Sitting

My friend is in the market for ergonomic chairs - the sort that are supposed to help your posture. It got me thinking about sitting in general - and about a conversation about it that I had with my Dad a while ago. Is sitting natural !?! I know we have evolved to stand, and obviously lying down's pretty natural, but sitting seems to be something we started doing once we got sophisticated and civilised and whatnot. It seems to me - and I have reached the stage now where I am pulling things out of my arse - that if we are to try and relieve seating related back problems, we have to start finding ways to make lying down and working feasible.

Another Climate Change Question

While on the climate change topic, there's another thing I have wondered about.

Most climate change pundits claim that danger is either imminent, or the date by which we could prevent catastrophic change has already passed and that we should now try and limit the scale of the change to merely very large, as opposed to apocalyptic.

But no one, not even governments of countries like the Netherlands, which risk losing huge swathes of the country to rising oceanic levels seem to be talking about actually preparing for any catastophies. It's all about prevention, even as they talk about the uselessness of trying to do so. But no one seems to be saying, "OK, this is what is going to happen and this is what we should do to actually doing to make sure we're ready." It's almost as if they don't actually believe most of the warnings they endlessly repeat. 

* I'm sure I've read a similar sentiment written in someone's blog before. I'll get around to finding and putting up the link sometime soon.

A Question About Global Warming

From Wikipedia:

"Russia:

Prior to the meeting, Russia pledged to reduce emissions between 20% to 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 if a global agreement is reached committing other countries to comparable emission reductions.[37] This target had not been announced to the UNFCCC Secretariat before the COP 15 meeting. In the COP 15 negotiations, Russia only pledged to make a 10% to 15% reduction below 1990 levels by 2020 as part of a commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, but said that it would reduce emissions by 20% to 25% as part of an agreement on long-term cooperative action. "


I have a question about Russia's role in the whole global warming drama. Specifically, why is it playing along at all !?! Not only does the country rely on oil exports to keep its economy going, but it is the one big and powerful country (well, OK, Canada is another, but it's too liberal to go against this sort of thing) that actually stands to GAIN from global warming. Huge chunks of Russian perma-frosted land could become accessible. Furthermore, Russia could actually start selling fresh water to other countries that suffer from water shortages as a result of global warming.

So, why is it going along with something that doesn't seem to be in its interests !?! Because it is. In fact, it's committing to reduction levels that are comparable to developed country levels - despite the fact that it is not a developed country. What gives !?!

Unfaithful Recollections: Chapter 1: I Leave For Canadian Shores

Now that the time has come for me to at least consider leaving Canada, I have taken to looking back at the time I have spent in the place. To be honest, my Canadian adventures, such as they are, started from the moment I got my letter of admission from the University of British Columbia in the mail. I rushed with the letter to the dining room and told my family. "Mum, Dad, Gran... I have been admitted to UBC!" My family responded with characteristic enthusiasm.

Dad: Oh.
Mum: Oh.
Gran: What's that!?!

Me: UBC! the University of British Columbia! I'm going to the University of British Columbia!

Gran (in a horrified voice to my parents): You can't send him there! It's all drugs and gangs in that blasted place.

Me: Gran, what are you talk... oh...

You see, my Gran has a very simplistic, if functional, view of the entire Western Hemisphere. The bit in the north is all the United States of America. And the bit in the south is Drugs.

Me: Gran, I'm not going to Colombia, I'm going to British Columbia.
Gran: Where's that !?!
Me: It's in Canada.
Gran:...
...
...
Gran: Umm, where's that !?!
Me: It's the northern USA.
Gran (hugely relieved): Ohh. OK then. Off you go.

Because the US is alright. The US is ace, as far as Gran's concerned. It's where that nice man Clinton's from.

And then she went off to watch her crappy soaps.

Then my Dad came up to me and put a paternal hand on my shoulder.

Dad: Son, I'm not easy in my mind about sending a thin boy like you to THAT place.

Me: What do you mean, THAT place !?!

Dad (leaning towards me and speaking in a loud whisper): They're all vicious bastards!!

Me: What !?! Why !?!

Dad: Have you seen their pastime !?!

Me: You mean hockey !?!

Dad: Big men wear sharp blades on their feet. Then they pick up big sticks and beat the crap out of each other! It's true, I have seen it in the ESPN commercials.

Me: I'm sure there's more to hockey than that, Dad.

Dad: Oh my God! There's more! That does it, I'm definitely not sending you to that hell hole!

And he left the room before hearing my reply.

Then my Mum came up and shoved her oar in.

Mum: Now listen to me. Those people are all French. They have no shame and they shag anything that looks organic.

Me: Mum...

Mum: If you try to be like them, you might end up with some horrible disease!

Between them my parents were apparently convinced that the first guy I came across in Canada would knock me out cold, shag my unconscious body and land me in hospital with three broken ribs and syphilis. And they didn't stop there. Every day they came up to me with some new factoid that some friend of a friend had told them ("You have to shag a moose to be considered a full member of society". "Their national dish is called Poutine. The chef makes it by throwing up on French fries.") All I'm saying is, thank God for the Internet, or it would have been a really hard task convincing them.

As it was, they only reluctantly agreed to let me go. You could tell they had their reservations. On the day of departure, they gave me a parcel. I opened it. Mum had given me an English-French travel phrasebook.

Me: Mum, they speak English in Vancouver.

Mum: Take it. Trust me, it will come in handy.

Dad had given me a rape whistle.

Me: Dad! It's really not that...

Dad: You keep that with you! I tell you, there's no point taking chances!

And with that stern warning, they took their leave.

And I came to Canada.

[[Chapter 2]]

Linguistic Jingoism

I have recently come across a lot of people, mostly my fellow Indians, who trumpet the inherent superiority of their language by pointing out that it is so difficult to learn. I suppose they believe it validates their own linguistic ability - "Unless you're special like us, you have no hope of learning such a complicated language." I personally think that's rubbish. The primary purpose of a language is to communicate, and any language that makes this especially difficult has not performed its main task. It's not a very good language.

Baghdad!

YouTube gave me a birthday present. His name is Tim. 

Update On the Fort Hood Shooting

OK, so there were probably three shooters and the 'police' may have been military police which shows the army in a much more favourable lighr, performance wise. But still, given the location of the shooting, the victim count seems awfully high.

Shooting At U.S. Military Base

Another shooting, this time at a military base in the US.

This is as tragic as any other shooting, of course, but it is also strange, for two reasons:

1. The gunman managed, with handguns, to kill 12 and wound 31. That's means he shot a total of 43 people - and he may have shot at many more - before he was stopped. That's a lot of people to take out at a military base. One would think the place was crawling with people armed to the teeth who were trained to deal with just this sort of thing. 

2. Mr. Hasan [the gunman] “opened fire, and due to the quick response of the police forces, he was killed,” said Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, the commanding officer at Fort Hood.

Instead of fighting back, the army resorted to what ordinary civilians do - call the cops. Huh !?! I was under the impression - based on movies, mostly - that usually the positions are reversed; that the army is called in when the police can't handle a situation.

Split The Lit Prize

I was always under the impression that the Nobels were given for furthering the cause of the field they were awarded in. And of course, Nobel literature prize winners inspire noble feelings in our hearts and open our eyes, and for that they must be lauded. But they don't inspire us to write anything. On the contrary, after reading, say, Yeats's poems or Solzhenitsyn's novels (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a terrifying masterpiece), one feels that attempting to write would be useless; after all, one will never match the beauty of these writers' works.

Maybe we should split the literature prize in two. One should be given to great authors whose work enriches humanity at large. But the other should be given to crap authors - authors who somehow managed to get published and popular despite writing truly awful garbage. These, these are the authors who really inspire you to write, the ones who make you say, "Fuck it, even I can do better than this." 

If the Nobel is too precious to be sullied by associating it with these tree-wasters, I suggest we name the prize after the Mills and Boon publishing house.

End Of The World, Take Two

The world is getting progressively less superstitious. Fewer people are believing in the supernatural than ever before. What that means is that, when secret genetic engineering by a mad scientist does bring us the monsters of the night, like vampires and werewolves, very few people will believe in them. That can't be a good thing.

Borlaug

Given that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has been in the news recently for prematurely honouring Obama with this year's prize, I thought I would write a little about a man whom they deservedly celebrated in 1970.

I first came across the name of Dr. Norman Borlaug when I was in the eighth grade. He was mentioned in one line in one of my school books. For some reason, I decided to look him up (maybe because I thought the name was funny). The World Book Encyclopaedia (this was way before the internet) had devoted only about a page to him. But that was long enough to make the man a hero in my eyes.

Dr. Borlaug developed "semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties" and led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India." (Wikipedia). As fascinating as that sounds in itself, it was the repercussions that turned me into an instant fan. His efforts (often in the teeth of stubborn opposition, red tape and, in one case, outright war) led to the Green Revolution which more than doubled the production of foodgrains in the aforementioned countries, and saved "over a billion people from starvation".

