History, as we are told.

"After hearing two eyewitness accounts of the same accident, you begin to wonder about history"

How true! Actually I have often wondered, how easily history can be distorted and how can I be so sure of events of the long past that have been chronicled by the historians? What does it take to distort the facts? Just a dictator right?

Why don't you all share your thoughts on the most ridiculous and unbelievable FACT you have heard?

Go Vegan Go

Yesterday I received my PETA membership stuff for which I had applied over a month ago. I am a vegeterian by choice. And I am glad and happy. What people eat is none of my business. But I feel for animals that are tortured and/or killed just for the pleasure of human taste buds. Life to me is the best motivation for living it. And life of any living being is equally precious.

To HELL with computers

I have broken my head, my neck (because it hurts due to excessive strain), my spinal cord (coz of bending too many times to change the CD's, my fingers (because of over-typing), and my patience with Dell computer. But SUSE Enterprise Server version 4 just wouldn't stall. It is as if, it has explicit orders to not listen to my commands. Dell Precision 370. That machine has a Seagate SATA drive and SUSE ESL 9 just does not support it. Why? Because the software engineers, for reasons best known to them, send information in packets using Frame Information Structure (FIS), which splits the packets but not on block boundaries. As a result the SATA drive is either not recognized by the Linux OS or it is hanging during installation when I switch it to SATA / PATA mode.

For those of you who do not know about it, please bear with me. I have bore enough patience with Dell so far. So much for DELL PRECISION 370.

HELL INDECISION 370.

From the unseen frontiers.

Space Travel link - click here

Wondering what H.G.Wells would think about it were he alive today!!!

It would be real fun though meeting an alien. But how will we recognize an alien? Why can't an alien be absolutely unlike the living beings on Earth? Why can he/she not be made of rock, sand or metal? Actually why should it be a he or a she either? Why can the alien life survive without water or oxygen? Why do they have to be in the visible spectrum also or the audio wavelengths that we know of? So, in principle, there can exist life that we know nothing about and have no means to find out, as yet. And by the extension of the same, there exists a strong possibility that such a life form could be sitting in my verandah looking over my shoulder, without me knowing about its existence. Is that a scary thought?

There was this nasty joke that did the rounds when I was in the college. An alien comes down to earth and meets this gorgeous Blonde. He shakes her hand and obviously charmed does not release the grip. The blonde is excited that she has met an alien and they both engage in a conversation talking about things on earth and after about a couple of hours, Blonde, talking all this while, tells him how sex happens on earth. Then she asks out of curiousity, "So how is it done in your planet?"

Releasing the grip now, the alien replies "By shaking hands".

Enjoy your space travel.

IH-1

"It's wrong."
"Who are we to pass on that judgement?"
"There is something called culture, shame, Indian values."
"Indians have always prided themselves with spritual advancement(well.... whatever that is). So why look at what the girls are wearing? How does physical display cheapen anything?"
"But it's wrong."


So it went, the talk between my conservative cousin, his conservative wife and myself. Well, nothing is more wrong than having some opinionated views. What had happened was that they, while I was taking them around the town on their visit to my place, saw a girl in a micro skirt with a transparent top. And like bullet they went on how the moral standards have corrupted. Now perhaps that was a sleazy outfit. Fine. But if a girl is comfortable wearing it and carrying it off, in a pub, I do not see, how or why can someone have a problem with that. I mean, isn't it hypocritic that while on one side, Indians say, physical sufferings, attractions are parts of what is called MAAYA and on the other hand the moral priests of the society come down hard, (strictly in an asexual way) on people (read girls), who wear the mini's and the micros? Recently there was a rape in a very safe (for women) city, Mumbai of a girl by a police constable. And a political party argued that the girl made a case for it by wearing revealing clothes. JESUS CHRIST. have the not heard of the word called VIOLATION? Did the girl say, "Rape me."? How dumb can it get! Actually how disgusting. And the bad part of it was that almost half the population of Mumbai, that took up a suvery, supported the view. Any guesses on the worst part? Well, there were women too who agreed with that view. I think I should start a series on Indian Hypocrisy. Yeah that's a good idea(Let others decide it ...Anoop ;) ). I am not saying there aren't any hypocrites in other parts of the world, in other countries. But why not start at home?

So treat this as IH-1.

God .... Who?

