONE

Time taken for US army to reach New Orleans...48hours
Time taken for Indian army and navy to reach Mumbai...12hours

status 48hours later... New Orleans is still waiting for relief, army and electricty
status 48hours later... Mumbai is back on its feet and it's business is as usual

USA...world's most developed nation
India...JUST A DEVELOPING NATION..

oopss...did i get the last fact wrong???

Found this rebuttal on these blogs here.

I think the whole comparison is based on a convulated idea that the two disasters can be compared ! It is next to being imbecile !

The rains in Mumbai cannot be compared to Hurricane Katrina.

In the case of Katrina , the coastal protection build-up whatitsname were damaged and helped the whole frigging ocean flow into the state of New Orleans.Whereas in Mumbai it was just a downpour from skies!

You don't compare an ocean flowing into a landmass with rainfall , do you ?

The Dike-like structures gave away and since ocean wave levels rise significantly during hurricanes , the ocean duly flowed in.This did not happen in Mumbai.

Oh yeah, Katrina brought in the rains with addition to the in-flow of water from the ocean.

New Orleans is many a feet lower than the ocean level.Two pronged attack!

Add to that it was a CAT-4 Hurricane! Google to know the speed of wind brought in by a CAT-5 Hurricane and Katrina was only short of a 10 miles/hr to reach CAT-5 when it struck land.Most rural buildings in India wont survive!

Kolkata gets Hurricanes with 90KM/HR winds every monsoon and leaves lot of destruction behind. That is just a CAT-1.

Okay now compare the area of damage in both the disasters !

Remember Orissa and the super-cyclone ?

I tell you, this is NEGATIVE thinking, and if our countrymen and the country feel 'happy' and 'motivated' by such selective reading of facts, then, my friend, this is what you call NEGATIVE MOTIVATION.

The Nazis, I think, would be the best example of what a Nation would come to be if it is motivated by such a perverted thinking.

I am what I am today because I let myself to be influenced by negative thoughts.

Want to feel happy and proud and thump your chests that we let less people die than the US ? Relatively speaking , don't we end up celebrating the death of the American people?

Finally, Information is wealth. Google is my gift to you. Use it.

Being proud of your country is one thing. Snubbing other countries to feel good about yourself is something completely another. Don't care if it's US, Pakistan or even Tanzania... We had better try & be good of our own accord.

Handling the Media Monster

2006-05-03T11:18:00.000-05:00

Continuing on the previous post... here's my take on how the whole Outsourcing issue began.

As the ripples of the dot-com euphoria swept the world, a lot of investment money came flooding into the Indian software industry. The media, wanting to play on upbeat middle-class sentiment (remember BJP's India Shining campaign?), began a barrage of national jingoism. They hyperventilated about how US jobs are being outsourced to India, how India's brain power is beginning to bring her on par with the West, India is the best, etc etc. The government, never one to miss out on a good thing, started echoing those lines. And like a virus, the sentiment caught the nation. If ever there was a good example of irrational exuberance, this was it.

Of course, we were hardly the only country that was getting US investment. Outsourcing to other Asian countries- China, Indonesia, even Vietnam- was almost on par with ours. (Story from a friend's friend: While negotiating salary with his new company, he's offered something like $8/hr. He says "Boss, atleast make it double figures!" The company exec replies, "Listen, be glad that you're being offered this much. Otherwise there's someone in China who'll probably do it for less than a dollar an hour.") But we were the only ones banging the drum about our greatness. The rest weren't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, and kept their mouths wisely shut.

Inevitably, this caught someone's attention. And this time it was the US media that pounced on this story like a wolf on a T-bone steak. The indignant public went "What the...? The nerve! Stealing American jobs!" Nothing makes a better story than telling the people they're being had. It creates anger, resentment, and generates great newspaper sales. More importantly, nobody ever really stop to check the authenticity of the news, they just follow the mob. That's the journalists' immunity, and that allows them to fuel the fires even more. Some senators caught on to the public resentment, & brought bills to legislature that do nothing except make the lives of H1-B workers more miserable.

