Signing off 2004 in style

I know that this is a "very worst", "nalla illai", "idhellam", and all such kind of things... still...

am reminded of my 7th std drawing master, who used to say

Wish you a very, wish you a very, happy and a, happy and a, phosphorus new year

Wish you same....

Swades == AYM GRAMD

To be and to be; actually-two be

All messiahs are schizophrenics.........

Isnt it fascinating that a handful of hallucinators have brainwashed mankind? We are believing freaking hallucinations, dammit!

Blast from the past

This is one of my previous posts... I find it incredibly well written:

Karmic Tithes

:-[

Marx was wrong, calvin was wrong.... *

Romance is the opiate of the masses!
- Ishwar.

A greater opiate is the delusion that you would have accomplished a lot more had you not wasted time fooling around.

There is something about thursays that brings out the superlative in me. What is open to interpretation, and better, to opinion is the characterisation of the superlative - best or worst....

India still has a long way to go

"India has a tremendous tendency for overstatement," says Porter, adding wryly: "I've made many presentations over the years in India. One thing I've noticed is that Indians don't take criticism well. They get very offended."
- Michael Porter.

How very true

Recent searches that have led to my page:
1. mms + clip
2. mms + flick
3. hijo di puta
4. tantalus + vcd

Such elcectic topics... what a!

Tsunami struck india... so what?

The making of a hijo di puta...

Bangalore is a nice city to live in... It took me close to 3 years to shed off my provincial attitude, but here i am...

If u r in blore, i'd suggest u to pay a visit to Blossoms, on Church street... very good collection of books. It was there that i saw the book Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk... but some arbit hijo di puta grabbed it first, and exclaimed, 'Ha! Chuck Palahniuk'

Weekend philosphy quota..

Tantalus

Tantalus was the son of Zeus and was the king of Sipylos. He was uniquely favoured among mortals since he was invited to share the food of the gods. However, he abused the guest-host relationship and was punished by being "tantalised" with hunger and thirst in Tartarus: he was immersed up to his neck in water, but when he bent to drink, it all drained away; luscious fruit hung on trees above him, but when he reached for it the winds blew the branches beyond his reach.

This is pretty much how i feel now... Almost there, but not quite there... Have been desperately trying to get some work done... its not happening... so, thought i'd browse and do some blogging.... apparently that isnt happeneing either... Feels a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole...Welcome to the real world....

The other day, I was complaining to my friend that while people as far away as UCLA and VTU got to see the famed MMS clip, I wast able to get my hands on it. She seemed genuinely surprised, thankfully not at the moral side of the issue(which i knew she wouldnt), but instead at the staggering vicariousness of it all.

What pleasure do you get by watching two arbit people making it out on a poor quality CD?

Do you really believe that people watch porn for the vicarious pleasure?

Yes, I do!

You had to give it to her.

Perhaps... at 17.. yes, it was! At 24, its no longer VP,

and i went on to explain the evolution from VP to "just the concept".

At 17, it was a lot of curiosity + teenage rebellion... Actually, it was only curiosity. Mentioning teenage rebellion makes me feel more enigmatic. at 20, it was for the company, the booze and the jokes cracked. At 24, all these things cease to matter. I see a porn flick just for the heck of it.. Its the concept that has survived...

Well, is it true? Gone are the days when we used to huddle around the TV and VCR at my friend's place on Saturday afternoon after the school.. Gone too, are the days when a porn VCD was the second most seen object in our rooms... These days, you wake up one fine day, and realise that you havent seen a flick in the last 3 months, you refuse when the VCD guy winks at you and asks if you want a "good" vcd... and most amazingly, you delete a flick from your system to make way for a second linux installtion... Realisation dawns upon you that every flick is the same as every other.. there is nothing new.. no variation... you think of all the bullshit that you gave about it being artistically made, and have a hearty laugh...

Boy, i AM getting old...

Friday angst quota

We are a nation of hyper-religious, overly-conservative, mediocre, dogmatic, self-hyped underachievers... its surprising that people find it hard to accept facts...

Thursday rambling quota

Back to mood zero....

Was wondering - which is worse: playing antakshari or reading a self-improvement book. Well, its like asking one to choose between SRK and chimpu movies... i choose a painful death by prolonged self-asphyxation.

The magis-sublimito-anthropo-metro-prehendo syndrome

We are a generation of confused men and women, thanks in no small measure to Michelson, Henry I, and Gudea of Lagash, of course...

Life offers scope for enough ponderables to keep me occupied for a lifetime... i can do without poeple coming over to me and inviting me over for the house warming ceremony of their new 1500 sq. feet house, about 2 furlongs off Tambaram Camproad, a couple of miles from East Tambaram bus stand. For god's sake, i cant even imagine how much is 1500sq.ft....

Almost immediately, a flurry of conversions leave me faint, and I search for a chair, and find one a metre away.

Familiarity breeds reassurance...

My earliest recollections of this units war, is intriguing, to say the least. My grandfather measured distances in yards and furlongs, dad in miles,feet and inches, and me in metres. It feels very strange to read in the newspaper that the big B was fined for measuring distances in feet on Kaun Banega Karodpati, turning back and finding your parents discussing if a 1200sq.feet house is good enough for the family.

Whats stranger is this syndrome of mine... the magis-sublimito-anthropo-metro-prehendo
In layman terms, it signifies the inability of a person to visualise measurements that are larger than the height of a human being.

This whole feet-metre issue drives me crazy. I can visualise distances and height in feet updo 6 feet, not more... Anything above six, say 7 feet and 23,400 feet make no difference to me... i just cant comprehend such distances in feet. Above 6 feet, measurements should be in metres.

Death to Michelson, Henry I, and Gudea of Lagash, and everyone else too....

Amour propre

Heights of narcissism:

You are in love with someone, feeling all smug about it, and you dont even think for a second if she is in love with you or not... it just doesnt matter... and it takes a long time for you to realise this....

Am just incorrigible

:) :)

OMG

Good thing that i got my desktop...

sanjeeth, ananth - beware

Vile unobsession

Had a very interesting conversation over dinner with my friend. She was highly impressed with a particular George Orwell saying that talks about how contemporary english has become complicated, and quoted an example.

Fortune doesnt always favour the talented, you need luck too.... English...

Not withstanding the innate congential ....... contemporary English....

I said that i quite agree with his observation, and hers too, but that i quite like the second way of talking and that i find it to be quite expressive, and she refused and challenged me to quote an example.. I said

'I manifest a vile unobsession towards humanity at large'... 'please translate this into your english'

'I hate people' - she.

I grinned sheepishly and ordered for chopsuey...


Tell me ppl, 'manifesting a vile unobsession towards humanity at large' is different from 'hating people', isnt it? :D

this is funny - http://www.kanchi-sathya.org/

authentic in bold+red.... lol

i am a debian boy :)

I told ya...

I have an uncanny ability to spot talent in football(soccer).. i told this in 2002, and nobody listened...

Shdve told East Bengal or Mohun Bagan... imagine "noodles" playing in cal...

Gloria victis.... hmmm

Noname00.cpp

Ill effects of watching mushy hindi movies:

0. Evolution proceeds backwards with every movie released by Karan Johar, or for that matter, any hindi movie.
1. Such polls and whats infinitely worse, such results.
2. Mass genocide in Rwanda.
3. Acute indigestion in Bangalore.

Femme gaboore(hindi women) all over the world just cannot believe that someone can not like "the cho cute" shahrukh...

This is my list of favourite english words:
1. Velociraptor
2. Knostiche
3. Epiphany
4. Surreal
5. Synchronous
6. Schizophrenia
7. Subtle
8. Abstract
9. Fetish
10. Sublime

But the best word in the English language - "Ego"....

Is smoking cool?

Smoking does not make you cool... Real coolness comes from the heart

Maybe, but isnt a diseased heart more "punk rock" than a healthy one? And punk rock is the gasoline that cool-mobiles burn to run... Gasoline is concentrated dinosaur juice.... and nothing is cooler than dinosaurs... so, smoking is cool...


surrender....very very cooling-like pethal..

Chennai-Madras

Language – this is an issue which has stirred Madras and its politicians over the last 34 years that I have been experiencing the happenings of Chennai. It is one of the keys to the character of the citizens of Chennai. The fixation with Tamil and English both hides and reveals many facets of what makes Madras such a charming and culturally significant city to live in. Madrasis regard the Tamil language as the key to the essence of their culture. English is their window to the wider world; Hindi, an imposition of an alien, aggressive culture trying to dominate.