Well, I was having a debate, now what's wrong with that? Why frowning? The debate was, and I insist, on the concept of God, not God. They are two different things. The debate on God, implies, though that might not be the intention of an atheist, that God exists. Where as the debate on the concept of God, is a fair pointer on what the debate should be actually about. There are a few mistakes, ok I feel so, that people make. Any discussion on the concept of the God, tends to bear an argument for or against science. Science is not, be all and end all of this world. Science is a gradual learning, which questions itself. Yes there are scientists who are reluctant to admit some changes, just as there have been popes/priests/people who have opposed the idea of the Earth going around the Sun. It's another matter that the word of God, should not have been wrong about the Earth going around the Sun, at the first place. God and science can peacefully exist or not exist. They need not be in mutual exclusion of each other.

But my problem is that I do not believe in the concept of God. I am a man of simple logic. And if logic can not prove to me the existence of God then nothing can, science or no science. You just can not tell me on the face, God exists, and expect me to believe it. Prove it. And if God has a hesitation revealing itself to one of it's own creation, well BUMMER.

The thing also is that people talk about intelligent design and the science of probability.

Intelligent design :
1.) Does intelligence need creation?
2.) No. End of the debate.
3.) Yes. Is God intelligent?
4.) No. Well ....
5.) Yes. So go to 1.)

Probability :

People argue, it can not be by chance. Such precision has to be created. Let's justify first, whether its really precision by creation or by chance.
Well, okay. Probability is the likely occurrence of an event, defined in mathematics as the ratio of the number of outcomes in an exhaustive set of equally likely outcomes that produce a given event to the total number of possible outcomes.
What are the total number of possible outcomes? All the planets, in all the solar systems, in this universe or all the universes, if the concept of parallel universe is true (which again I do not believe in)? Nope take also into account the planets, the solar systems, the galaxies that did not get formed. But does anyone know such a number? Not in my knowledge. We do not know how many galaxies exist, let alone know about the solar systems and the planets, how can we possibly know how many did not get formed, due to natural factors (not enough gravitation force to bind the material, not the right distance, etc...)!

There are more points and a discussion such as this can actually consume all the server space that Blogspot has to offer and yet will not result in any decisive outcome. This is not to hurt anyone's sentiments or feelings. Whether or not one believes in the concept of God, is one's own decision and rightly so. I just chose to ignore it.

Turning Green with envy.

Green is the theme today in the office. Oh, did I tell you we have a party on the last friday of the month and a color is chosen to be the theme of the day. So this time, its Green. Okay Okay, I repeated. Well so I am wearing this, ethnic stuff, which I love, (and I haven't yet figured out how to put a picture on the blog, else I would have posted it.) and someone promptly remarked, "Nice mosquito net". :O Was he referring to my top, called a Kurta in Hindi, or me? A mosquito trapped in anything would make that anything a mosquito net, right? How dare he? ;)

Anyway, the weather has chosen to be pleasant today and that's a welcome after the harsh summer. What's on my agenda for the monsoon season? Well.... I love getting drenched in the rain. So that is something I am going to indulge in a lot. I beat GNU chess occassionaly now, so I have to sharpen that skill too. And snakes.... I love them, well I love all wild life, .... And I plan to join a snake club and get trained in handling them.

Go Cobra. But I need to end it on a green note. So, BOOMSLANGER.

Sunil Dutt is no more.

As an actor he was average, and sometimes rank bad, nevertheless a top hero of his time. But as a human being, there aren't very many above him. A rare politician, his integrity no one questions, his commitment to cause of the slum dwellers is legendary and Indian sports had taken a turn for the better with him at the helm of the affaors as the sports minister of the country.

A great loss it indeed is.

Relationship and communication.

This post is inspired by a couple of comments by me on annush's blog. Though it's not a comment on anyone.