The manner in which the Green Revolution itself came about has a real touch of the dramatic about it. Indeed, the description in Wikipedia reads a bit like a screen play:

"During the mid-1960s, the Indian subcontinent was at war, and experiencing widespread famine and starvation, even though the U.S. was making emergency shipments of millions of tons of grain, including over one fifth of its total wheat, to the region.[16] The Indian and Pakistani bureaucracies and the region's cultural opposition to new agricultural techniques initially prevented Borlaug from fulfilling his desire to immediately plant the new wheat strains there. By the summer of 1965, the famine became so acute that the governments stepped in and allowed his projects to go forward.[12]

Biologist Paul R. Ehrlich wrote in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over ... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Ehrlich said, "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971," and "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."[23]

In 1965, after extensive testing, Borlaug's team, under Anderson, began its effort by importing about 450 tons of Lerma Rojo and Sonora 64 semi-dwarf seed varieties: 250 tons went to Pakistan and 200 to India. They encountered many obstacles. Their first shipment of wheat was held up in Mexican customs and so could not be shipped from the port at Guaymas in time for proper planting.[citation needed] Instead, it was sent via a 30-truck convoy from Mexico to the U.S. port in Los Angeles, encountering delays at the Mexico - United States border. Once the convoy entered the U.S., it had to take a detour, as the U.S. National Guard had closed the freeway due to Watts riots in Los Angeles. When the seeds reached Los Angeles, a Mexican bank refused to honor Pakistan treasury's payment of US$100,000, because the check contained three misspelled words. Still, the seed was loaded onto a freighter destined for Bombay, India, and Karachi, Pakistan. Twelve hours into the freighter's voyage, war broke out between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region. Borlaug received a telegraph from the Pakistani minister of agriculture, Malik Khuda Bakhsh Bucha: "I'm sorry to hear you are having trouble with my check, but I've got troubles, too. Bombs are falling on my front lawn. Be patient, the money is in the bank ..."[12]

These delays prevented Borlaug's group from conducting the germination tests needed to determine seed quality and proper seeding levels. They started planting immediately, and often worked in sight of artillery flashes. A week later, Borlaug discovered that his seeds were germinating at less than half the normal rate.[citation needed] It later turned out that the seeds had been damaged in a Mexican warehouse by over-fumigation with a pesticide. He immediately ordered all locations to double their seeding rates.[citation needed]

The initial yields of Borlaug's crops were higher than any ever harvested in South Asia. The countries subsequently committed to importing large quantities of both the Lerma Rojo 64 and Sonora 64 varieties. In 1966, India imported 18,000 tons —the largest purchase and import of any seed in the world at that time. In 1967, Pakistan imported 42,000 tons, and Turkey 21,000 tons. Pakistan's import, planted on 1.5 million acres (6,100 km²), produced enough wheat to seed the entire nation's wheatland the following year.[16] By 1968, when Ehrlich's book was released, William Gaud of the United States Agency for International Development was calling Borlaug's work a "Green Revolution". High yields led to a shortage of various utilities — labor to harvest the crops, bullock carts to haul it to the threshing floor, jute bags, trucks, rail cars, and grain storage facilities. Some local governments were forced to close school buildings temporarily to use them for grain storage.[12]

Wheat yields in developing countries, 1950 to 2004, kg/HA baseline 500

In Pakistan, wheat yields nearly doubled, from 4.6 million tons in 1965 to 7.3 million tons in 1970; Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat production by 1968.[citation needed] Yields were over 21 million tons by 2000. In India, yields increased from 12.3 million tons in 1965 to 20.1 million tons in 1970. By 1974, India was self-sufficient in the production of all cereals. By 2000, India was harvesting a record 76.4 million tons (2.81 billion bushels) of wheat. Since the 1960s, food production in both nations has increased faster than the rate of population growth.[citation needed] Paul Waggoner, of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, calculates that India's use of high-yield farming has prevented 100 million acres (400,000 km²) of virgin land from being converted into farmland—an area about the size of California, or 13.6% of the total area of India.[24] The use of these wheat varieties has also had a substantial effect on production in six Latin American countries, six countries in the Near and Middle East, and several others in Africa.[citation needed]

Borlaug's work with wheat led to the development of high-yield semi-dwarf indica and japonica rice cultivars at the International Rice Research Institute, started by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and at China's Hunan Rice Research Institute. Borlaug's colleagues at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research also developed and introduced a high-yield variety of rice throughout most of Asia. Land devoted to the semi-dwarf wheat and rice varieties in Asia expanded from 200 acres (0.8 km²) in 1965 to over 40 million acres (160,000 km²) in 1970. In 1970, this land accounted for over 10% of the more productive cereal land in Asia.[16]"

Apart from the billion or so people who owe their lives to him, Dr. Borlaug's Revolution also saved untold acres of forest land from being cleared for farming. You would have supposed the environmentalists would have hailed him as their personal messiah for this. But there's just no pleasing some people. Again from Wikipedia:

"Borlaug's name is nearly synonymous with the Green Revolution, against which many criticisms have been mounted over the decades by environmentalists, nutritionists, progressives, and economists. Throughout his years of research, Borlaug's programs often faced opposition by people who consider genetic crossbreeding to be unnatural or to have negative effects.[27] Borlaug's work has been criticized for bringing large-scale monoculture, input-intensive farming techniques to countries that had previously relied on subsistence farming.[28] [Someone please tell me how this is a bad thing.] These farming techniques reap large profits for U.S. agribusiness and agrochemical corporations such as Monsanto Company and have been criticized for widening social inequality in the countries owing to uneven food distribution while forcing a capitalist agenda of U.S. corporations onto countries that had undergone land reform.[29] [The 'inequality' is probably between people who get to eat as opposed to those who starve.] There are also concerns about the long-term sustainability of farming practices encouraged by the Green Revolution in both the developed and developing world.[citation needed] [Long term sustainability... remember, people are starving right here, right now.]

Other concerns of his critics and critics of biotechnology in general include: that the construction of roads in populated third-world areas could lead to the destruction of wilderness [Really...]; the crossing of genetic barriers; the inability of crops to fulfill all nutritional requirements; the decreased biodiversity from planting a small number of varieties; the environmental and economic effects of inorganic fertilizer and pesticides; the amount of herbicide sprayed on fields of herbicide-resistant crops.[30]"

This opposition hasn't been a harmless armchair tantrum. In the early 1980s, the environmentalist groups pressured Borlaug's sponsors to stop giving him the funding needed to take his methods to Africa. The suffering that has caused would take detailed research to calculate. Luckily, he found other sponsors, notably Ryoichi Sasakawa, and as a result, the Dark Continent has been put on some sort of track to getting enough food to feed its people.

Given the towering contributions the man made to worldwide prosperity, it is depressing to consider that his death received such little coverage in the world media. Depressing, but not surprising. He passed away on September 12th, 2009. Michael Jackson had died just two months earlier and the world hadn't done crying yet. (I mean no insult to Michael Jackson by this.)

I'm Likin' It (In That Way)

McDonald's has recently taken to writing refreshment related puns on their soft drink cups. The one I had last had the following pun on it:

"IN THIRST POSITION"

Now, this isn't the most intellectually pleasing pun ever, but it's OK. The French version (this being Canada, everything has to be written in both languages - someone should really look into the environmental and economic impact of essentially having to write everything twice; all that ink and paper must cost a lot and when put in the landfills/recycled, seep in large quantities into the water systems)...where was I... oh yes. The French version says:

"EN MODE DE RAFRAICHISSEMENT" or something very similar.

Now I don't really speak any French (apart from the "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, mon cher petit mouton !?!" variety), but I have a sneaking suspicion that this isn't in any way witty. It's just a translation of the English pun. Really, Quebec!?! I mean, come on. If you're going to hound the rest of the country into putting funny sounding words on every damn thing, at least make up a bloody pun.

Preventative Surgery

Why do people wait until they actually have, say, advanced cataracts or heart attacks until they get replacement surgery !?! Surely, if you have a family history of heart disease, say, it makes more sense to apply for the operation some time slightly before the time your ancestors have had the problem (other factors such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels agreeing with the decision, of course). One obvious problem is the scarcity of organs. Obviously, people who are literally dying should get priority over those who can wait - and as far as organs like the heart and the lungs go, that makes sense. But what about problems like arthritis !?! Why wait till the knee cartilage is completely worn down and the knee is screaming with perpetual pain before seeking replacement surgery !?!

Fretting Over Frets

One thing I always wondered about when it came to musical instruments was the handedness of an instrument. Most instruments are designed for right handers. In the case of the piano, the structure makes intuitive sense. The right hand plays the more dexterity heavy melody, with the left hand playing the supportive chords. It's in the string instruments, such as guitars, that things get weird. I would have thought that the left hand would do the picking whereas the right hand would have the more difficult task of choosing the notes. However, this is obviously not the case. Now, I'm not a player of any musical instrument, so for all I know, this arrangement is actually better for right handers. But it doesn't look like it.