I have a couple of things to say about the last sentence... but that comes later....The rest of the article is much less interesting and sheer nonsense...

This reminds me of an incident... Was talking to my friend about my classmate's marriage and she asked when his baarat was... I promptly went on to ask what this baarat thing is, and guess what, i was greeted with an incredulous stare and the type of look that is bestowed upon a 10th standard child when he is caught watching a porn flick on a hot and sticky saturday afternoon or upon a person endowed with a vociferous fart puts up a public display of his vociferousness(or is it vociferocity?) over a speaker when the crowd's devotional fervour is at its peak...

The gravity of the situation overwhelmed me...

'What?' I queried tremulously.
'Dont you know what baarat is?'
'No... Its a hindi word, isnt it?' - the post-gathering-myself me

The incredulous stare upon a 10th std porn-watching boy turned into one upon a 3rd standard serial rapist.

'Dont you know hindi?' : Make that font 40 bold
'Not to this extent'
'Well, you are supposed to... Its our national language'
'So is English...'
'But...but its a foreign language'

And the pointless conversation went on....

Pushing aside all this patriotism junk, the answer is simple... India, as a nation is only 60 years old... There was no political entity called India before the britishers established the nation....Everybody was fighting everybody else... I wouldnt exactly call that a nation...

To tamilians, both English and Hindi are foreign... Where tamilians differ from the rest of the linguistic communities is that while all other languages of India were either evolved from Sanskrit or heavily influenced by it, tamil has a distinct linguistic tradition, not evolved and not influenced(very little)... And while the familiarity with English is 250 odd years, the familiarity with Hindi is only 40 odd years...I think the criticism is a bit unfair...

And i am much more comfortable with english...

P.S: This doesnt mean i am against/for certain languages... i suppose i am beyond all that now... was just trying to talk some logic... :)

Kannada skills

ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಬರಯುವದು ನನಗೆ ಗೊತ್ತು
---ಕುವೆಂಪು2

Humanity's subtlest sophistications:

1. Language
2. Music
3. Danish pastry,
not necessarily in that order.

Based on personal experience

Wallowing in the luxury of self pity....

Yet another batch joined the company - a new batch of people, each one more normal than the other, each one as expendable as the other... I was looking at a sea of faces, constantly moving, but with no visible features - all that it exposed was ripples of black hair and brown faces. The constant high-pitched laughter, the silly games and the occasinal glances around to find comfort in the fact that they are being no different from the rest of the silly mob, the desperation to fit in, to be a part, to belong, and to forcefully belong the non-belongers-pulling them in into their self-mockery...

Amidst all this, i found my reflection in the far away glass, not quite indistinguishable, but fast fading into the uniformity. An acute shudder started at the base of my spine, and coursed through every nerve in the body, and i found myself petrified, stunned and afraid... finally gathered myself, went to the washroom and tried to rub off the uniformity off my face- it refused to go....

I can still hear the shrieks of joy as somebody won a round of musical chairs; somebody gives her a prize for the parody that she just excelled at, and the crowd goes mad clapping...

I wish the rest of the world wasnt born.

death

Counted the number of people who would really miss me for more than a week, if i happen to die now. Here is the demographic breakup

1. Madras : 6
2. Bangalore : 1
3. US : 2
-----------------
Total : 9
-----------------

And cooling will probably be disbanded.

Should it be depressing? Nay... i am beyond that stage.

P.S: never mind...am in one of those moods.

Surrender to Minister of State for External Affairs

This man is priceless...


1. What is your observation about the
situation in Palestine?
The Palestinians are going through a lot of
hardship and a very difficult situation.

2. What has India gained so far
strategically from its pro-Palestine policy?
Why do you think in those terms? We have a policy
and we follow that policy.

3. You have been quoted in newspapers as
saying that you will take this issue up with the Israeli government.
I did not say anything like that. Somebody asked
me, so I said that whenever I happen to see an Israeli leader, I will definitely
raise this issue.

4.Is your meeting going to make an impact
on the politics and the situation there?
That you have to say. Why should I say?

5. Five million Indians are working in Arab
countries. Are Arabs allowing them to work there only for benefit? It is because of the emotional and cultural relations we have had with them.


ROTFL.... god save india.

These desis are crazy....

Had been to a Patel restaurant in Palo Alto with a bengali guy from HP. The owners were a friendly couple, and the food was reasonably priced too, just that the owner refused to give a bill for the groceries bought...

The owner guy was intolerably garrulous, and it looked like his primary interest in life was collecting demographic info from the customers.

'Where are you from?' - Patel
'India' - me
'Arre bhai... where in india?' - Patel
'Madras' - me
'Calcutta' - Bong guy
'Where are u from?' - me
'I am an Indian!' - retorted the Patel, with a proud smile....
'Whatever part we are from, we are still Indians, arent we?' - Patel mama...
'Suno Kanta... Get some water.. fast...' - Patel.... for i had fainted....


Another incident involved the shuttle driver from the hotel where i was put up. First day of stay....

'Good morning... How are you?' - driver
'Fine. Thank you.. how are you?' - the solicitous me...
'Fine. thank you.. Where do you want to go?' - driver in thick spanish english.
Gave him the name and address of the company....
'So, my friend.. where are you from?' - driver.
'India' - me
'Oh, India.... Heard that its a very good place.. I know lots of people from India' - driver.
'Is it...very good...' - me
After a pregnant pause, the driver queried....
'Is India the same as Fiji'.....

Karmic Tithes

An attempt at science fiction...

The year : 2032
The place: Hellas Impact Basin, Mars.

As Arvindhakshan Venkatakrishnan Pandurangan, aka Vishy peered out through his stereoscopic visors, he wasnt able to supress a moan of disappointment that emanated from the deepest reaches of his constipated bowels.

In front of him lay sprawled Mars, in all the splendour that an ailing 4.5 billion year old planet could possibly muster, and it did a pretty commendable job at that. The steep walls of the impact basin towering 5 kms above the stereoscopic visors dominated the alien martian landscape. The walls gave an impression of having been thrust out upwards by some colossal force of nature in so short a time that it didnt have time to think of an ergonomical design that would have made this place the mecca for lifetime members of Ameteur Mountaineers of Central Kentucky... Anyway, thats a long time from now... Indeed, it was so...Vishy was standing at the bottom of the Hellenic impact crater, a 1600kms wide and 5kms deep crater formed by some freak meteor that just couldnt stick to its orbit.

The only thing unalien about the place was a transcendental feeling of insignificance that one experienced when faced with something as unsurmountable as the walls of the largest impact crater in the solar system, a feeling perhaps not very different from the marked sense of utter incomprehension that struck Vishy right on the face and other protruding parts of his anatomy the day he found a pair of triped Agnoiologists from the twin star planetary system of Zygota.

A martian sunset is a breathtaking spectacle, breathtaking enough to offset the queasiness that a claustrophobic environment like a spacesuit can bring upon a clogged oesophagus. The distant sun was gradually obscured by dust, creating a silver blue halo against the salmon pink martian sky. As the last fading rays of light fell on the iron-rich clay soil, the surface gave an impression of being caramel, burnt ember, ochre , butterscotch, tarnished silver, rust and a number of other subtle shades all at the same time. As these rays bounced off the thin layer of carbon dioxide ice that clung to the rocks, the result was that of an eerie phosphoroscence that gave an almost aetherial atmosphere to the whole place. Even the most morbid sentient entity from the remotest corners of Necros cluster would stop for a couple of minutes to admire the beauty, before returning to what is eulogised in their "Sacred Book of Necrophilia", that being sulking.

Vishy couldnt stand it any longer.

'Why... why me?' he muttered under his breath, and looked up at the sky in the general direction of earth, and let out a long deep sigh, unaware of the fact that his sigh missed the earth completely by approximately half the sky, and was wasted on Alpha Centuari. His gaze then shifted to the bright yellow spaceship that looked like a hundiyal in tirupathi devasthanam...its incongruity couldnt have been any starker. He thought of his crew mates back in the ship who were sweating it out on this uncompromising alien world. His whole frame suffused with a warm feeling of assurance brought about by the knowledge that Bob Marlin, Lisa Tyler and Anna Konstantinova were in the ship and carefully monitoring his every move, while simulataneously gathering mission-critical information to beam it back to earth as soon as the earth comes out from the other side of the sun.