My personal theory is that one should always take the news with a pinch of salt. The media must be treated as a tool of awareness alone, nothing beyond that. News journalism looks mainly for impact, more bang-for-the-buck. Hyperbole is daily fare. As a result, most of America (2 of my University Profs included) still lives under the illusion that they've been cheated.

Somewhere in Hell there's a special place reserved for journalists. Probably right by the loos.

National Issues

2006-05-03T11:16:00.000-05:00

We were discussing differences in national perspectives in class today. Topics that came up included piracy, ethics and (naturally) outsourcing. I played this ABC News video in class. It shows India in great light, and of course everyone was discussing how wonderful it is, etc etc.

Now I am a proud Indian, and I do agree with some of the things in this video, but some things irk me about it.

It's too simplistic. A 10-minute depiction of a country as diverse as India, does about as much justice to its subject, as an episode of The Simpsons does to the real USA. (Sure it's entertaining, but it's not accurate.)
It ignores the other side of India, the reasons we're so backward despite all the good things in the last 59 years. The Torpedo has a good rant on what ails us.

I've lived in 7 different Indian states, and pretty much traveled the length & breadth of the country. And the first thing you realize being a frequent-flier, when going from one culture to another, is that there is no good or bad. In comparing two nations, two cultures, they're not better or worse... they're just different.

Having said that, some differences cannot be escaped. Current business wisdom has it that all companies have some fundamental strengths and weaknesses, and business success depends heavily on whether the company's strengths match those that the current market conditions demand.

It thus looks a little short-sighted to me when people get worked up over outsourcing, when the symptoms of America's ailing economy run much deeper. Instead, the focus should be things like these- which would be the fundamental factors in shaping tomorrow's US economy:

America's population is ageing, and lacks modern skill sets.
India's youth is probably better educated than most other countries.
China's people are learning English faster than you can say "Ni Hao". Wait till the 2008 Olympics- that's going to be quite something.
The majority of graduate students in American universities are from China/Korea/India, and they'll be the professors of tomorrow.

OK, the 64 million dollar question. Should US really be worrying about India?

As Prahalad says in the video, India's strength is that the system works, despite the lack of a "system". The only rule is survival- looking out for #1. And in a nation of educated, ambitious youth, that means an unparalleled hunger to succeed. Their skills are tuned to the new economy, unlike an ageing American workforce which last went to school about thirty seven years ago. China can't speak English (yet). No wonder so many jobs are going to India! Imagine if we had the resources of a developed country, we'd be unbeatable!

Or so the theory goes.

Reality may be quite the opposite. In my view, our instinct for survival is simultaneously our greatest strength and biggest weakness. Desire to succeed, mixed with scarce resources (university seats, challenging jobs), often means illegaly manipulating the system. Blatantly disregarding laws. A mentality of screw-thy-neighbor. Ignoring ethics in favour of a quick buck. Apathy towards society (a result of "what can one man do?" sentiment). Passing the buck when it comes to taking responsibility on social issues. Religious extremism (an increasing threat- RSS, SIMI, the Samajwadi party, and the followers of those new-age Hitlers, Bal Thackeray and Abu Azmi). Impotent institutions (police, justice, healthcare, governance) which participate in this ideology.

Currently the system is precariously balanced, and that allows progress to go on. But unless we get our institutions in shape (think of the problems of ITPL in Bangalore, Narayan Murthy having to plea for a better road), progress will stall because the system will be incapable of handling that growth.

Ultimately, I think, every developing nation has to converge to the US system- i.e. strong institutions, and empowered citizens that believe in the law. That's India's challenge. America, on the other hand, has different issues. Instead of focusing on the few lost low-end jobs that were outsourced, they should be more interested in renewing their old workforce's skills. Provide better, more affordable education. Reduce the national debt (that's a stumbling block the whole world should be watching).

If they cannot do that, the only way America can stay competitive is by recruiting talent from abroad. Now this has always been their major strength- attracting talented individuals with the promise of prosperity. But ever since 9/11, their attitude is increasingly turning to isolationism. Government reduces the F1 & H1-B intake. Companies refrain from the hassles of processing an H1-B. Top executive management at most corporations tends to be white Caucasian (this was something discussed in class), with very little in terms of diversity.