There is a beautiful Indian movie called Ijaazat (Permission). Bear with me for a brief plot outline. It starts with the meeting of the hero, Naseer, and the heroine, Rekha, in a waiting room of a railway station. The story then goes into a flashback, where Naseer is in love with Anu, who is a pretty progressive in thoughts. Anu is non-commital on marriage as she thinks it might spoil the relationship. Meanwhile, Naseer is coaxed to marry an acquaintance, Rekha (yep who meets him in the waiting room), and Naseer tries one last time, asking Anu to marry him. Fast forward, Naseer is married to Rekha. Rekha sees some of the stuff of Anu lying in their house. She also comes to know about her through Naseer, who shares a platonic relationship with Anu. This bothers Rekha a lot and she becomes insecure. There is a beautiful dialogue by Naseer to Rekha on Anu, "More than me it's you who can not seem to forget her". Anyway, the story goes on and one day, Naseer is informed that Anu is serious in a hospital. He rushes from the office and comforts Anu. Next day, Rekha while doing the laundry finds Anu's earring stuck in Naseer sweater. She leaves him, in a moment of anger and anguish, thinking she is coming in between the two of them. But then one day she calls up Naseer to sort it out only to be answered by Anu on the phone. She leaves her home for an unknown destination, wishing him all the best with Anu.
The flashback ends there.
In the waiting room, Rekha asks Naseer, meeting him after a gap of a few years, about his life and Anu. Naseer tells her that after she had left him, he had a heart attack and Anu took his care. That was when, it seems, Rekha had called her. Anu wanted Naseer to call Rekha back but Naseer dismissed saying, "she went on her own, she should come on her own".
And about Anu, she had died in a road accident.
Regretting the events, they both sleep. In the morning, when Rekha returns his shawl (because it was cold, Naseer had offered her the shawl), her earring is also stuck in that. That's when Naseer says, "it does not mean, I slept with you. You had totally misinterpreted the chain of events."

Naseer wants to say, they can still get back, when Sashi, comes walking through the waiting room door, calling out Rekha, asking her to pack up and hurry up. Turns out, Rekha has married Sashi. Sashi takes her luggage out, and Rekha before departing says, "Pehle main bina pooche chali gayi thi, ab ijaazat de dijiye."
Translated it means, Earlier I had left without asking, please give me the permission now."

And she bows to him. Sashi, who is wondering whats taking his wife so long, comes rushing in and is puzzled. When they both go out, Rekha with teary eyes, Sashi asks her, who it was and then after a moments pause asks, "Naseer?". And the movie ends.

It's a beautiful movie and it is about how insecure we can get in our relationships only because we do not care to confront the situations. We draw our own inferences and perhaps it gets too late by the time we know the truth.

A relationship is worth all the pain in the world, but while in it. And the feeling of hurt is the most when a relationship goes down the drains only because we chose not to talk, not to communicate with the person we love.

This post is not a comment on anyone, but I am sure, everyone has been through it atleast once in one's lifetime.

Ahhhhhhhh it feels great

well... nice break I had.

Who did I think I was? Superman. When the mercury shot up to 44 deg C, I was bicycling around. Trying to be another Lance Armstrong, eh? Mirror, mirror on the wall.....

So I got what I deserved. Dehydration and cramps and a mild fever. Well but I like to get sick... can someone dig up the name of the phobia for that for me please?

Anyway, I really wanted to take a break. I just did not want to be online. Watched some gorgeous movies(!!!), yeah thats talking like a character from any of the Jane Austen's novels. Cold Mountain, I liked very much. I do not know how the video libraries or IMDB classifies it based on the genre. What the heck... let me check out.

And IMDB says.... Genre: Drama / War / Romance (more)

Well to me this is really a romantic movie and perhaps the best I have seen. I know there are so many like Gone with the wind, Casablanca, Shop around the corner, City of Angels, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry met Sally so on and so forth, but when it comes to romance, Indians, Indian novels and Indian movies are way too ahead of Hollywood stuff. Ofcourse minus their song and dance routines. Indians are not just emotional, they like to be emotional too and perhaps like to be emotionally handled too, which perhaps is not such a good idea. But then who am I to pass the judgement? So what was I talking about? Oh yes, the movies. So those movies are very good but they are not extraordinarily brilliant, definitely not when I have seen some brilliant Hindi movies on romance. But Cold Mountain, that's my kind of romance. I am not sure if I have seen any other romantic movie even in Hindi that touches it. Pyaasa? may be.

Beau Pere was another movie which I saw and though I know French as well as I know the language spoken in Alpha Centurii galaxy, it was a good movie.

On that note, I resume my blogging.

P.S. - Thanks Annush. She is doing very well now. :)

And Ciona, I am a little dumb, dumber than Jim Carrey.... oh he is really dumb. Which novel? "The life of Pi" or "The Namesake"? anyway, happy reading.

Wanted, Break !!

Whole of the last week was exceptionally tiring. My daughter was hospitalized due to very high fever (106 F is pretty high, right?) and her nomal minimum temperature was 102 F. That had us freaked out really. And now all I want is an additional day off from the office so that I can take proper rest.

If wishes were horses beggars would be riding them. :(