He could almost picture Anna's delicate heinies rippling with excitement as she bent over to examine martian soil for possible signs of life, Bob poring over the communication charts and Lisa in the communication room, talking to him...

Something struck Vishy as being strange... If Lisa is in the communication room talking to him and guiding him, why hasnt he heard from her for the last half an hour... It was panic's turn to suffuse his entire frame... He could almost picture bug-eyed green men with immobilisers attached to their noses invading the spaceship... He was able to smell scorched russian flesh as wave after wave of neutron beams bombarded Anna's heines, instantly vapourising her.

'This is too good to be true' thought Vishy, refusing to indulge himself in such delusions of bliss...Thinking back, he couldnt remember the last conversation after the trio had literally pushed him out of the spaceship.

To be continued....

Revelation....

A huge surrender to the superorganism called society... Realised that fighting against being a part of the superorganism is, inane at worst, and in the best case, a mere delusion... There goes another of my home-brewn theories...

I have a holistic view of the society, and i believe that society is a very adaptive superorganism. And its adaptation is as a result of the individuals who shape the society. In one of those typical sweeping generalisations, i divide people into three categories :

1. those who truly contribute and hence are the essentially that part of society that makes it adaptive


2. parasites like me, who do not contribute anything, but only exist only to benefit from the society


3. hypocratic parasites - the worst of the lot. look
   here for more about them.

Falling into the second category was a conscious choice, and i was naive enough to assume that i am not a part of the society and that i dont belong...

And i was wrong... The solution is unbelievably elegant... Every system has two types of forces acting on it - one trying to balance the system, and the other trying to unbalance it(remember matrix)... The system is held in equilibrium by the constant interaction of these two forces... The balancing force has no reason to exist, but for its purpose to counter the unbalancing force...

Not only did i realise that i was a part of the unbalancing force, but also that i, rather my kind holds a central place in the working of the superorganism... The more you try to resist it, the more the balancing forces act to supress you, making the society stronger....

Ayn Rand was wrong, Sartre was wrong... Individualism is a delusion, more ironically, individualism in one person feeds the growth of uniformity and mediocrity among others... Nothing wrong in this... This mediocrity is the reason why we still exist...

I can no longer frown at people whose sole aim in life is to get married, get a house, have a family and die... I owe the luxury of being what i am to these people... yet, i choose to frown and smirk... cos i love unbalancing... thats my purpose

:)

Vernacular angst

நான் எனது தாய் மொழியில் சிந்திக்கும் திறனை இழந்து விட்டேன். வருந்தத்தக்க நிலமை...

தமிழ் ஐயாவுக்கு பெருமை சேர்க்கும் மாணவ மணிகளில் நானும் ஒருவன். :(

P.S: You need Arial Unicode MS font for viewing pleasure.

Hindu gods on sandals

"The West has no idea about what they are encashing upon, for they do not realise the true value of our divine heritage and cultural ethos," sums up Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.


ROTFL

Dont live in the past, you morons... what was cultral ethos, is now cultural pathos... perhaps worse...

You arent worried about the fact that a lot of states still havent reached replacement levels of fertility, instead you accuse that muslims growth rate is higher; you arent worried that while 3 states contribute to 80% of your GDP, the rest of them act as parasites, instead you pour money into bottomless pits like bihar and UP; you arent worried that schools here offer zero scope for self-thought and that India cannot have a home-grown physics genius, unless they study abroad, instead you choose to fight between commie version of history and saffron version of histroy...

And you are agitated that some arbit guy is has a ganesha photo in his underwear... You guys are amusing, to say the least...

Is life about being happy with life, or being happy with what you are?

To a lot of people, there is no perceptible distinction... lucky ones...

If the answer is the first option, then, i have failed miserably... On the other hand, if it is the second option, I JUST ROCK... not MJ kind of rock... but the ozzy kind of rock...

Am in the process of shedding my passive hypocrisy, have been feeling good about it... till now... almost lost a good friendship... dont know if it can be salvaged... but what the heck... not that i dont care, but... whatever....

Will someone out there please crawl up behind my back, kick my ass brutally, strangle me and whisper gently "Bastard, get a life!"... I'll even pretend as if i didnt notice u until its too late...

I am moving to the City of Dis

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished me to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how I matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Extreme
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis

You approach Satan's wretched city where you behold a wide plain surrounded by iron walls. Before you are fields full of distress and torment terrible. Burning tombs are littered about the landscape. Inside these flaming sepulchers suffer the heretics, failing to believe in God and the afterlife, who make themselves audible by doleful sighs. You will join the wicked that lie here, and will be offered no respite. The three infernal Furies stained with blood, with limbs of women and hair of serpents, dwell in this circle of Hell.


:) These small pleasures make your life liveable

Life of a coffeesattva

The coffeesattva, on the lines of bodhisattva, is translated literally as "one whose essence is perfect coffee" or "one destined for caffeine addiction."



This, is the ultimate expression of a craving human soul; this is what i work for day in and day out; this is the reason why life is liveable - this is COFFEE... shot in the coffee estates of coorg..

The most depressing thing about nature is its inconsistency.... Unlike drainages that smell of drainage, coffee estates dont smell of coffee... there is no universal law that applies to everything... Nature sometimes behaves like a person who applies clotrimazole powder over his lungi when his neighbour's cow is in heat...

You dont see a connection, do you? Thats precisely what i mean when i say it is illogical...

Some tangential points...
1. Caffeine withdrawal is a genuine "mental disorder," according to the study, which was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

2. "When people don't get their usual dose, they can suffer a range of withdrawal symptoms, including headache, fatigue, difficulty concentrating. They may even feel like they have the flu"

But the clotrimazole is worth it...

Acta est fabula (Its all over)

I can rest in peace now...

A part of my not-so vapid past life- one from the pre-realisation days used to come occasionally to haunt me, despite the fact that it amounted to nothing but a few incidents of typical adolescent misinterpretations, though i would like to claim otherwise, the denoument of which triggered the realisation that i was probably over-reacting and purged the sense of guilt, or whatever was left of it...

Acta est fabula

Ita sum placuit

Going to coory for a three day team building exercise... polaycaud- to be precise..

Polaycad is located in the Coorg hills. A river on one side and coffee estates on the other surround the property. Accommodation is in the bungalow, which was built in 1920.

What a beauty!

The initial plan was to pitch tents, gather firewood, hunt animals, and so on... would have been much more fun...

Ethics of philanthropy

Any action that a person does, s/he does it because

1. it is essential for life and /or it makes life comfortable, AND/OR
2. it boosts one's ego.

Eating, sleeping... falls wholly in the first category.
Ur work can fall completely fall in the first category, or completely in the second category, or in both, depending on the person....

I dont believe in philanthropy, not in the way the world perceives it...

Take philanthropy and blogging, for example... Everybody recognises a person blogs ONLY for reason 2. In fact one of my friends even goes on to say, blogging is masturbation of the ego... cant help but admit...

Stripping down philanthropy to its basics, it is an ego boosting too... u do it only for the "See, i made a difference" feeling, or what is infintely worse, a patronising attitude thats worse (or better ) than the ego masturbation through blogging...

What beats me completely is all the hype and adulation that surrounds philanthropy... i mean, u dont say blogging is a virtue, do u? when philanthropy does the same thing, why the hell do you deify the process?

In fact, philanthropy is even more sickening because the while person at the receiving end will be happy and end up revering you, you will be fuelling your own damned ego...

Remove all the hype, the halo and virtues that adorn philanthropy, and stop feeling self- righteous for what u do... and then, i'll accept philanthropy..

Its not fair....

Not fair at all... am in a grumpy mood...

Was in california for two whole months... nothing happened... absolutely nothing... even tried cycling on the left side of the road after drinking... nothing...

and the moment i leave california, this happens...

boo hoo.... not fair...

Emancipating ettayapuram - the origins....

and this is the mail that started it


Dear Friends,

Myself and a few of my friends are working on effecting social and economic changes at the micro level,especially in villages. We believe that providing a push to economy in villages can have a "big postive impact" on the overall living standards and conditions in these places.