That's as dumb as killing the hen that lays the golden eggs. Or rather, let's put it this way- If one day you walked in on your wife making love to the neighbor on the couch... would you solve the problem by selling off the couch? Someone isn't thinking.

In the end, as always, the winner of this global game will be the country that makes the least boo-boos. (Read my blog on stupidity.)

It may just end up being China. With them, even if they make a mistake, at least they'll all make it together. And one billion wrongs do make a right.

Good Pool, Bad Pool

2006-05-03T11:14:00.000-05:00

Pool 1: Played five hours of 8-ball at Pierpont Commons today. Started playing 3 days ago (after discovering the pool table there was free)... getting the hang of the game & getting better with every shot. Might be first signs of addiction. Going there again first thing tomorrow morning, and plan to learn the even more challenging art- snooker.

Pool 2: Kayaking lessons were on at the University swimming pool... went to find out about it. The door to the swimming pool entrance goes through the men's showers & locker rooms. Upon entering- eyes shot out of sockets, brain did double take- before remembering that shower stalls in this wacko country are public. i.e. naked white people all around. Ran out screaming, never to return again.

2006-05-03T11:13:00.000-05:00

Finally! Someone discusses a question philosophers have been asking for decades... plus, I like the name. Boing Boing!!! Here's another one... a site dedicated to urban legends.

I swear I'm gonna name one of my kids after these websites. How does BoingBoing Bardoloi sound?

Stupid Signs

2006-05-03T11:12:00.000-05:00

This is one hilarious story... these folks put their zingo interpretations on the US government's new Ready-America public signs. I actually checked out the ready.gov website, and they really are amateurish.

Check out these sites for more stupidity. Google images. Bike Tourism.net. Stupid church signs (go down the page a bit). Protest signs.

The Problems of Living in Bangalore

2006-05-03T11:10:00.000-05:00

My friend on Orkut asks me this... "Hi Vishal.. how r u?... hows life out there.. long time since i mailed or talked to you .... when r ur hols?... r u coming down to bang?"

Hmm. Well, I might be going home in the summer, but definitely not to bang.

Lord of the Chicks

2006-05-03T11:06:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, on a planet far far away, there was a man called Zarqwad. While not a particularly interesting man, he was special in one rather remarkable way. The reason he was was special was this: he was the only man on his planet.

By a strange quirk of nature, the laws of probability governing his side of the universe made a coin turn up heads once every 10,000,000 tries. (It is rumoured that the Gods played dice nearby...) This played havoc with the genetics of all species on this planet (named Fabella), as a result of which he was the only man in a population of 10,000,000.

Life was pretty good for young Zarqwad. Things being as they were, he was the king of the place, lording it over the patria and being treated as the precious commodity he was. His only job was to... (well, guess). While taking care of so many women alone was no easy task, Zarqwad had with him the collected wisdom of his ancestors... a long unbroken line of great kings whose advice was garnered in book form & handed over (like a sceptre) to the next king of Fabella. The book, called "Lectori Nostrum Bardissimi" (loosely translated as "How to make love to thirty women a day without making any one of them jealous") was a complex scienctific methodology that took ten long years to master completely. It was the secret to the planet's survival, and the book was reverently preserved in the main temple of the city.

One day, a spacecraft landed on Fabella. It came from the planet Earth (millions of light years away), carrying a man Promesceus.

Promesceus was immediately taken prisoner & presented before the king, who asked him to explain his mission. Promesceus narrated to the king the travails of his home Earth... how it was Women who ruled the planet, how 98.98% of the men were labeled a subspecies - 'dork', and hence unable to establish relations of any kind with the ruling class. Particularly heart-rending was the tale of the head Priest, Zigmunt Froyt, who died in his bed alone & cold, asking "What do women want?" And so Promesceus had been sent forth, as the finest 'dork' on the planet, to find a cure to the ails of his fellow men. (He had also angered his wife, who was then President of the USA, but he didn't mention that.)

Zarqwad was a wise man. He saw the opportunity this man held for his clan, and decided to make Promesceus a fellow king. However, he was forbidden to leave the planet ever.