One argument in favour of having the instrument played the other way is the prevalence of great left handed guitarists who play/played the traditional'right handed' guitars. A cursory look reveals the following:

David Bowie
Paul Simon
Steve Morse (current Deep Purple)
Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins)
Michael Stipe (R.E.M.)
Duff McKagan (Guns 'n' Roses)
Michael Anthony (Van Halen)
Noel Gallagher (Oasis)
Chris Martin (Coldplay)
Adam Jones (Tool)
Tom Hamilton (Aerosmith)
James Root (Slipknot)
Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin)
Bob Dylan

By contrast, comparatively few left handed guitarists actually play/played 'left handed' guitars:

Kurt Cobain
Paul McCartney
Iggy Pop


(Jimi Hendrix played a Strat turned upside down and restringed for left hand.)

(source: http://www.frihost.com/forums/vt-46800.html)

Of course, they are really talented musicians who would probably have been great at music regardless of their handedness. And lack of ready availability of left handed guitars would be a reason these guys took up right handed guitars. Nevertheless, the fact that they were forced to play to their strengths may actually have helped them.

Holy Pants!

Consider trousers (never mind the pockets). They have two openings at the ankles and one big one at the waist. How many holes does that make !?!

Muster

In 1989 Thomas Muster, a young tennis pro, had just finished a five-set win over Yannick Noah in the semi-finals of the Lipton Championships and was fiddling with his gear near his car. By which we merely mean he was checking his junk. By which me mean his balls and stuff. TENNIS EQUIPMENT, alright !?! 

Not like this

It was then that a drunk driver decided to park his car where Muster had parked his. Without respecting tradition and, you know, waiting till Muster had vacated the space. When you're drunk, you really think out of the box. The crash rammed the bumper of Muster's car right into his left knee, tearing out more stuff than you'd learn about in a week of med school.

People deal with crippling accidents in various ways. When told they may never walk again, many lose all heart and become shadows of their old selves. Some stoically plough on, reconciling themselves to to their fate. A few bravely meet the challenge head on, heroically battling till they triumph against all odds. And then there's Muster, who treated the whole affair as some sort of minor nuisance.

Muster, seconds after the accident

Almost immediately after getting discharged, he and his coach built a chair that allowed Muster to sit in it and practice hitting balls around on court. Unable to get him to treat it with the respect it deserved, the injury suffered a crisis of confidence and sulked off pronto. Less than 6 months after his knee was twisted off, Muster was back PLAYING PROFESSIONAL TENNIS. In less than an year, he was in the Top 10. And that wasn't the end of it. By the time he retired from the sport, he had won a Grand Slam, earned a reputation for being well nigh unbeatable on clay courts and been A WORLD NUMBER 1. The turnaround was so amazing that he had to deal with (unfounded) accusations of drug abuse from various players. Our take on it is that he's Austrian, and if he's from the same cradle as another famous Austrian .....

That's right, he's probably a frickin' machine.

A Thought On Craigslist

I wonder if anyone has ever looked at the environmental impact of sites such as Ebay and Craigslist. Considering that reusing stuff is the best way to cut down on environmental impact, and that that's precisely what both these sites do, their role in helping save the environment must be quite substantial. Reusing electronics, especially, must be keeping an impressive amount of harmful chemicals out of landfills and water bodies.

This seems to hold particularly in the case of Craigslist which encourages local trading and thus keeps shipping to a minimum. It would be really interesting to see someone do research to try and quantify this impact.

Toilet Humour

I generally refrain from simply copying and pasting from other sites but sometimes I find something like this and, well...

This was an actual letter sent to the Indian Railway Department in 1909 by a certain Mr. Okhil Sen:

“I am arrive by passenger train Ahmedpur station and my belly is too much
swelling with jackfruit. I am therefore went to privy. Just I doing the
nuisance that guard making whistle blow for train to go off and I am running
with lotah in one hand and dhoti in the next when I am fall over and
expose all my shocking to man and female women on plateform. I am got leaved
at Ahmedpur station.
This too much bad, if passenger go to make dung that dam guard not wait
train five minutes for him. I am therefore pray your honour to make big fine
on that guard for public sake. Otherwise I am making big report to papers.”

(lotah - a vessel or pot for carrying water; dhoti - a garment wrapped around the lower body)

Bullish

You know how, in martial arts demos, there is this one section where some guy lies down on the floor, someone places a plank on his belly and then someone else rides a motorcycle over the whole lot !?! And then the crowd goes bananas and he's declared the absolute shit !?! You know why he's praised !?! Because he's had a fucking motorcycle go over his belly. Seriously, it's kind of an achievement. Try it sometime. Now remove the plank and use a truck. What's that !?! You'd die !?! You wuss. Meet Antonio.

Antonio was minding his own business - playing on the street with the other kids like his parents taught him to - when a parked truck backed up over him. Let's take a minute to go over that. The brakes didn't fail. The driver wasn't speeding. A truck that was parked on the side of the road BACKED UP over the 11 year old boy. That's not just bad luck - that's a personal dare from Satan.

The accident left him with broken legs and broken ribs. Also, a pierced liver and injured diaphragm. And a punctured lung. Look, just think of an organ, it was probably screwed. He was in a coma for days and in the hospital for almost an year. The doctors overseeing his recovery insisted he WAS dead. They even left various odd bits and pieces of infectious equipment in him to make sure...

"Yeah, he's a goner."
"Only a matter of a day or two, folks."
"OK, he's holding but he won't be off the life support."
"Alright, but he'll never walk..."

"HE'LL NEVER PLAY, HE'LL NEVER PLAY!!!

"...AAAARRRRGHHHHH!!!"

Honestly, we'd have been impressed if he were just the fucking referee.

Two decades after staring down Death, Antonio Rodrigo "Minotauro" Nogueira has won the UFC heavyweight title and the PRIDE heavyweight title and along the way, earned the right to use a fantasy character nickname without being laughed at as a deluded nerd. Rather unsurprisingly, he's known for the ability to take massive amounts of punishment early on and then turn it up and beat the crap out of his fatigued opponents. We're not sure why his opponents even try. How the hell do you plan on winning a fight against a guy who shrugged off an assault by a truck as a kid !?!

On The Bus To Granville...

I was on the 99 to Granville on Sunday morning. In front of me were seated two fairly young men, who were holding an earnest conversation. About religion. One of them was a believer, the other was a staunch atheist. I'm not really religious, but I found myself siding with the believer - mostly because the atheist was a bit too smug. And as happens so often in these cases (to me, anyway), I started arguing my case - silently, of course, all in my head. Then the two of them got off and I focused my attentions on a baby who was trying to eat an Adidas shoe.

Not an Adidas shoe

I mulled over the argument over lunch and found myself fairly intrigued and disturbed in equal measure. The atheist's argument had been that belief in God was wrong because it was unscientific - that is, science did not support or verify the presence of a God. Also, God's decrees, as enforced by various organised religions, were, he claimed, the reason for all the wars and general misery in the world.

I have a problem with that view. Firstly, if God doesn't exist, then the decrees were written by people. And well, if they were written by people, they would have been written and enacted anyway, regardless of whether they were attributed to God or not. 

Of course, decrees that do not have divine backing are less likely to carry weight. However, that works both ways. Just at the bad decrees are more likely to be ignored if they come from just a human source, so are the good ones. And that was, more or less, what disturbed:

Without divine backing, does morality carry any weight !?!

When someone steals and gets away with it, he has committed a crime - but only because the fairly arbitrary laws of the land say so. Did he do wrong, though !?! If you believe in God, the answer is simple enough - yes, he did, because God says stealing is wrong. But what if there is no God to say so !?! Then it's just the opinion of some humans (most specifically the guy who was robbed) against that of another human (the thief).

Another question. Atheists claim belief in God is wrong because there is no scientific basis for His existence. But if we are to use that as the yardstick for concept validity, then, well, what is the scientific basis for justice !?! Or, for that matter, morality itself !?!

Happy Childhood Award

This Chinese soccer player is going to have a lovely time in Australia.

Yet Another Random Post

Having become obsessed with swimming in the past month or so, I have taken to looking up snips of Olympic swims on YouTube. One really famous swim was the men's 4*100 freestyle relay at the 2008 Olympics, where, after talking gobloads of smack, Alain Bernard had his garlic scented backside handed to him by the Americans.

The point being, Jason Lezak (the guy who overtook Bernard and got the US the gold) swam his 100m in 46.06 seconds. The world record (according to Wikipedia) is 46.91 seconds. How is Lezak not the record holder !?!

A Band I'd Love To See Live

When I was about 12, I had a VHS tape (yes, I am ancient) of an old "Tom Brown's Schooldays" film. It featured part of the song Molly Malone (that some boys were singing in the common room). It was only a part of it and it hadn't anything to do with the story, but I remember thinking it was absolutely lovely. This was back in the day before the Internet and YouTube, so following up on it was very difficult (Indian/Saudi Arabian interest in Irish music was never very high). And so the song drifted from my mind.

And then, yesterday, I came across this.

The movie featured singers who sounded like choirboys (and probably were), and they sounded good enough, but this man's voice really seems to hit the spot. The gruffness of age lends an added element of nostalgia and "what might have been" to the song that really touches you. 

Germs Have Hired Doctors, Spin Doctors

In an attempt to get humans to lower their defences, microbes have apparently gone... cute !?!