We had recently visited the village of Ettayapuram(the birth pace of MahaKavi Bharathi) in Tamil Nadu. Agriculture and Weaving were the primary occupations of the people. But the consistent failure of the monsson had brought agriculture to a stand still. Weaving too is ailing with only the loss making Co-optex as the only market. We thought we can help here by giving a push to the ailing weaving industry. There still is a huge demand and craze for handloom products amidst the younsters. We just need to show them a this market. We are targetting the students to start with. We thought the souvenirs and memorablia produced in colleges can be garments such as hand woven Kurtas. My Alma Mater, IIIT-B has come forward and placed the first order for thousand Kurtas, which is a significant number for a beginning. There are quite a few hurdles to cross here. We need to have some good designs- simple to produce(The product would be completely done by hand) and catchy. It would be great if we can get some help from fashion technology students on this front. We would greatly appreciate any help on this front. If anybody in your circle can help us on this do ask them to mail me at sanjeeth@gmail.com or sanjeeth.kumar@iiitb.ac.in.

The slump in agriculture and weaving had actually resulted in a exodus.Among all the people affected, children and old people are severely affected. Some years back the macth industry was doing well. Not any more. As long as there was match industry, children would go to school (there are a couple of free scools, one started by the Raajah(Ettappan) and the other by the other community leaders) and work in the evenings! Now, many of them go to Chennai to work in shops. Old aged people are practically orphaned and they sleep in temples before dying a eventual death out of lack of food. If we can give the necessary impetus to weaving, we would be solving a much bigger problem in this region!

Regards,

Sanjeeth

-------------

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand,

more perilious to conduct, or more uncertain in its success

than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

==============================================================

I wish sanjeeth on his endeavour... and sanjeet,
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand,

more perilious to conduct, or more uncertain in its success

than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

this is what i meant by getting patronising

Emancipating ettayapuram

One of my friends is coming up with an initiative to give a push to the ailing weaving community in the drought-ridden ettayapuram village. When we had met in college, he explained his plan of action in detail and how everybody seems to be keen in making this work, and how this could become a self-sustaining economic model. Had he talked to me about this a few months back, i would have fallen... but not any longer....


Behind the mask of philanthropy, and behind the "eschewing selfishness and self-interest" crap, i was curious to find out what this serving the society thing was all about... turns out that its pretty simple... people simply want to assure themselves of their importance, and justify their existence to the rest of the world...

It goes like this - "See, I am this nice person and all, and am happy with life, and look at you... poor man... i pity you very much... here, take this and be happy... dont forget to thank me..." attitude outside, and inside, its like "Am i great or what! i could have used this money anywhere.. instead, i chose to give it to these poor people... and boy, i am happy that i am not one of them" - a kind of justifying one's own existence, and a silly happiness on the lines of "See, i made a difference"!

In addition, its only too easy to patronise one's services... and i've seen this happen time and again...

i wouldnt want to fall into one of these categories...

Demographic conspiracy....

Recently saw the tamil movie Aaidha ezhuthu, (Yuva in hindi) as a part of my driving insane drive... A very normal movie, slightly inspired by Memento...

One part of the movie was hilarious though... An election campaign or something to that account, and a politician is making a passionate speech... the audience are captivated by the powerful speech delivery...Paraphrasing the politician,

Why is it that the northern part of india is broad and the southern part narrow?(in tamil, he uses a word that means narrow, as well as malnourished)... Its a huge conspiracy by the northern states to weaken us, and take away our importance...

ROTFL

Cut the crap

Got this link as a forward....

Point 1: Wrong history fundas
Point 2: You guys dont have the right to bask in the glory of the past...


Sickening....

Sic ad nauseam

A typical morning - I am waiting restlessly at my bus stop to board the bus, silently cursing the post-cambrian life-forms for not having perished in greater numbers, which would have made petrol cheaper, thereby making biking to office affordable, and bracing myself for the quiz that will be hosted by the inimitable sunaina on radio city....

The moment the bus crosses jakkasandra, the driver religiously turns on the radio, and out comes a voice, with an enthusiasm that is perhaps more artificial than the hubble space telescope and hence more irritating than an itch in the armpit.

"Gooooooooooood morning Bangalore" she says, and i start questioning if life is worth it.. then i think of the weekend beer, and tell myself "Relax buddy... if the bihari sitting next to you can do it, so can you"...

So saying, i look at the guy.. he seems enraptured by her voice, turns towards me and gives me a contended smile that would make you swear that you were in heaven, and says "Kya haal hai yaar...",

Seeing the blank stare that he elicited from me, he then goes on to say "Kamaal karti hai yaar...Roz subah mujhe iski aawaaz sunni chhahiye... varna din bhar kaam hi nahin chalta....Mujhe isliye bangalore pasand hai.. bangalore rocks man", turns towards the window and starts humming an arbit remix... i look at him, look at the voice from the radio, and start contemplating on the seeming shallowness of other people's existence.

My thought process is interrupted as the outline of a hideous building emerges from the broken tree line, with a cut-out of some arbit hindi movie.. the movie hub of bangalore, and its name is "Innovative multiplex"... the person who named it had as much imagination as a bowl of tomato rasam.

And as the bus dips under the Marathahalli bridge, my nightmare comes back with the much awaited quiz - Bisi bele bollywood, the show where the host and the participants try their best to underwit themselves, and becoming famous in the process... and the person on air claims that she has seen Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham 36 times, and i wish i had a debilitating paralysis attack right there... and to save myself from such an attack, i refrain from writing anything more on this....

"Just a few more minutes", i tell myself " and you will be safe". As soon as the bus stops near the side gate, i scramble out, pick up a coffee and run rush to my seat....Acta est fabula

And after all this, people ask me why am i am so morbid.... i dont know what to say....

AYM GRAMD - etymology.

Nilu, as usual, is doing what he does best - overdoing....

that coolers are moving apart is a totally unremarkable fact... what would have been remarkable is if they werent/hadnt already... and i have also come to realise that at some point in life, individuals matter more than a group. behind his veil of denial, i hope he gets this fact.

Anyways, here is my version on the origin of aym-gramd. it all started in the cooling western union summit at chicago. And guru was explaining why he chose what he chose. and i was trying to explain why i've chosen not to choose what he chose, and instead chose to be labelled a misanthropist by others, rather than being called a hypocrat by my own conscience. This is the crux of what i told him...

If guru does what he says he would do, i'd be among the first people to appreciate. What pissed me off then was the condescending attitude with which he acknowledged my point. It was an "Its ok, i understand!" attitude, and not "I respect your point"...

Its ok if people dont give me recogntion for my thoughts...but please dont give me condescension...i dont need it.

And the rest is history....
more about this later...

An unbelievable fraction of my life in the last one year or so has been about one person... so much so that i suppose, subconsiously, i cared a damn about the rest of the world. am not going to weigh the consequences, and am not going to debate the reasons... whatever they are,i enjoyed it to the core and am happy...

realised this as i have to go to the hospital today to dress my stitches, and am stranded with nobody to take me to the hospital as she is busy with one of her spic macay orientations, and i dont feel like asking anybody else...

A sincere piece of advice - dont let your mind wander when your body cant, particularly when the period of non-wandering is close to two weeks. The mind starts thinking...thoughts ranging from leptons to lesbians, from communism to comic strips, and from renaissance to raapi.

The last time i was in this state, i bought a few danish pastries from a bakery near my hotel, instantly fell in love with them and decided that this must be what the gods eat. And since the only god i believed in happened to me, i proceeded to subsist on danish pastries, gaining 8 kgs in the process. But this time, this wasnt going to be the case. Instead, i decided to spoil myself rotten, and saw the following movies

• The day after tomorrow
  
  
• Cat Woman
  
  
• Aaidha ezhuthu
  
  
• Azhagiya Theeye

Bliss... sheer bliss...
Movies in line

• Van Helsing
  

Somebody save me....

Magnum opus

Surrender....











reminds me so much of the good old days of cooling...

What happens when gods rape a transvestite?

Hindu mythology offers answers even to such profoundly teleological questions.