For a while, it was good. Promesceus was taught the fine art of courting women, how to rule them wisely, and how to make them obey his every command. In return, he performed his kingly duties as best as he could. He began to finally understand the secrets that his people had tried to grasp, but failed. And he was happy.

But deep in his heart, he was still a dork. And with the comradeship that binds one dork to another, he began to think of the men of his home Earth. Their suffering clawed at his heart. He saw that all the problems back home could be solved if only he could get to them this holy Book of the Zarqwadians. One day, when walking through the streets of Fabella, he passed by a Cindy Crawford lookalike. The pain of past memories was too much... he decided to act. That very night he stole the Nostrum Bardissimi from the temple, placed it in his spaceship, set the co-ordinates to Earth, and let it fly.

Zarqwad was furious. As punishment for his sins, Zarqwad proclaimed that Promesceus be made to watch George Michael videos everyday until he turned gay.

Promesceus' ship, the Pyro, had a fast & safe journey home, until it was almost at the upper levels of Earth's atmosphere. For reasons unknown, Pyro's on-board computer (running Windows) suddenly belly-upped & crashed, disabling the ship's navigation system. The ship and its invaluable cargo were lost deep in the mountains, and have not been found to date.

Today I, your narrator, am setting out on the quest to find this lost book. The journey will be long, the obstacles many. But I shall persist. I do not know what strength is in my blood, but I swear to you I will not let the Great Book be lost, nor our people fail. Amen.

The End.

(1) The motivation comes to the author from a female friend who saucily said to him, "You really need a course in the fine art of dating women".
(2) You may have the following questions about Promesceus- a.How did he learn the arts of the alien planet so quickly? b.Why did he stay back? For answers, please see Tom Cruise in the movie The Last Samurai. If that made sense to you, this will too.

Why Grad School Doesn't Suck

2006-05-03T10:58:00.000-05:00

Have you noticed how many of today's best technology companies & startups were founded by folks from A-list schools?

Facebook- Harvard sophomores.
MySpace- Tom Anderson, alum of UCLA & Berkeley.
Napster- Shawn Fanning, Northeastern dropout.
Google- Larry Page was an undergrad at UofMichigan, a grad at Stanford.
Cisco- Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner were at Stanford when they developed the routing technology that went into starting Cisco.
Microsoft- Ok, so Gates was a dropout... but a HARVARD dropout. All the difference in the world.
Sun- Scott McNealy, who actually finished Harvard. Here's his rather interesting (but scathing & bitter) take on the difference between him & Gates.
Amazon- Jeff Bezos graduated from Princeton with EE & CS degrees.
Apple- Steve Wozniak was a UC Berkeley dropout. Steve Jobs never needed college I guess, he dropped out after 1 semester, but did spend a year after that exploring different courses.
Adobe Systems- Charles Geschke (CMU) & John Warnock (Univ. of Utah). Both also worked at Xerox PARC... that temple of innovation.
Hewlett Packard- Stanford dudes.
Dell- dropout of University of Texas, Austin.
Oracle- Larry Ellison, University of Illinois dropout.
(Ok, my point is made. But just for brag value...) Mathworks- Cleve Moler (founder, chairman, chief scientist) was a Math & CS prof at UofM & Stanford.

Just goes to show you the value of being in a good university. I can vouch for the fact that it is, in a word, inspiring. Admittedly I'm at the bottom of this academic barrel, which can't be too inspiring, which just makes me wonder what it feels like for the people at the top.

On the other hand, success doesn't always depend on education. See these lists of high school and college dropouts. Einstein, Edison, J.S.Bach, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Spielberg, Leon Uris, George Bernard Shaw, Princess Diana are all on it. But in terms of technological success; that spark of inspiration, so essential for innovation, is easier to find in an academically stimulating environment.

On to the next point... which is the nature of new companies. If you were thinking that the first 3 entries on the above list were rather misplaced, check this out... Facebook is selling for the prime rate of $2 billion! To put that in perspective, Pixar was sold for $4 bn to Disney. Talk about the big league! The owners actually turned down an offer of $750 mil (probably didn't want to be too close to MySpace). Not bad for a 2-year old company started by sophomores.