Case in point: This is a Rhinovirus (Common Cold) soft toy. No really. Check out the site.

http://www.giantmicrobes.com/

You can tell they really listen to their public.
"Swine Flu (H1N1) is now available"

I can imagine this creating a whole new trading/collecting frenzy among kids - "Do you have Common Cold !?! I have Bad Breath. I'll trade you Bad Breath for Common Cold! No, NOT Sore Throat! I already have Sore Throat! I got it from Johnny. Yeah, I gave him Kissing Disease! Hey, you never asked! You never... GIVE IT BACK, GIVE IT BACK... MOM... DAD!!!"

Sin City Blues

A lab-mate of mine went to Las Vegas recently (for a conference). On the day he checked in at his hotel, he ran into another conference attendee whom he happened to know.

Lab-Mate (LM): Hey.
Other Attendee (OA): Yo.
LM: Why the long face !?!
OA: Lost my luggage.
LM: Oh really !?! Shame... Anything of value !?!
OA: Yeah, a brand new suit, an IPod Touch and a gold watch.
LM: Whoa! Well, I hope you get it back mate.
OA: Yeah, thanks.

The following evening, LM met OA again. This time OA was in very high spirits. There was gold on his wrist and something in his pocket was playing Coldplay.

LM: I see you found your luggage.

OA looked at him with a blend of contempt and triumph.

OA: FOUND it !?! Why, I WON it back !!!

On Canada Day, Desperately Seeking Canadians

Practically no Canadian I've met identifies himself/herself as 'Canadian'. It's always 'Indian-Canadian', or 'French-Canadian' or 'Chinese-Canadian' and so on. Even the ones whose ancestors have been here for many generations seem to want to point out that they are from somewhere in the Old World. Or they insist on a connection with the First Nations. If they cannot do either, they admit their simple 'Canadian-ness' almost with embarassment.

Why !?! It's a beautiful and great country filled with lovely people. Why can't they be proud of being just Canadian !?!

Happy Canada Day !

What's In A Rose

Two family friends had come from India to visit and I took them around the university campus. We put in a visit at the Rose Garden and the old couple (Uncle Tim and Aunt Sally) stopped to smell the roses. They got close-ish to one bush and took a deep sniff.

"These Canadian roses don't smell like Indian roses."

Another sniff.

"It's very strong, the smell."

Sniff, sniff.

"It's not bad, not bad at all. I quite like it, in fact. But it's different. In fact (this is Uncle Tim), I have smelt this type of rose before. When I was in England. Yes, yes, I remember it now. It's a special type of Western rose. You don't get this sort of rose in India. We should really introduce this there, let the locals know what they're missing. Am I right R (R being yours truly) !?!"

"Well, Uncle, actually, umm,.... it's uh, umm...."

"Oh you wouldn't know. You engineer types stay all day in the lab and stare at computers. This is not your field. No, trust me, this is a special kind of rose. I know my roses."

We took the far exit out of the garden past the inspected bush, and thus past a young man reading a book, sipping coffee...

... and smoking a joint the size of a Subway sandwich.

If Uncle Tim and Aunt Sally made the connection, they sure didn't let it show.

Nyaah!

If muscles can only pull and not push, how do we stick our tongues out !?!

Hughes Mearns Wrote Some Deep Stuff

"ONE FINE DAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

Ladies and Gentlemen, skinny and stout,
I'll tell you a tale I know nothing about;
The Admission is free, so pay at the door,
Now pull up a chair and sit on the floor.

One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight;
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.

A blind man came to watch fair play,
A mute man came to shout "Horray!"
A deaf policeman heard the noise and
Came to stop those two dead boys.

He lived on the corner in the middle of the block,
In a two-story house on a vacant lot;
A man with no legs came walking by,
and kicked the lawman in his thigh.

He crashed through a wall without making a sound,
into a dry creek bed and suddenly drowned;
The long black hearse came to cart him away,
But he ran for his life and is still gone today.

I watched from the corner of the big round table,
The only eyewitness to facts of my fable;
But if you doubt my lies are true,
Just ask the blind man, he saw it too."

Another Random Post

I had been a fairly consistent atheist for a long time. Despite the fact that my parents and grandparents are/were religious Hindus (though by no means fanatics), I had, since my teen years, always had a tendency to question practically anything that I found inconsistent or awkward. It is ironic, therefore, that while in those fairly pious surroundings I had been steadfast in my disbelief of God, in my current environment of an intensely liberal, 'all that God talk is shite', Canadian university, I have begun to doubt.

Partly, no doubt, this is due to my contrary nature. I have an instinctive desire to take a position that's against the norm (often, even if I fundamentally agree with the prevalent point of view). I have noted that since I came to Canada, my views have shifted distinctly to the right. Of course, given the fact that I was quite a leftist before, this means I am probably merely left-centrist (I certainly wouldn't consider myself right wing), but in my current surroundings, I do seem to stand out as very conservative.

But I digress. As I said, the contrary nature has something to do with it, but perhaps another reason is just that I'm getting older. At the age of 17, the thought of death is so distant as to make everyone believe themselves practically immortal. Just avoid obvious death traps and don't jump in front of any buses and you'll live forever.

All that changes as you get older. I am merely 27, technically in the prime of life. However, in that decade, I have seen both my grandfathers pass away, seen many of the 50 year olds of my childhood visibly age and stoop and been involved in a near death scenario in an auto accident myself. Life no longer seems as eternal as it did 10 short years ago. And with growing conciousness of the reality of mortality there comes the hope that there is something beyond, that this isn't it.

Which brings me to another point. Notwithstanding the fact that I want very much to have an eternal and happy life, if there is no proof of an entity such as God who will provide me with one, isn't it merely wishful thinking !?! Surely the argument, "Well, there is no conclusive proof that there is no God" is rather inadequate. How can I justify belief in something that, at the heart of it, has no proof !?!

Well, for one thing, as has been stated so often elsewhere, it is in the realm of belief precisely because there isn't proof. And as beliefs go, it's a nice one to have. If I am to die, and we all are, I would rather face death believing that there is happiness beyond than with the miserable, sinking feeling that my inconsequential and pointless life, in which I barely got to realise a mere fraction of all that the world had to offer, will forever end.

Furthermore, from what I have seen thus far, people have to believe in something. People seem unable to accept that they are the best there is out there. They (or rather we) feel the urge to bow to something superior to ourselves. And no one seems to be spared this. For instance, the aforementioned left-wing atheists (of which I am/used-to-be one) who sneer at the pious themselves tend to believe in a whole lot of nonsense that has very little proof to back it up - such as their cornerstone belief of large scale socialism, or even communism. It is, without a doubt, an idea that has bombed spectacularly, but many of these 'skeptical' atheists refuse to give it up. It is as if, having turned their backs on God (or gods) they have promptly given themselves up to the worship of the State. All told, therefore, it seems that there is no escape from the need to believe. So why not believe in some Entity out there who tells you to be kind and to love your neighbour !?!

This is not an anti-atheist rant. If you don't believe in God, fair enough. If you do, again, good for you. It is merely the musing of a somewhat confused 27 year old who has begun to look at the world with a different perspective than one he had held for most of his life.

Governmental Capitalism

A lot of my socialist friends are fervent supporters of democracy and the 'will of the people'. I find that rather amusing since, to my mind, democracy is a very capitalist form of government. Every party puts up its product (representative and policies) and then competes for the most cash (votes). People 'buy' the product they like best. It's copybook capitalism.

Doing Poorly At The Olymipcs - A Cricket Based Excuse

Major international sporting events - and especially the Olympics - bring up the question that every Indian dreads. 'Why do Indians suck so much at sport !?!' The most common responses - we're poor, and we're cricket obsessed - serve to explain only so much of the dearth of medals. Poorer countries than India (like Kenya and Cameroon) routinely take home a few medals. Moreover, India, though poor overall, has a middle class Wikipedia estimates to be around 300 million. Even if that's middle class only by Indian standards and just 10 percent of those 300 million are really wealthy, that's still 30 million. That about the same as Canada's entire population. Yet Canada, which is as mad about hockey as India is about cricket seems to perform respectably at the Olympics. So the cricket craze doesn't fully satisfy either.

But maybe there's more to that craze than meets the eye. Maybe it's not just that we are obsessed with one sport, it's that that sport is what it is - cricket. To get what I'm driving at, it's important to understand that cricket (and it's cousin - baseball) is fundamentally, crucially different from other sports.

Most other sports, whether they're racquet sports, ball sports or martial arts are centrally about directed, purposeful motion. The athelete is always on the go, continually changing position, adjusting balance, shifting weight. Footwork is key - without it, you won't get anywhere. So an athlete who grows up with one of these sports gets a solid grounding in footwork, and once that is learnt, it can then be transferred to other sports. Sure, the nuances will be different, but you won't be starting from scratch.

Cricket just doesn't work that way. You can go through a lifetime of cricket without having to learn much by way of footwork, at least in the way other sports use it. Of course, you have to run - occasionally. And pace bowlers have to run quite a bit. But no one has to do the elaborate dances that other sports demand. Hence, that crucial skill goes undeveloped. Moreover, the cricket obsession means most children won't even try another sport till they're somewhat grown up, thus compounding the problem. The end result is that we end up with athletes who are competing with opponents who have had a massive headstart in learning and perfecting one of the most crucial skills in most sports.