There was this rishi guy living in the forest with his two wives. this rishi guy took his job seriously... too seriously... and not surprisingly, he didnt have children. so he gave his wives an egg each and told them to incubate them with care. lol.

after a period of incubation, one of the eggs hatched, and out comes garuda. the second wife, getting a little impatient breaks open the other egg, and as a result of this, the child, named arunan, emerges with a malformed leg. garuda goes on to become vishnu's vehicle and arunan becomes surya's charioteer.

arunan longs to go to kailash and pay a visit to shiva. surya warns him that its very difficult for a disabled person to go to kailash. so, arunan disguises himself as a beautiful girl and goes to kailash. on the way, he meets indra, and indra enamoured by his beauty, rapes this guy. and arunan comes back crying, and gives birth to vaali. he then goes on to narrate the story to surya, who becomes curious to see the feminine form that indra had raped. arunan changes into a woman again, and this time surya rapes him, and arunan gives birth to sugreevan.

what happens when gods rape a transvestite? we get two monkeys from madhya pradesh, kicking the shit out of each other...

looking at our mythological stories, there seem to be way too many impotent couples - parents of ram, pandavas, gauravas, jarasandhan, garuda, arunan... the list goes on... how, in the name of god, do we have 1.1 billion people? where have all the impotents gone?

Qualis artifex perio

The main reason why i didnt write a travelogue, rather one of the main reasons, for there are many, was because some ppl asked me to write one. The other inconsequential reasons being nobody is interested in reading them, and to a lesser and slightly more unbelievable degree that i was too busy working to write one.

Besides these incidental reasons, there is an epistemological reason behind this. The intent was to wait for a week and write only about those things that still have an impact. In short, i wanted to be an experience collector(thanks to j for the term), and write

about impacts, not about events;
about impressions, not about people,
about thoughts, not about about travels;
about changes, not about cheese burger.

and now u know why i didnt write one, cos i couldnt. :)

The personality test says i am like this guy 

Any takers?

somebody give me a gun and some red wine

the media targeting middle-age tambram community is disgusting beyond belief. television and the print media have joined hands to convert the average(or collective?) IQ of the whole community to somewhere between that of a salt water gargle and clotrimazole powder.

imagine 2 hours of bhajans from 6 to 8, and an hour of puja on weekdays and three on weekends, mega serials and devotional magazines after dinner; and these ppl are 35-45 years old, not retired grannies and granddads. these ppl hardly think of anything else. when they meet other relatives, the talk is invariably on the which temple to visit next, or about the healing powers of some incarnation of lord shiva in some arbit village who specialises in injuries of the middle ear... i mean, come off it...

full credit to the media for enslaving a whole community and making money in the process.

ROTFL

a master-piece from Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy...how very true..

"I always thought that about the Garden of Eden story," said
Ford.

"Eh?"

"Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?"

"Yes of course I do."

"Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and
says do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise
surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush
shouting `Gotcha'. It wouldn't have made any difference if they
hadn't eaten it."

"Why not?"

"Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of
mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks
under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll
get you in the end."

dammit, there is a whole theory on this - the Anthropic principle, and i thought i had come up with one... sigh.....

things will never be the same again....

i wont say that jonny shdnt have gone for that rafting trip; i wouldnt comment on the ephemeral nature of life... i wouldnt say that ppl shd think five times before taking a shower bath because their parents' hard work might end up wasted... all i say is "we will miss you jonny".

thanks for all the great time we had with you, the "genius" incident with vaidhy in the first year, quiz clubs and dumb-cee clubs, sathaars, PEC tamil dumb-cee, the

hostel fight with muthukameshwaran, municipal colony, the boozing episodes, pult incidents, "space jim", your characteritic "thinking...."s, and just about everything...

never again can we log on to our mail accounts and expect a "send two mails" or "dont wad in your panties" in cooling.. we will miss you da...

thinking he is gone
he will always be remembered, dear john.

Whats so special....?

Why is the speed of light what it is?

The speed of light - 299 792 458 m/s is considered a very special constant in physics. It is so fundamental a constant that people sometime take its special status for granted. For instance, had the speed of light been lower by a fraction of a millimetre per second, the universe would have imploded upon itself, and had it been a fraction higher, the universe would have long since dissipated!. Such, my friends is the special nature of the value of speed of light!

Do you see any logical flaws in the argument? I do. The question should be "How is the speed of light what it is?" and not "Why", cos "Why" is such an ad-hoc question. Had the speed of light been different, we would still be asking the same question. A "how", on the other hand, is a much more scientific question, cos the question is independent of the value. It is an earnest scientific quest to find out and explain how the value couldnt have been anything else.

The "how" takes away the special status, so unjustly associated with the value, and gives it back to the rightful owner - "the concept of speed of light"!

My recent loss of belief in certain ideals like "partiotism", "my religion", "my culture" can all be traced back to this crucial argument. There is nothing special about the country in which i was born, i just happened to be born here. Had i been born in a different country, i would have been loyal to that... this takes away the special nature of the country. same is the case with my religion and culture, and my parents too.

The only truth is me, and only me. Everything and everybody else is incidental.

i am.

For the first time in my life, i practised my beliefs....

When my mom asked me wear my poonal(sacred thread), i refused, and said that i wont wear it henceforth, not as an act of defiance, but as a symbolic act of breaking my passive hypocrisy.

But the hero of the day wasnt me. it was my mom. in an unexpected, and altogether sensational act, she accepted what i said. Am proud of her.

And nothing else matters... 


yep, thats me!

My unrequitable crush....

Isnt she drop-dead gorgeous? 

Definiton 1 - Responsible citizen

Definition 1:

A responsible citizen is one who comments on (pseudo?)philanthropic blogs, has a set of ideals that he doesnt have the courage to live up to and doesnt have the heart to give up, talks of improbable ideals, at best comes up with an intention towards betterment of society, and places himself on a moral high over others for just his intentions, instead of feeling ashamed that his intentions are, at best, a feeble attempt and a mistaken substitute for concrete action, which he inturn justifies saying "atleast i have an intention, and you dont", each layer of specious justification feeding upon itself until it reaches a stage in which he begins to believe in his own moral authority over others.

In short, a responsible citizen is a hypocrat, guilty of not contributing to the society that he so ardently claims to make better.

I find it easier and better to accept my inability and unwillingness to give back something to the society, instead of deluding myself that i might contribute someday.

this ranting is the result of this conversation, and the subsequent comments.

Dont mistake me here - i am not against ppl who serve the society. in fact, ive had the opportunity to come into contact with a few ppl who i literally worship, in a couple of aspects, for their selfless contributon to SPIC MACAY - ruchira, janaki, sukhdeep, et al. And these ppl dont talk, they perform.

ps: sanjeeth, this is not directed towards you, but towards a fellow mind that claims it is beautiful.
pss: i dont have anything against this person. its his views that i despise.

The pope is funnny

There is no one who does not see the dramatic and distressing consequences of such pragmatism, which perceives truth and justice as something modeled around the work of man himself

-pope

Why dont these religious leaders just leave science to itself? is it because they see themselves and their god threatened by science?

god always gives His best to those
who leave the choice with Him

another hilarous quote... rotfl!
how desperately they try to safeguard their world! the funny thing is, they have succeeded.

Thinking

The highly organized auto-cannibalizing system naturally emerging from conditions common on planetary bodies, and consisting of a population of replicators capable of mutation, around each set of which a homeostatic metabolizing organism, which actively helps reproduce and/or protect the replicator(s), has evolved sucks.

In short, life sucks.

Just a comparison

This is Hindu's front page
and this is Times of India's front page

I think TOI shd stop calling itself a newspaper, and call itself a daily magazine. Its an insult to the term newspaper. Any self-respecting individual wont buy times of india, after seeing this.

I rest,
Ishwar.

P.S: these days, i am into over-dramatising stuff.

Ode to my latest opus, a sublime expression of context free grammar

My late afternoon prediliction for composing veritable classics is finally consummated with a lazy click of the left button of my HP mouse.

Read this.


Now, the literary world has thrust upon me the responsibility of being
Thiruvalluvar2, in addition to being kuvempu2.

I rate this right next to the all-time classic -
Vaazhkayil vettiyai, naaripona jettiyai", also by the same author. Long live his fame.

Seven-week `ban' on non-Kannada films - Pathetic state of affairs

When will people come to know what to expect from the govt and what not to!
When will the govt. stop supporting these weaklings...

Everybody knows the reasons why people dont go to kannada movies. Let them battle with their own ineptitude, and let them die in the process if they arent fit enough to survive. Why should my money go to inept producers?