The other point of view is that Facebook doesn't really want to sell, it just wants to get an idea of what the market thinks its true value is. Pretty slick, boys. Play on industry frenzy and media hype, get yourself a good deal. Because there's no question that the next phase of Web 2.0 will see all the big-money players move in for a bite. And what big bites they'll be, oh boy. (See this.) Which means that the best thing for a developer to do is to try & build a community of users around their product. This isn't a new idea, just that the Internet makes word-of-mouth a much more effective advertising strategy than it ever was. Word-of-mouth over the internet is now the best viral marketing method.

Frankly, though, I'd rather be a buyer than a buyee. Better to be Big Bad Wolf Inc., be able to buy $2 billion startups and not break a sweat, than be a wide-eyed kid that sells his creation for a bad valuation. You know, something along the lines of Pierce Brosnan in Thomas Crown Affair (you can tell I want the moolah when I call $2bn a bad valuation).

Jorge Cham is Here!

2006-04-05T19:01:00.000-05:00

Jorge Cham, creator of Piled Higher & Deeper is here at UofM speaking today. Losers if you're not there!

Good Company in the Closet?

2006-04-05T18:58:00.001-05:00

I have to share a startling revelation with the universe... it may disturb you, shock you, even scare you. But it's too great to hide anymore. Here it is.

ALL THE GREAT HEROES IN HISTORY WERE GAY!!!

Ok, before you think I've gone crazy, or have had tee many Martoonis, hear me out.

So I was slacking off studies as usual, watching The Last Samurai. While the movie itself had a been-there-seen-that feel to it, the battle scenes were good enough to fascinate me about one-sided wars of history. Googled the one that Cruise's Nathan Algren mentions- Thermopylae- where "300 Spartans held off a Persian army of a million men" (300 Spartans is an actual movie based on this historic war, and next on my must-see list). One thing led to another, and pretty soon I was reading about Alexander the Great, Greek wars, and on and on into Greek mythology and stuff. The trends didn't take long to emerge.

Alexander the Great had a friend/lover called Hephaestion.
Achilles had Patroclus. (don't believe the movie... legend says that Patroclus was a lover, not a nephew)
Hercules, aka Heracles, had someone too. I forget the name.
I'm not joking... Socrates.
A personal hero of mine- John Nash (read the book, forget the movie).
Oscar Wilde. I only mention him coz I love his books, and to prove the point.

Need I say more? People, we're talking about historical characters that are ICONS of intelligence, bravery, and total kick-ass-machoism. In the last 2 years these characters have been portrayed on screen by Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe, Colin Farrell... not the sort of chaps you'd associate with being gay (could you imagine the effect on their female fan following? It'd be like telling nine-year-olds that Santa Claus doesn't exist.)

So it really makes you wonder why gay people spent so much time in the closet anyway. They have great ancestry, it seemed pretty commonplace in medieval times (God help us, they even had a term for it! - which I'm not gonna tell you, of course), and they're fashion trendsetters- I read somewhere that buffed bodies, cargo pants, etc all started out in the gay community. Besides, saying you're gay is the easiest way to getting on TV... well, that, and attempting to jump off a 20-storey building.

Anyway, hope this encourages some people contemplating coming out of the closet. Not bad for half a day's work.

However, here's a list of some people that I wish were not gay.

Ellen Degeneres. (Love your work, Ellen, but of all the people you had to shack up with, why did it have to be Anne Heche and Portia de Rossi? You took away the women of my dreams, and Oh, the difference to me!)
Alan Turing, whose frustrations drove him to end his life. God knows what he could've done for the science of AI had he lived longer.
Sharon Stone and Angelina Jolie. Thank goodness they keep changing their minds.

(p.s.- to that special someone- Just in case you're wondering- No honey, I'm not. Really.)

Quotes - II

2006-04-05T18:58:00.000-05:00

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be.
- Abraham Maslow

Philip: [to Young Alexander] A king isn't born, Alexander, he is made. By steel and by suffering. A king must know how to hurt those he loves. It's lonely. Ask anyone. Ask Heracles. Ask any of them. Fate is cruel. No man or woman can be too powerful or too beautiful without disaster befalling. They laugh when you rise too high. And they crush everything you've built with a whim. What glory they give in the end, they take away. They make of us slaves.