So what does one do !?! Banning cricket is a ridiculous idea - both in practice and in principle. Equally, it's difficult and impractical to get people actively intersted in other sports by merely telling them to like them. That liking for a sport, like love for anything else, can only come from within.

I humbly propose a simple and elegant solution - make Bollywood dancing a competitive sport.



Don't ask.

Who's Your Daddy !?!

"Hey babe."
"Feelin' OK now, baby !?!"
"That's a sweet chick."
"That girl's cuuuuute..."

When did paedophiles get to define our terms of romance !?!

How To Miss The Point

http://www.teachit.co.uk/attachments/othrtime.pdf

Random Observation Of The Day

Stripping naked in public in front of five year old kids will get you years in prison, public humiliation and the ostracism of a wrathful society.

Stripping naked in front of five year old kids in a communal gym shower is absolutely fine.

Inquisitiveness

In this day and age, curiosity seems to be a good thing. By and large, anyway. After all, science and technology, the crowning glories of human endeavor, are the fruits of inquisitive minds. It was the curious types who found new lands and continents. Progress, in short, seems to have stemmed from this universal human trait.
However all of these gifts of curiosity seem to be relatively recent ones. In our evolutionary past, when we were nomadic hunter gatherers, or perhaps, even more primitive, curiosity must have been dangerous. "I wonder what's behind that tree..." must have often been followed up by, "Ooooh.... oh shit...", and the steady sound of sharp teeth chomping. I'm not saying it would have always ended badly, but surely the odds must have been against curious types. After all, for ages, folk wisdom has warned us that curiosity kills cats. And yet, humans are almost universally curious. We just want to know. How did this (very-useful-in-the-long-term) trait survive !?! How does evolution account for curiosity !?!
Just curious.

The Scottish Play

I haven't read a lot of Shakespeare, but I have read some of his more famous comedies and tragedies. In the majority of the cases, the case for which category his work lies in is pretty simple. Light hearted banter, misunderstandings which are cleared up at the end and a couple of marriages - comedy. Everyone you liked in the play dies - tragedy. Macbeth, however, is rather difficult to categorise. It's been considered a tragedy, but given that the story ends with the deaths of a traitorous murderer and his equally evil wife and the restoration of some sort of order to a kingdom that's been freed from their grasp, I would say that the story has a pretty happy ending. Sure, the play is dark enough and bloody enough, but strictly speaking, given that it ends on an upbeat note (more or less), it should be classified as, well, not perhaps a comedy, but certainly something other than a tragedy.

Sports And Drugs

Every time any big sporting event rolls round, people have this huge debate about steroids and androgens and all the rest of it. I don't mind - I love getting angry about anything. But I wonder if we are focusing too much on the 'male' drugs - the drugs that help pack on more muscle and help strength and power. Surely there are sports out there - rhythmic gymnastics being a big one - where a dose of 'female' drugs, which boost flexibility and suppleness would make big differences in outcome. Has this been looked at ever !?! Just wondering.

Gotta Love Canadians

I find Canadian innocence touching and, at the same time, just a wee bit disturbing.

I wrote some days ago about the British government contemplating the passage of a bill that would penalise offensive jokers with prison sentences. The most common reaction among my friends when I tell them about it (I told about 10) is, "That's a shame because the rude jokes are usually the best ones." Or words to that effect. The UK, of all places, is about to pass legislation that will kill its freedom of speech - and once the UK sets such a precedent the rest of the world will follow suit. And the main worry of my Canadian friends is that they may not get their money's worth when they next watch a stand up act.

Needs And Wants

People seem to consider 'need' and 'want' to be varying extents of the same phenomenon. If you really, really 'want' something, you are said to 'need' it. I'm not sure that's the relation though. The relationship is that of a journey (need/needs) and a destination (want/wants). You need something because you want something else. For instance, you need to breathe because you want to live. Without the desire to live, the need to breathe wouldn't arise. Thus, needs arise because of wants and wants must give rise to needs.

A Random Observation

I was looking up recreational classes to join over the summer - specifically badminton classes which would help me with my footwork. I've been playing the sport for a while now, but I still stagger around the court like a drunken sack of crap. Needless to say, they have taken badminton classes off the list this term. Just this term, apparently. Presumably, just to piss me off. 

Anyway, I started looking at other courses on offer, and then, due to the beauty of the internet, at random courses for all kinds of activities off campus and noticed something interesting:
A lot of them are sub-categorised into beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. The thing is, while intermediate and advanced are indicators of ability, beginner is an indicator of experience. Hence, the three don't really form a set. This irritates the prude in me. However, calling someone a beginner is certainly more kind. Naming the levels 'Useless, Intermediate and Advanced' is just rude. So, despite my uptight views, I quite like the elegant politeness shown here. 

Eternity

I am at a rather liberal university and there are a lot of atheists around and trust me, no one dwells more on the topic of God than atheists.

I bring up this topic since I recently had a conversation with someone regarding God, or rather one of His attributes - eternity. And what I realised during the conversation was this: I readily understand the concept of something or someone without an end. But something/someone without a beginning - that's tricky. I have no problem logically comprehending the concept; it's essentially -infinity years. But I have trouble intuitively getting a feel of it.

Perhaps it is because, since we are still alive, it is possible to consider a scenario where that status quo is maintained. But since we ourselves had a beginning, it is difficult to get a feel of always having been.

Of course, this is assuming everyone else feels the same way. It could be just me.

Smileys Continued

I make a bit of a distinction between smileys and the other stuff that 'netspeak' has thrown up. Most of the others may be synonyms or acronyms - u -> you, lol -> laugh out loud (or, as my mother stubbornly insists in her emails, 'lots of love') etc... On the other hand, as 'GreenOnion' remarked, smileys are a reversion to pictographs. This is a fair point, but smileys aren't used to replace words. They don't convey the body of the message. They serve an entirely different purpose - they supplement the words with emotional information. They succintly depict the mood behind the sentence. This can be quite useful, especially in cases where a sentence can have many emotions behind it. For instance-

Without smileys:

A: Would you go out on a date with me !?!
B: Sorry, no. I have a boyfriend.
A: Oh really !?! I didn't know that. Sorry.
B: No problem.
A: Thanks.

With smileys:

A: Would you go out on a date with me !?!
B: Sorry, no. I have a boyfriend :p.
A: Oh really :o :o !?! I didn't know that. Sorry.
B: No problem. :).
A: Thanks :D.

The first conversation would probably leave both parties feeling rather awkward. The second smoothly indicates the fact that B hasn't taken it seriously and isn't uncomfortable. Ditto A.

Sniff

There's this new fangled malady going around - swine flu and it's bad.  Someone objected to it being called 'swine' flu - since swine are offensive to muslims and jews. I'm not sure how that works; presumably, if you're a jew or a muslim and you get the flu, then you've commited a sin 'cause you got pig stuff in you, I guess. So they want it renamed - because apparently that's going to change the fact that it comes from pigs. Or something. Anyway, there was a suggestion that it be renamed to 'Mexican' flu, since that's where it started.... and those guys haven't taken that too well. So now, it's not just a cold, it's also a political headache.

Also, I'm not sure whether calling it "anything flu" is going to make it easy to get the public to take it seriously. I know influenza was a kick-arse disease back in the day, and some of its variants wreak devastation even today. But we've come to associate the word 'flu' with a mild cold that you shake off with a couple of Tylenols and a morning in bed with your favourite novel. No one's going to take 'swine flu' with the seriousness it deserves. You might as well call it 'piggy sniffles'. No. I suggest we should give it a really deadly sounding name.

Any suggestions !?! 

Smileys

I have started to punctuate my smileys. It would be interesting to see if other people who tend to be prudish about grammar are doing the same. If so, we can declare smileys a part of formal, written English. And the language will be the richer for it.

Disturbing Developments In Old Blighty

The British have long been the innovators that the rest of the world has emulated. Indeed, this creativity had been one of their trademarks. For instance, they gave us the modern system of parliamentary democracy, we saw that it was good and we all tried to take it up ourselves. Ditto various other institutions and inventions, not least among them, the English language itself.

Another characteristic of the Brits is that, having produced these great innovations, they then proceed to suck at many of them. This is, of course, most obvious in the myriad sports that they have come up with. Cricket - great sport. Who invented it !?! - The British ! Who are going to get their arses handed to them when the Ashes roll round !?! The British !! Who invented footie !?! Brits!! Who will be going home without the World Cup in 2012 !?! ... You get the drift.

The reasoned response to this is perhaps 'Fair enough'. After all, sport is competitive and someone is going to win at the expense of the rest. There is no reason to believe that the country that came up with the sport should be the best at it. The best composers aren't always the best performers.

But now, to that 'invent and suck at' list, it seems we have to add something that isn't competitive. It is a right. And that is the right of free speech. If the Australian is to be believed, "The [British] Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison."