Decades of socialistic leanings have made ppl expect ridiculous things out of the govt. The whole thing sucks.

Paying guests: hosts may be taxed

Too bad... I was hoping to work for a year or two, save a few tens of lakhs, get a land in a "decent" area like koramangala, construct a ghetto or two, rent it out as PG accomodation, and make millions... Er, did i say ghetto?

If you plan to open a PG accomodation, here is one piece of advice - rent it out to girls - you can ask twice the amount for the same space. All you have to do is to keep saying a few adjectives like "safe", "decent", "decent", "safe".

Good move, in any case. My sadistic instincts prevail... Death to PG's psuedo-parents.

Who is a minority person?

As bad an article as anything that came out of the sensationalistic rediff. But it shifted a few rusting gears in my head that havent been moving for quite some time....

Identifying my place in the political spectrum has been one of the most challenging and irritating burdens of my life, irritating because i keep swinging so many damn times from one extreme to the other.

To me, everybody has a place in the 3D space, emerging out of three axes - religious/non-religious, liberal/conservative, right/left. And there i am, in the rightmost top corner, ya-there! as a pseudo-secular right liberal... dont know if i have much company. Its been a long journey, but i made it! Thanks folks.

Issac Asimov is God

This boy is a musta. After watching some arbit channel called "Sci-fi", i realised how grateful i am to have read asimov. No green bug-eyed martian invading human brains, no mutant cockroaches having a prediliction for teenage virgins, and lastly no aliens landing on earth without a valid I-90 duly stamped by immigration and naturalisation service.

Appreciating science fiction is not very different from appreciating european beer. You should have tasted a bad one(american, so to say) to really, truly, whole-heartedly appreciate the good one. And once you've had the good one, you just cant go back. Nothing less than an antakshari competition in a room overflowing with gaboors with nothing around for miles around can drive me towards an american beer, not if i can find a gun to shoot myself first!

To all those lesser mortals would think Poul Anderson or John Barnes was better, i have only one thing to say - drink american beer, and then drink european beer. You'll realise why crusades were fought!

Thank you issac. I owe you a lot!

The last question

My all-time favourite. A must-read if you like science fiction. A must-read even otherwise.

The Last Question

Isaac Asimov

The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:
Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face--- miles and miles of face--- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.
Mulitvac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough. ---So Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share in the glory that was Multivac's.
For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth's poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.
But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.
The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it toa small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower.
Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public function, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.
They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.
"It's amazing when you think of it," said Adell. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. "All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquefied iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever."
Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. "Not forever," he said.
"Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert."
"That's not forever."
"All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Twenty billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?"
Lupov put his fingers through his thinning hair as though to reassure himself that some was still left and sipped gently at his own drink. "Twenty billion years isn't forever."
"Well, it will last our time, won't it?"
"So would the coal and uranium."
"All right, but now we can hook up each individual spaceship to the Solar Station, and it can go to Pluto and back a million times without ever worrying about fuel. You can't do that on coal and uranium. Ask Multivac, if you don't believe me."
"I don't have to ask Multivac. I know that."
"Then stop running down what Multivac's done for us," said Adell, blazing up. "It did all right." "Who says it didn't? What I say is that a sun won't last forever.
That's all I'm saying. We're safe for twenty billion years, but then what?" Lupov pointed a slightly shaky finger at the other. "And don't say we'll switch to another sun."
There was silence for a while. Adell put his glass to his lips only occasionally, and Lupov's eyes slowly closed. They rested.
Then Lupov's eyes snapped open. "You're thinking we'll switch to another sun when ours is done, aren't you?"
"I'm not thinking."
"Sure you are. You're weak on logic, that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."
"I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too."
"Darn right they will," muttered Lupov. "It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was, and it'll all have an end when all the stars run down. Some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won't last a hundred million years. The sun will last twenty billion years and maybe the dwarfs will last a hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion yearsand everything will be dark. Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all."
"I know all about entropy," said Adell, standing on his dignity.
"The hell you do."
"I know as much as you do."
"Then you know everything's got to run down someday."
"All right. Who says they won't?"
"You did, you poor sap. You said we had all the energy we needed, forever. You said 'forever'."
It was Adell's turn to be contrary. "Maybe we can build things up again someday," he said.
"Never."
"Why not? Someday."
"Never."
"Ask Multivac."
"You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars says it can't be done."
Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?
Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?
Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased, the distant sounds of clicking relays ended.
Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of Multivac. Five words were printed: insufficient data for meaningful answer.
"No bet," whispered Lupov. They left hurriedly.
By next morning, the two, plagued with throbbing head and cottony mouth, had forgotten the incident.

Jerrod, Jerrodine, and Jerrodette I and II watched the starry picture in the plate change as the passage through hyperspace was completed in its non-time lapse. At once, the even powdering of stars gave way to the predominance of a single bright marble-disk, centered.
"That's X-23," said Jerrodd confidently. His thin hands clamped tightly behind his back and the knuckles whitened.
The little Jerrodettes, both girls, had experienced the hyperspace passage the first time in their lives and were self-conscious over the momentary sensation of inside-outness. They buried their giggles and chased one another wildly about their mother, screaming, "We've reached X-23---we've reached X-23---we've---"
"Quiet, children," said Jerrodine sharply. "Are you sure, Jerrodd?"
"What is there to be but sure?" asked Jerrodd, glancing up at the bulge of featureless metal just under the ceiling. It ran the length of the room, disappearing through the wall at either end. It was as long as the ship.
Jerrodd scarcely knew a thing about the thick rod of metal except that it was called a Microvac, that one asked it questions if one wished; that if one did not it still had its task of guiding the ship to a preordered destination; of feeding on energies from the various Sub-galactic Power Stations; of computing the equations for the hyperspatial jumps.
Jerrodd and his family had only to wait and live in the comfortable residence quarters of the ship.
Someone had once told Jerrodd that the "ac" at the end of "Microvac" stood for "analog computer" in ancient English, but he was on the edge of forgetting even that.
Jerrodine's eyes were moist as she watched the visiplate. "I can't help it. I feel funny about leaving Earth."
"Why, for Pete's sake?" demanded Jerrodd. "We had nothing there. We'll have everything on X-23. You won't be alone. You won't be a pioneer. There are over a million people on the planet already. Good Lord, our great-grandchildren will be looking for new worlds because X-23 will be over-crowded." Then, after a reflective pause, "I tell you, it's a lucky thing the computers worked out interstellar travel the way the race is growing."
"I know, I know," said Jerrodine miserably.
Jerrodette I said promptly, "Our Microvac is the best Microvac in the world."
"I think so, too," said Jerrodd, tousling her hair.
It was a nice feeling to have a Microvac of your own and Jerrodd was glad he was part of his generation and no other. In his father's youth, the only computers had been tremendous machines taking up a hundred square miles of land. There was only one to a planet. Planetary ACs they were called. They had been growing in size steadily for a thousand years and then, all at once, came refinement. In place of transistors bad come molecular valves so that even the largest Planetary AC could be put into a space only half the volume of a spaceship.
Jerrodd felt uplifted, as he always did when he thought that his own personal Microvac was many times more complicated than the ancient and primitive Multivac that had first tamed the Sun, and almost as complicated as Earth's Planetary AC (the largest) that had first solved the problem of hyperspatial travel and had made trips to the stars possible.
"So many stars, so many planets," sighed Jerrodine, busy with her own thoughts. "I suppose families will be going out to new planets forever, the way we are now."
"Not forever," said Jerrodd, with a smile. "It will all stop someday, but not for billions of years. Many billions. Even the stars run down, you know. Entropy must increase."
"What's entropy, daddy?" shrilled Jerrodette II.
"Entropy, little sweet, is just a word which means the amount of running- down of the universe. Everything runs down, you know, like your little walkie-talkie robot, remember?"
"Can't you just put in a new power-unit, like with my robot?"
"The stars are the power-units, dear. Once they're gone, there are no more power-units."
Jerrodette I at once set up a howl. "Don't let them, daddy. Don't let the stars run down."
"Now look what you've done," whispered Jerrodine, exasperated. How was I to know it would frighten them?" Jerrodd whispered back.
"Ask the Microvac," wailed Jerrodette I. "Ask him how to turn the stars on again."
"Go ahead," said Jerrodine. "It will quiet them down." (Jerrodette II was beginning to cry, also.)
Jerrodd shrugged. "Now, now, honeys. I'll ask Microvac. Don't worry, he'll tell us."
He asked the Microvac, adding quickly, "Print the answer."
Jerrodd cupped the strip of thin cellufilm and said cheerfully, "See now, the Microvac says it will take care of everything when the time comes so don't worry."
Jerrodine said, "And now, children, it's time for bed. We'll be in our new home soon."
Jerrodd read the words on the cellufilm again before destroying it: insufficient data for a meaningful answer.
He shrugged and looked at the visiplate. X-23 was just ahead.
????/big>
VJ-23X of Lameth stared into the black depths of the three-dimensional, small-scale map of the Galaxy and said, "Are we ridiculous, I wonder, in being so concerned about the matter?"
MQ-17J of Nicron shook his head. "I think not. You know the Galaxy will be filled in five years at the present rate of expansion."
Both seemed in their early twenties, both were tall and perfectly formed.
"Still," said VJ-23X, "I hesitate to submit a pessimistic report to the Galactic Council."
"I wouldn't consider any other kind of report. Stir them up a bit. We've got to stir them up."
VJ-23X sighed. "Space is infinite. A hundred billion Galaxies are there for the taking. More."
"A hundred billion is not infinite and it's getting less infinite all the time. Consider! Twenty thousand years ago, mankind first solved the problem of utilizing stellar energy, and a few centuries later, interstellar travel became possible. It took mankind a million years to fill one small world and then only fifteen thousand years to fill the rest of the Galaxy. Now the population doubles every ten years---"
VJ-23X interrupted. "We can thank immortality for that."
"Very well. Immortality exists and we have to take it into account. I admit it has its seamy side, this immortality. The Galactic AC has solved many problems for us, but in solving the problem of preventing old age and death, it has undone all its other solutions."
"Yet you wouldn't want to abandon life, I suppose."
"Not at all," snapped MQ-17J, softening it at once to, "Not yet. I'm by no means old enough. How old are you?"
"Two hundred twenty-three. And you?"
"I'm still under two hundred. ---But to get back to my point. Population doubles every ten years. Once this Galaxy is filled, we'll have filled another in ten years. Another ten years and we'll have filled two more. Another decade, four more. In a hundred years, we'll have filled a thousand Galaxies. In a thousand years, a million Galaxies. In ten thousand years, the entire known Universe. Then what?"
VJ-23X said, "As a side issue, there's a problem of transportation. I wonder how many sunpower units it will take to move Galaxies of individuals from one Galaxy to the next."
"A very good point. Already, mankind consumes two sunpower units per year."
"Most of it's wasted. After all, our own Galaxy alone pours out a thousand sunpower units a year and we only use two of those."
"Granted, but even with a hundred per cent efficiency, we only stave off the end. Our energy requirements are going up in a geometric progression even faster than our population. We'll run out of energy even sooner than we run out of Galaxies. A good point. A very good point."
"We'll just have to build new stars out of interstellar gas."
"Or out of dissipated heat?" asked MQ-17J, sarcastically.
"There may be some way to reverse entropy. We ought to ask the Galactic AC."
VJ-23X was not really serious, but MQ-17J pulled out his AC-contact from his pocket and placed it on the table before him.
"I've half a mind to," he said. "It's something the human race will have to face someday."
He stared somberly at his small AC-contact. It was only two inches cubed and nothing in itself, but it was connected through hyperspace with the great Galactic AC that served all mankind. Hyperspace considered, it was an integral part of the Galactic AC. MQ-17J paused to wonder if someday in his immortal life he would get to see the Galactic AC. It was on a little world of its own, a spider webbing of force-beams holding the matter within which surges of sub-mesons tookthe place of the old clumsy molecular valves. Yet despite its sub-etheric workings, the Galactic AC was known to be a full thousand feet across.
MQ-17J asked suddenly of his AC-contact, "Can entropy ever be reversed?"
VJ-23X looked startled and said at once, "Oh, say, I didn't really mean to have you ask that."
"Why not?"
"We both know entropy can't be reversed. You can't turn smoke and ash back into a tree."
"Do you have trees on your world?" asked MQ-17J.
The sound of the Galactic AC startled them into silence. Its voice came thin and beautiful out of the small AC-contact on the desk. It said: there is insufficient data for a meaningful answer.
VJ-23X said, "See!"
The two men thereupon returned to the question of the report they were to make to the Galactic Council.

Zee Prime's mind spanned the new Galaxy with a faint interest in the countless twists of stars that powdered it. He had never seen this one before. Would he ever see them all? So many of them, each with its load of humanity. ---But a load that was almost a dead weight. More and more, the real essence of men was to be found out here, in space.
Minds, not bodies! The immortal bodies remained back on the planets, in suspension over the eons. Sometimes they roused for material activity but that was growing rarer. Few new individuals were coming into existence to join the incredibly mighty throng, but what matter? There was little room in the Universe for new individuals.
Zee Prime was roused out of his reverie upon coming across the wispy tendrils of another mind.
"I am Zee Prime," said Zee Prime. "And you?"
"I am Dee Sub Wun. Your Galaxy?"
"We call it only the Galaxy. And you?"
"We call ours the same. All men call their Galaxy their Galaxy and nothing more. Why not?"
"True. Since all Galaxies are the same."
"Not all Galaxies. On one particular Galaxy the race of man must have originated. That makes it different."
Zee Prime said, "On which one?"
"I cannot say. The Universal AC would know."
"Shall we ask him? I am suddenly curious."
Zee Prime's perceptions broadened until the Galaxies themselves shrank and became a new, more diffuse powdering on a much larger background. So many hundreds of billions of them, all with their immortal beings, all carrying their load of intelligences with minds that drifted freely through space. And yet one of them was unique among them all in being the original Galaxy. One of them had, in its vague and distant past, a period when it was the only Galaxy populated by man.
Zee Prime was consumed with curiosity to see this Galaxy and be called out: "Universal AC! On which Galaxy did mankind originate?"
The Universal AC heard, for on every world and throughout space, it had its receptors ready, and each receptor lead through hyperspace to some unknown point where the Universal AC kept itself aloof.
Zee Prime knew of only one man whose thoughts had penetrated within sensing distance of Universal AC, and he reported only a shining globe, two feet across, difficult to see.
"But how can that be all of Universal AC?" Zee Prime had asked.
"Most of it," had been the answer, "is in hyperspace. In what form it is there I cannot imagine."
Nor could anyone, for the day had long since passed, Zee Prime knew, when any man had any part of the making of a Universal AC. Each Universal AC designed and constructed its successor. Each, during its existence of a million years or more accumulated the necessary data to build a better and more intricate, more capable successor in which its own store of data and individuality would be submerged.
The Universal AC interrupted Zee Prime's wandering thoughts, not with words, but with guidance. Zee Prime's mentality was guided into the dim sea of Galaxies and one in particular enlarged into stars.
A thought came, infinitely distant, but infinitely clear. "This is the original galaxy of man."
But it was the same after all, the same as any other, and Zee Prime stifled his disappointment.
Dee Sub Wun, whose mind had accompanied the other, said suddenly, "And is one of these stars the original star of Man?"
The Universal AC said, "Man's original star has gone nova. It is a white dwarf."
"Did the men upon it die?" asked Zee Prime, startled and without thinking.
The Universal AC said, "A new world, as in such cases, was constructed for their physical bodies in time."
"Yes, of course," said Zee Prime, but a sense of loss overwhelmed him even so. His mind released its hold on the original Galaxy of Man, let it spring back and lose itself among the blurred pinpoints. He never wanted to see it again.
Dee Sub Wun said, "What is wrong?"
"The stars are dying. The original star is dead."
"They must all die. Why not?"
"But when all energy is gone, our bodies will finally die, will finally die, and you and I with them."
"It will take billions of years."
"I do not wish it to happen even after billions of years. Universal AC! How may stars be kept from dying?"
Dee Sub Wun said in amusement, "You're asking how entropy might be reversed in direction."
And the Universal AC answered: "There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Zee Prime's thoughts fled back to his own Galaxy. He gave no further thought to Dee Sub Wun, whose body might be waiting on a Galaxy a trillion light-years away, or on the star next to Zee Prime's own. It didn't matter.
Unhappily, Zee Prime began collecting interstellar hydrogen out of which to build a small star of his own. If the stars must someday die, at least some could yet be built.