Maybe this disease will remain confined to British shores. But there is a good chance that it will spread. Like I said before, the world often tends to imitate the Brits - and then outdo them. And that trailblazing nation - one which played a leading role in giving us the concept of freedom of expression - is just about to surrender that very fundamental right without a whimper of resistance.

Ill winds blow.

Ego

Ego gets a really bad press. I have yet to come across anyone who views it as remotely good. The closest attribute that gets the thumbs up is self respect - or self confidence. And yet, it seems to me that ego is not merely a good attribute, it's been a major driving force behind a lot of progress humanity has made to date. The desire to show oneself as the 'king of the hill' has, in many, many cases, chanelled itself into great feats of science, sport, art and discovery. But there is another reason ego should be lauded as a trait.

Let me illustrate that reason:
I am a rather regular practitioner of the noble art of badminton (this is a sport where two guys slap cocks back and forth across a net, so noble may not be the most appropriate way of describing it - feel free to come up with your own adjective). I wouldn't call myself proficient in the sport, but I'm not a beginner either. Intermediate would be somewhat accurate. In the University's recreation centre, I have had the pleasure of playing against opponents of varying degrees of proficiency. Now, whenever I play against some guy who's way, way out of my league - and get, umm, pwned ( I believe that is the term) - my ego lies dormant and let's me be. I feel no real humiliation. I just accept his victory as a fact of life. On the other hand, when some guy whom I assess as a fellow intermediate puts one over me, no matter how close fought the game was, I burn. My ego kicks into ovedrive and I just have to play him again and again - until I either win, or establish to myself that he is, in fact, a superior player. In either case, my ego calms down.

So my theory is this: Ego is our subconsious way of deciding whether a particular task is reasonable. By flaring up and dying down to suit the circumstances, it drives us to accomplish what we may, but makes sure that we don't burn out trying to achieve what is beyond our reach. It's thus both a progressive trait (by which I mean what I wrote in the first paragraph) and in a more subtle sense, a survival trait - and it's about time we accepted it for what it is.

So here's to ego, one our our most underappreciated gifts.

Quote Of The Day

Overheard:

"One of my only problems with pizza is that it's fattening."

The Emergency Response From Hell

"Hello, you've reached 911. To continue in English, press 1, ...."

A Deeper Issue

Here's the police defending their response time when called to the Binghampton Massacre scene. The following snippet wasn't the main reason for the overall delay, but it raises an important issue:

"The first 911 calls came in at 10:30 a.m., police Chief Joseph Zikuski said at a news conference. The callers spoke broken English, and it took dispatchers 2 minutes to sort out what was happening, he said."

I have no intention of sounding like some kind of 'hater', but in a multicultural society, where a sizeable population speaks 'broken' English or none at all, how are emergency services affected !?!

Regarding The Binghampton Murderer

A guy called Voong (Wong) went bananas and killed 13 and injured others in Binghampton in New York.

From AP (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090404/ap_on_re_us/binghamton_shootings) :

"Police and Wong's acquaintances portrayed him as an angry, troubled 41-year-old man who struggled with drugs and job loss and perhaps blamed his adopted country for his troubles. His rampage "was not a surprise" to those who knew him, Zikuski said."

I have a mild question:

If this guy's massacre did not come as a surprise (meaning people kinda sorta thought even before the incident that he might do something like this), why the heck was he issued a gun permit !?!

Your Personality = Nails On A Chalkboard

I had to rant some more about the people I overheard on the bus yesterday, but I hadn't much more to say about them specifically. So I wrote a story about someone like them as a protagonist. It is, on reflection, the meanest article I have written to date and I'm not sure I like it. But it's vented my rage and I'm kinda sorta normal again. Enjoy, or not:

So I got this address of a prostitute from a pal two weeks ago, because I had turned 26 and was still a virgin and that's against God's will. I called her up and we agreed to meet at the local Starbuck's to talk and set up a "date" as she put it. I thought it was unnecessary, but she said she preferred it this way because she wanted to "make it more than just a physical thing" for her customers. So I thought I would go along with it. After all, I wanted to make sure she was worth fucking before I committed myself. I imagine I would get fairly pissed off if I were to go to her boudoir and get naked and then have her come out and find she was ass ugly. So, anyway, I walked into the place and looked around and I saw her. I was almost certain it was her of course, because all the other girls in the place were titless. Oh, apart from that half Latino barista, and I'm pretty sure she was not the one. Her face was a turn off. Anyway, back to the whore. Like I said, I was almost certain. But I had to make sure, of course. So I asked her, "Are you the whore I will be fucking !?!" And the bitch went all, "Shhh..." and looked around all embarassed. Because, you know, she was just racist and did not want to be seen as a servicer of brown guys. I was having none of that shit. I have my pride. So I said, "Well !?!" And she went all red and quiet and said, "Yes... yes..". And I said, "Good. Time and place please." And she gave me her address and said, "I'm free on Tuesday between 5 and 7." Having finished the "business" part of the conversation, I tried to talk about more casual matters, but she seemed all cold and aloof. It was most depressing. I mean you try to be nice and ask her about the work and if she likes it and if she has been in it for long and all you get are monosyllabic replies. When I asked her if she liked what she did, she said she had no "fucking" choice. I thought she was trying to crack a pun and so I laughed. It did not go down well.

It would not be overstating the facts to say that the "date" ended somewhat awkardly.

Tueday, 5 PM saw me outside her door. I had left the condom packet at home and I was worried. I mean, this is a whore we are talking about here. So when she opened the door, I got straight to the point. I said, "You don't have AIDS, do you !?! I have left the packet of condoms at home." and she was all like, "Good eveni--, what!?! Fuck no.." and I was like, "Prove it." and she got all angry. But she went and got test results from the doctor anyway and they were negative. Then she said, "I would ask you for proof, if I wasn't so Goddamned certain you hadn't come within ten feet of a cunt before." Which I thought was mean and also, unprofessional. I said so but she just told be to shut it and get to the fucking.

The shagging was strictly OK. It wasn't what I had been led to believe. My pal had said the bitch had a tight one but I thought it was wide, so he must have been fucking lying. But hey, I had fucked someone, so that was something.

I dressed up and got ready to leave. I was almost out of the door when she screamed, "Where the fuck do you think you're going!?! You owe me 50 bucks, you bastard." The cunt. I was having none of that shit. I mean really. "I'm not paying you, bitch.", I said drawing myself up to my full height, "You said you were free on Tuesdays." It wasn't about the money, it was about principle. It pains me to tell you, dear readers, that at this point, she went bananas and started screaming "You bastard"s and "Fuck you"s and whatnot. Which was unnecessary and uncalled for, but I thought I would cut her some slack since she was a woman and I am naturally given to chivalry. But then she attacked me. I mean like, physically. That is just not ON. So I pushed her to the floor and she stayed there cursing and said, "Get the fuck out of my apartment." So, of course, I turned to leave and she shouted, "I have syphillis..."

Bitch.

Self Centered

I was on the bus yesterday and happened to overhear a couple conduct the most self centered conversation I have ever heard in person. From what I gathered from their conversation, they had planned a party and had invited friends over. One friend had dropped out at short notice because his parents had been in a car accident and he was staying with them in the hospital. The couple's reaction to this was non-stop bitching about his frightful treatment of them, without so much as a word of sympathy. The only time they mentioned the parents was when they claimed that they had not been hurt badly ("It's only a little bruising, why couldn't he just come away after checking them in - for %&*&$'s sake !?!")

Now I've been, and still am, rather self centered myself. Everyone is, in some measure. But this takes the cake. This is selfish to the point where not only does other people's pain not move you, but it doesn't even register that they may have any pain whatsoever. It's like a man who not only breaks his wife's arms but then complains that she's not making him tea.

Arseholes.

Apology

To both my readers:

I'm currently reading "The Hound Of The Baskervilles" and the writing style is rubbing off on me. Hence the long winded and verbose prose of the two preceding posts.

My apologies.

Unlocked Treasures... And Some Confusion About Emotions

Jealousy, like kindness (as I mentioned earlier), is an emotion which I have trouble feeling. I just don't feel the urge to become miserable if someone else has more money, or is better looking, or perhaps even has more talent than I do. I may like to be more like them, but I don't grudge them what they have.

However, sometimes, just sometimes, I do feel pangs of discomfort when I contemplate genius of the order of, say, Beethoven. Or Dali. Or Wilde. Or Einstein. It's not jealousy, at least not as I understand it. After all, they wrote and composed and painted for my pleasure. They created wealth, and then, they just gave it to me. No, I don't grudge them their genius, I am grateful to them for using their talents to give me treasures. But every so often I do think to myself, "What else did they see, or hear, or think up !?! Maybe there was a tenth symphony that Beethoven heard all by himself on the inside of his head. Maybe he died before getting it out - or maybe he did not want to soil it by bringing it forth into this sullied world. Ditto Dali. Ditto Wilde and Einstein and all the other greats who have and will grace this earth. There must have been whole ocean floors of unlocked treasures in those eggheads which will, forevermore be sealed from the rest of us."

Granted, I don't say this to myself in quite the melodramatic way in which I have written it here, but that is more or less what crosses my mind. Like I said, it's not jealousy. But what is that feeling. Yearning, I suppose !?!

Puck Of Pook's Hill

I've been reading Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling (now there's a poet) and the story of the Roman Centurion has set me thinking about the British Isles. Not just historically, but geographically as well. What they must have seemed to the early settlers and navigators! Perennially shrouded in mist, covered thickly with forests haunted with predators hungry and huge, the very western edge of the world, and nothing but sea beyond!

The book itself is lovely. The stories are immensely evocative. They conjure up visions of faraway days and times, and fill you with a nostalgia for sights and sounds you have never seen or heard - but still miss with all your heart. And the poems! I rarely feel jealous of peoples' talent, but I did feel a twinge when I read these. I suppose it is poems like these that make people abandon form and write their own dross in free verse. They are afraid of being compared to such delights. Here's a sample:

Cities and Thrones and Powers
Stand in Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die.
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth
The Cities rise again.


This season's Daffodil,
She never hears
What change, what chance, what chill,
Cut down last year's:
But with bold countenance,
And knowledge small,
Esteems her seven days' continuance
To be perpetual.


So Time that is o'er-kind
To all that be,
Ordains us e'en as blind,
As bold as she:
That in our very death,
And burial sure,
Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,
'See how our works endure!'

End Of The World

One day, someone, somewhere will compose music of indescribable beauty, or write an almost unbearably beautiful masterpiece, or paint the perfect painting. And when he does, the skies will part and God will come to earth on His Thrones and surrounded by the rest of the angelic Host. And in the light of that Divine magnificence all the people will forget their sorrows. The blind will see, the crippled will be made whole. Hunger and thirst will not even be a distant memory. Happiness will rule and everyone will love each other. And God will reach out His hand to the man whose Work called forth this miracle. He will take that Work, and say, "Cheers mate, I made the world just for this!"

And then the world will end.

I've told this story to friends before and I have been called cynical. But I certainly don't intend it to be so. It makes me all warm and cosy. I mean, it would be nice to know that this was all for something.

Forty Degrees Of Separation

If I assume that the historical average life span of people has been 50 years, then 40 people laid end to end (along the temporal dimension) would suffice to connect me to the age of Pontius Pilate, Caesar, and of course, Jesus. This makes me feel as if an earlier, simpler era is just around the corner, not shrouded in the mists of Time, as it were. For some reason, this makes me feel very cosy and secure.

Food For Thought

I was wondering how much food has changed throughout human history. It seems to me that the answer is: not much. The arts, the sciences, the languages and of course the various technologies have all changed immeasurably over the millennia. Indeed, some of these, such as music, and sartorial fashions change from generation to generation, if not sooner. But though food displays great diversity across cultures, within a country or a culture, it has been remarkably constant over centuries. Yes, there has been a shift towards junk food and preprocessed food, but most of these foodstuffs are, in themselves, not really modern or new. Moreover, and more importantly, no matter how often they are consumed, they are not staples. When people get down to 'proper food', it is almost always something that has been around for many, many generations (I mean the kind of food, not the actual, physical specimen on the plate - that would be rather unappetising). If ancient Greeks or Romans suddenly materialised at a modern Greek or Roman banquet, the food would probably give them little clue that they had left their own day and age. This may have a lot to do with the fact that fiddling with food usually has more grim consequences than artistic or scientific curiosity. However, danger has held its own fascination for various people throughout history and it seems strange that food should have had no such 'adventurers'.

I freely admit that I am not very knowledgeable about this topic. My relationship to food has mostly been of the "find on plate, put in mouth" variety with little introspection regarding its history, or often even its content. So the above ramble has to be read with the skepticism due to any piece that has been pulled out of an arse.

Another Recent Read

I just worked my way through 'David Copperfield', and I have to say, it was thouroughly enjoyable. I suppose that word sees a lot of use these days, but in this case, I really mean it. I vaguely remember reading the story in an abridged version as a child and being rather depressed by most of it. Even at the end, when it all worked out, it seemed as if there had been more sorrow than joy in the tale. That version, shorn of Dickens language, was unable to communicate anything beyond the plot. The original, on the other hand, is vibrant. The book is, ultimately, about a man who has gone through life's foaming rapids and come out, triumphant, onto the serene side. And Dickens, throughout the novel, keeps you minful of that fact. You feel the tragedies, but you know the hand that writes them has dealt with them and prospered. And of course, you feel the joys too. I am aware that there are probably many points of criticism that literary killjoys would love to direct at the book, but all of them notwithstanding, it a lovely work.

However, to join those killjoys on a very temporary basis, I would criticise one aspect, not just of this book, but of Dickens' novels in general: Though most of the Characters in the novels are beautifully formed and fleshed out, there is something awkward about many of his protagonists. You don't identify with them. You feel sympathy for David throughout this various trials, you share in his joys. But you don't identify with him. While, of course, his actions as a child are not to be judged, his actions as an adult often seem awkward. You are always aware that, in his place, you would have often done many things differently. The same holds for 'Pip' in Great Expectations. You like the bugger, but you often feel like telling him to stop being such a chump. And when Sidney Carter gets the chop, you feel sad, but not really overwhelmed. All told, Dickens' various literary strengths make this a rather trifling point - the books remain hugely enjoyable regardless. But the flaw stands out the more precisely because he scores so highly in all other departments.

Form Is Freeing

I am willing to accept verse
libre as a legitimate form of
poetry - I would even go so far as to
say that I am rather
fond of some of
it. When written by Eliot
or Whitman,
it seems genuine and, well,
poetic. But I really hate it
when someone
abandons any attempt at
rhyme and meter
and bashes out something
very drab and dull,
cuts it up at irregular intervals
and
condescendingly
calls it a poem.
It's not a poem,

..

..
you bastards.

Claim To Fame

I could well be the only person ever to bang his knee while doing pull ups.

सूचना

गेल्या पोस्ट मध्ये मी म्हटले होते की इकार सुधारावे लागतील। मात्र कमी फायर्फोक्समध्ये आहे अस दिसून येत आहे। इसवीज़ल इकार बरोबर दाखवीत आहे।

What's In A Name, Part 2

I wonder if the meme theme is universal - whether any social construct, not just ideas and beliefs, is subject to the constraints of natural selection and all the struggles that it entails. I mean, consider names. It seems that, for names, numbers, and the ability to spread themselves, are of the essence in the battle to stay alive. They seem to give the name momentum and also the ability to recover from any disease analogues.

Let us illustrate this point. Consider two names: Homer and Peter. The former is the name of the genius who wrote the two great Greek epics, two of the treasures of ancient Western literature. For centuries, for this reason, the name was one held in reverence. But it never became popular, it never caught on. It was, as it were, bad at propagating itself. So, when Homer Simpson came along, the name was finished. No one, but no one, is ever going to name their kid Homer again. The first disease that came upon it was enough to kill the species.

Now consider Peter. The name's hugely common. Everyone knows at least one Peter, perhaps several. It has managed to aggressively proliferate, at least the Judeo-Christo-Islamic world. Therefore, Peter Griffin, every bit a match for Homer Simpson, has been unable to so much as give the name the sniffles. 'Peter' sails on serenely, on the meme pool. Similarly, for all that he killed his own and his enemies by the millions, Stalin was unable to kill Joseph. Poor Adolf, on the other hand, is extinct.

Are there any other constructs that fit this memey behaviour !?! Ones that aren't generally considered memes, I mean.

Ads

I was fooling around with the settings on this blog and I turned on the AdSense thingy. Given my current readership of, umm, one, it's unlikely to lead to dazzling riches and an early retirement. So I tried turning it off. And it refuses to leave.

I don't mind it much. Or rather not at all. But it would be nice to know, for the sake of knowledge, how to turn it off.

On Kindness

I have a sort of confession to make. I have never felt kind. At least, I have never felt what I imagine kindness to be. I have helped people. I have carried old people's luggage for them, helped the blind cross the street, donated to charities and all the rest of it. But it has all been done with the goal of avoiding guilt. Put simply, I know, based on my personal code of ethics (such as it is, don't laugh) what is supposed to be kind and what isn't, and I know that if I do the nasty thing, I'll feel horribly guilty. Hence I have often done the kind thing. I've often been kind. But I've never felt it.

Is this normal !?! Is kindness nothing more than the avoidance of guilt !?! Or is it just me !?!

अरे वाह ! मला मराठीत लिहिता येत आहे !

ज़रा विचित्र आहे, आणि इकार ज़रा सुधारावे लागतील, पण तरीही देवनागरीत पुन्हा लिहिताना बरे वाटते .

Recent Reads

I'm reading "Psmith In The City" again. I hadn't planned on reading Wodehouse for a while, but I have just finished "The Trial" and Wodehouse's novels are wonderful cures for the sort of miserable emptiness that books like that induce in me.

I'm not sure what to make of "The Trial". It starts out almost silly, becomes absorbing and ends on a positively terrifying note. The hallmark of the book's greatness, however, seems to be the sympathy Kafka makes you feel for the protagonist. I have rarely felt for a character like Josef K. before. He is obviously arrogant, self centered, harsh and haughty and yet, I just had to sympathise with him.