Man considered with himself, for in a way, Man, mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies, each in its place, each resting quiet and incorruptible, each cared for by perfect automatons, equally incorruptible, while the minds of all the bodies freely melted one into the other, indistinguishable.
Man said, "The Universe is dying."
Man looked about at the dimming Galaxies. The giant stars, spendthrifts, were gone long ago, back in the dimmest of the dim far past. Almost all stars were white dwarfs, fading to the end.
New stars had been built of the dust between the stars, some by natural processes, some by Man himself, and those were going, too. White dwarfs might yet be crashed together and of the mighty forces so released, new stars built, but only one star for every thousand white dwarfs destroyed, and those would come to an end, too.
Man said, "Carefully husbanded, as directed by the Cosmic AC, the energy that is even yet left in all the Universe will last for billions of years."
"But even so," said Man, "eventually it will all come to an end. However it may be husbanded, however stretched out, the energy once expended is gone and cannot be restored. Entropy must increase forever to the maximum."
Man said, "Can entropy not be reversed? Let us ask the Cosmic AC."
The Cosmic AC surrounded them but not in space. Not a fragment of it was in space. It was in hyperspace and made of something that was neither matter nor energy. The question of its size and nature no longer had meaning in any terms that Man could comprehend.
"Cosmic AC," said Man, "how may entropy be reversed?"
The Cosmic AC said, "There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Man said, "Collect additional data."
The Cosmic AC said, "I will do so. I have been doing so for a hundred billion years. My predecessors and I have been asked this question many times. All the data I have remains insufficient."
"Will there come a time," said Man, "when data will be sufficient or is the problem insoluble in all conceivable circumstances?"
The Cosmic AC said, "No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances."
Man said, "When will you have enough data to answer the question?"
The Cosmic AC said, "There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
"Will you keep working on it?" asked Man.
The Cosmic AC said, "I will."
Man said, "We shall wait."

The stars and Galaxies died and snuffed out, and space grew black after ten trillion years of running down.
One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain.
Man's last mind paused before fusion, looking over a space that included nothing but the dregs of one last dark star and nothing besides but incredibly thin matter, agitated randomly by the tag endsof heat wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolute zero.
Man said, "AC, is this the end? Can this chaos not be reversed into the Universe once more? Can that not be done?"
AC said, "There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Man's last mind fused and only AC existed---and that in hyperspace.
????/big>
Matter and energy had ended and with it space and time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken computer attendant ten trillion years before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a man to Man.
All other questions bad been answered, and until this last question was answered also, AC-might not release his consciousness.
All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected.
But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.
A timeless interval was spent in doing that.
And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.
But there was no one to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer---by demonstration---would take care of that, too.
For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.
The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.
And AC said, "Let there be light!"
And there was light---
---end----

Girl murdered on campus, engineering student held

Thats my college...Atta boy! Way to go!

1-801-AYM-GRAMD

1. My prev blog had an alarming number of grammatical mistakes.
2. I can see a disastrous weekend... absolutely disastrous...

Two totally unconnected statements !

1-800-AYM-GRAMD

This day has been one of my darkest days, and what makes it even worse is the fact that i dont know what the hell is it that makes me feel so sick...

And i've been trying to find out the connection between self-pity and an all-pervading hatred towards everything in general and nothing in particular... well, almost nothing in particular... Its not everyday that i take the luxury of wallowing in self-pity, and everytime i do this, i end up hating everything in the world... can somebody explain.

Death to every living sentient and non-sentient entity, and destruction to everything that did not choose to live... i tell u, these non-living things are intelligent - they chose not to live... very intelligent.

Defending marx

I dont understand what triggered it, but nilu has lunged for marx's throat in a way that is not very different from bush's purported War against terrorism, only to further his raison d'etre - single minded determination to raise to fame.

Marx has a long list of failed assumptions, the success of each one built on the success of the one underlying it. When the most basic assumptions were proved wrong, the whole pyramid tumbled, and there you see eastern europe and west bengal.

Where marx failed fundamentally was in judging the difference between indiviudual person's psychology and society's psychology.  Marx believed in the inherent goodness of human nature, and the badness of the society. So, when you super-impose human nature on top of the society, you get a perfect society. Very childish, if you ask me.

And unwittingly i believe, he based his whole theory on envy. I am poor because you are rich... Quite ridiculous.

I have become a major fan of capitalism... But capitalism too is not without its share of evils. See, these ppl dont allow me to blog in office... Death to capitalism.

Will blog more on this soon...

Tip of the day.

peoples, kindly trying Ctrl+Alt+{arrow keys}.... am amused....

Defining existence

Interesting article.... Thanks nilu, you made my day...
 
i am.
 
P.S: overa sound vidadhe...

Lot of my friends are falling in love.

Maariatha meets Hayawata

18 long days have passed since i promised by faithful fans a blog a day. Well..living up to my words is not one of my strong points, so i am excused..

Actually wanted to post a blog titled The travails of a wayfaring peripatetic, but found the title too flat to convey what i have been going through in the land of liberty(ahem!)

The flight journeys, per se, arent even worth the mention... The flight out of bangalore was most depressing... with nobody to send me off on my maiden flight...Imagine getting your avain cherry popped with no onlookers... a most scary thought, i must say..

If bangalore was depressing, madras was distressing, with a million relatives pouring out of swaraj mazdas and battered tempos lined up ad infinitum, startling the airport authorities out of their customs-fattened tummies, so much so that i am sure a few of them would have even thought if rajinikanth is getting married to catherine zeta jones in madras airport.

All i wanted to do was to get the hell out of the place, which i eventually managed to, after spending half my life's savings on buying coffee...

Was messaging and talking on my cell till the flight attendant patiently explained the perils of how uncomfortable it might turn out if the EM radiation from my teeny-weeny cell phone(Samsung C100) can make the boeing 747 to come down in smoulders, somewhere between gooduvancheri and constantinople... not to be outdone, i made sure he served me red wine everytime he came within 80 metres of my seat.

To all those people who think that take-off is very romantic, here is what i have to say... Take-off has as much sex appeal as your grandfather's unwashed trunks... the take-off was not very different from a KSRTC bus from bangalore to madras, only a bit faster.. Even the person sitting next to you was just the same, pushing you aside and trying to peep out of the window...

The second leg of the flight from frankfurt to san francisco was a bit more interesting... there were a group of school girls sitting behind me, returning to US after a soccer tournament discussing their steamy last night in europe...

more on maariatha's travails in the subsequent days... keep reading...

P.S: btw, the publicity campaign has worked out... look here.

Guilt aham asmi...

I have a vague sesnse of foreboding... it may have to do with my shopping freakout yesterday.. the commie inside me is revolting...

Second Debut...

I just realised two things

1. Humanity has not improved in the last 42 days.
2. I am not going to become a millionaire by writing.

Why such sweeping statements all of a sudden? I just found out that my profile has only 32 views.. (did you fall fo r the cheap trick? If not, do go back 17 words and fall)...

Such sweeping statements necessitate sweeping actions.. Here is what i plan to do
1. Change the template of my blog.. (marketing funda)
2. Give a title to the blog that makes it sound like you are poised for a great comeback.
3. Do some cheap tricks...
a- I plan to visit as many famous bloggers as i possibly can before my project manager kicks my ass, and comment on their blogs, thereby leaving a link to my blog (i am a genius)
b- This method will take advantage of the quintessential human emotion - diplomacy... If i give links to other people's blogs, they are bound to give links to mine.
c- Send junk mails to everybody, that says something like this:


I've been using Gmail and thought you might like to try it out. Here's
an invitation to create an account.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Deepika has invited you to open a free Google Gmail account. The
invitation will expire in three weeks and can only be used to set up one
account.

To accept this invitation and register for your account, click here

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Using a girl's name makes it twice as easy to fool people....


I dont expect many people to fall for this one.. If you have, congrats! u deserve an applause...


And to top it all, I have decided to blog everyday, plan to give RSS feed, and start a fan club for myself. Am looking out for a secretary.... Any takers?

Goodbye oh 32-profile-viewed loser... Welcome to the most shameless campaigner history ahs ever witnessed.