There is no danger of having your reserves of sympathy depleted by any Wodehouse novel. His characters are fully as three dimensional as those of any of the so-called 'serious' authors, but they are singularly free from any substantial grief, hardship or fear. These emotions are raised, if ever, only momentarily, only to be gently replaced by goodwill and bonhomie. A Wodehouse novel is as close to pure joy, fun and pleasure as literature has ever come. I will have read a lot more of his novels before the term is out.

Dream Big

One day, I will be able to unwrap a Creme Egg without tearing the foil.

Delusion Of Grandeur

Every time I'm faced with automatic doors, I follow their motion with my hands and pretend to be tele-kinetic. I'm probably not alone in this.

Epiphany

The great thing about logic is that it makes so much sense.

Belated Happy 200th, Mr. D!

Darwin's theory of Evolution was a complete break from the established wisdom of the age. I find this gently ironic, given that the theory itself claims that nothing is a complete break, that everything is merely a slight modification of what has gone before.

A Kind Of Logic

If you go to a restaurant where everyone's eating with a knife and fork, and you start eating with tweezers, people look at you and say, "He's loopy!"

If you go to a restaurant where half the people are eating with knives and forks, and the other half with tweezers and you start eating with tweezers, people merely say, "Oh, he's one of the Tweezer People!"

...

...

Culture, therefore, is collective loopiness.

Brief Update

Aus 61/3 Vs SA.
Dale Steyn is a friggin' monster.

My Name Doesn't Translate Too Well In Mandarin

Parcel arrives at a Beijing post office. Clerk looks at the sender's name and address. Bursts out laughing.

Clerk 1: HAHAHAHAHHAAAA...!! OH... HA...Oh God.. Oh HAHAHAAAAAAHHHAA!!

Clerk 2: What's so funny !?!

Clerk 1: AHAHA..AHA.. This parcel... Hee Hee.. came from India. The name... the name... look at it...

Clerk 2: What's so fu... Ohhh, .. hee hee.. hee HA.. HAAHAAHAAHHAAA.... (To passing Clerk 3): Hey, Ting! TingLing Wang!

Clerk 3: Yeah !?!

Clerk 2: Take a look at the name on the parcel Dang's got.

Clerk 3: Which Dang !?!

Clerk 2: Our Dang. DangLing Dong. You'll never guess what this guy's name is.. hee hee hee.... oh dear.... (gasps for breath, before joining the general chorus of guffaws)

Curtains

Comedy Versus Mystery

It seems to me that, if you want to obtain literary immortality, you have to steer clear of comedy as a genre. As a die hard fan of comedy in all its forms, I find this depressing, but there's no getting away from it. Humour changes over time and yesterday's rib ticklers become today's stuffy boring prose that has to be ploughed through in ninth grade. I wonder if, Shakespeare apart, any comic author has genuinely withstood the assault of Time (and by that I mean 200 years or more - anything less than that is probably too soon for language to have changed enough to make that funny-boring switch). And even Billy's comedies are held in high regard for the majesty of their prose and their insights rather than their humour.

Mystery novels, on the other hand, probably get more intriguing with age. I say probably, since, as a whole, the genre is rather young. However, it kinda sorta stands to reason. The mystery is unlikely to simplify over time. On the contrary, the reader of an old mystery novel has the added challenge of having to account for the cultural and technological state of the day and age of the story. Thus, the plot only ends up thickening, and adds to the overall flavour of the story. Considering the current popularity of older whodunnits (The Sherlock Holmes Books, The Poirot Series, The Father Brown Stories), I may not be pulling this opinion completely out of my arse.

Perspective

The first thing that struck me when I entered St. Paul's cathedral was how friggin' high the dome was. It's something that does strike me every time I enter a really big room with a very high ceiling - the feeling of hugeness, of great space. On reflection, I find this rather odd. I mean, I walk out in the open quite a lot and the sky is almost limitlessly high. Yet it never evokes the same feeling in me. Nor, as far as I know, has anyone else ever gone, "Crikey, that's HIGH!" when contemplating the sky. It can't be just that we are used to it - I don't believe we've ever felt it. My personal belief is that it's to do with our finite capacity, as humans, to comprehend quantities. The sky is just too high to get our heads around, but the high ceiling of a cathedral is comprehensible.

I get reminded of this every time some white British or American friend of mine decries his country's lack of culture and praises mine. "Oh, your country's culture is so vibrant! You have such deep and great traditions!"

Now, don't get me wrong. I am proud of my country's (India, by the way) past, it's culture and it's traditions. But Western, and specifically Anglo-Saxon people have shaped the modern world. Democracy, free speech, fundamental human rights, parliamentary government, the modern approach to science, western medicine, transport systems, you name it, the West's been the engine behind its development. The reason you don't seem to have your own culture anymore is because the rest of the world has taken to being more like you. Your culture is everywhere. It has grown too big and too ubiquitous to be contemplated as culture anymore. Your culture is the sky, ours is the high ceiling.

Sacrifice

CPR is hard on the knees.

.

'Tis Time, Methinks

One thing was made painfully clear to me today: The battle against the ravages of Time have begun and there is no doubt that Time has drawn first blood. I have to fight back.

On the bus home from Chapters today, a young boy offered me his seat. Of course, the gesture touched my heart. It's always nice to see that gentlemanliness and chivalry are thriving in the new generation. It makes me feel that the world may not be going to pot after all. Having said that, I'm friggin' 27. How the hell did I get into this mess !?! More importantly, how do I get out of it !?! (Being out of shape, I mean. Not being 27 - that part's awesome, moreover, I only have to wait one year and I'll be 28, which is also awesome, and the year after, I'll be 29 and.....)

And The Title Goes To...

I may have, on a recent trip to Chapters, found the most insensitively titled book ever:

The Complete Idiot's Guide To Surviving Breast Cancer.


.

To Thine Own Self Be True

One of my friends, who shall remain nameless, goes in heavily for the emo/senti psychobabble that seems to be everywhere. Bless her for that. I mean, who am I to judge !?! I have my own eccentricities. I do have a problem, however, with her - or any other similar minded person - dispensing weird advice when it comes to how to cope with the various trying periods in my life. The worst one is "Just be yourself". That one just pisses me off. It seems to indicate that, for some unknown reason, I actively chose my current lifestyle - that of a guy who is (as of today, 05 February 2009) out of shape, very awkward socially, with few friends, no girlfriend, no real job and still struggling through school (of the grad variety). Does it seem at all likely that I would, of my own volition, go for this !?!

What I, and people like me, really need is some guy in a white coat sitting us down and saying, "Listen, you gave being yourself a fair go for, umm, how long has it been... 27 years !?!... yes, 27 years. And it's done you a buggerload of good. Look at that cardiac surgeon over there - he's got a great job, lovely wife, lovely kids, a big house, a fancy car and oodles of money in the bank. He's in great shape, eats well, sleeps better, goes on holidays, does the social thingy, and generally lives his friggin' life. Try and be a bit more like him."

What's In A Name

If Mr. Smith's forefathers were smiths, and Mr. Miller's were millers, and Mr. Carpenter's were carpenters, were Mr. Dickinson's ancestors paedophiles !?!

PhD

You have to be smart to complete a PhD.

You have to be silly to take it up.

Does not compute.

End Of An Era

South Africa are poised to beat Australia in the one dayers, having comprehensively beaten them in the Tests. It would be hard to deny that this signals the end of Australia's supremacy. The Aussies must have known that with the retirement of their galaxy of world beaters, they were never going to remain so far ahead of the other nations as they were for the past decade and a bit. Nevertheless, they would have been hoping for a gentler welcome into the community of the hitherto also rans than the hammering they received. 

Regarding the hammering, it must be pointed out that it evoked little sympathy from the rest of the world. Had Waugh been the captain at this juncture, the papers would have been lamenting the death of a great, if not always noble, empire. Ponting has never been held in the same respect. I got the impression that the press was stifling an urge to rub it in. 

Pee Here S.V.P.

The water in the swimming pool always gets refreshed, right !?! You know, new water comes in and the old water gets drained off !?! Well, I was thinking, why not make the point of drainage a designated pissing area !?! I mean, if some lazy fuckers are going to piss in the pool anyway, let's give them a proper place to do it without having them screw the pool up for the rest of us.

Horror Movies Vs. Horror Movie Trailers

Am I alone in thinking that horror movies always pale in comparison to their own trailers !?! In the trailers you get all the spooky questions - What WOULD happen if vampires attacked a town that gets no sun for a month !?! Why is this weirdo killing all these people !?! The movie tries to answer these questions and almost invariably doesn't. Or rather the answers are almost always inadequate. Then it becomes difficult to suspend your disbelief and the whole experience goes downhill.

Thankfully, YouTube has given me an alternative that serves my purposes quite well. Now I can watch all the gory bits the movie has to offer without actually searching for any answers to any questions. 

...

...

Am I alone in being scared of - and avoiding - showers for days after watching a good horror movie/trailer/YouTube Clipset !?! 

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It's a bird!

It's a plane!

It IS a plane!! SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!

BOOM