Of Fools…

Its early morning and Fool’s day is already having an effect.

I decided last night to stop being Mr. Rectitude and to seriously consider becoming a slimeball. And having regrets and thoughts of guilt within 8 hours, without having ‘done’ anything yet. I’ve understood something in the last few hours. Some of us are just not cut out to be smooth. Worst part is I’m no saint. I’m the guy who keeps doing the right things simply because the wrong things takes balls to accomplish and then stews in misery and green envy…

Also read a blog (or post Mr. DK) which was most disturbing…

Stormclouds in the horizon.

I’m afraid time is going to pull a fast one on us.

The Nature of Despair

dil jalata hai to jalane de
aansu na baha fariyaad na kar
dil jalata hai to jalane de
tu parada nasheen ka aashiq hai
yoon naam-e-vafa barabaad na kar
dil jalata hai to jalane de
maasoom najar ke teer chala
bismil ko bismil aur bana
ab sharm-o-haya ke parade mein
yoon chhup chhup ke bedaad na kar
dil jalata hai to jalane de
ham aas lagaaye baithe hain
tum vada karake bhool gaye
ya soorat aake dikha jaao
ya kaha do hamako yaad na kar
dil jalata hai, dil jalata hai, dil jalata hai …

Mukesh

What is despair if not the dish seasoned by the spice of hope. To hope is illogical.

You were right Mr. Batra

Slice of Life

First of all, apologies for the absence of posts for two months. Those who know why will remember the struggle life had turned into..

A little compendium for the last two months

1. New Year; Titanomachy plans finalized
2. January 1st week; working like a maniac, formed new friends with the java group I taught.. (come to think of it that was nice)
3. 2nd week; semester begins, workload, crappy faculty(no surprises there), Titanomachy being canvassed to raina.. bought the guitar
4. Birthday.. fever
5. Forgot a birthday.. fever continues
6. January end, Titanomachy work group formed
7. February; working 15 hours a day, avnish also slaving away on the quizzes
8. 1st week end; both quizzes ready, fervour (ieee bags honour for worst fest ever) bad fest, bad day.. it rained
9. feeling horrible and angry; sponsorship situation not good
10. 2nd week.. sponsorships still dawdling.. sam on edge..
11. 3rd week.. everything downhill.. ims quiz was a disaster
12. minors; Titanomachy to be merged.. then reduced.. then cancelled.. then finally postponded.. worst week of this academic year.. hate a certain officious sob
13. minors end..
14. a few days of peace
15. results come out.. topped.. 85%.. 2nd and 3rd place in gen and biz quiz respectively in xtasy(which beat fervour in its puerility but was less irritating)
16.today; srcc.. I love the place now.. won the debate.. met a person I’ve been meaning to.. am monarch of all existence for a day..

So in hindsight two months of hell can be compensated by a day in heaven. I’m happy. Will give the toefl soon. I still am alive (kicking too!!).

Am working on the guitar, some songs, the animation film idea..
Read many novels.. ‘Investiture of the Gods’ (ancient Chinese) primarily..
Wrote a bit.. A few poems too.. sketched.. getting a French craving (again..)
Am thinking about a new technical paper..
Want to read up on AI.. feeling lazy

Need to sit in more quizzes.. Need to sit in more quizzes.. and debates

Have learned a lot of my own thoughts.. I think I might make a good scientist..

Well, goodbye for now. I remain, eternally at your service of course.

A Thousand Wishes And Sighs

Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ki har khwahish pe dum nikle bahut nikle mere armaan lekin phir bhi kam nikle

Mirza Galib

The year is about to end leaving behind unfulfilled promises and a rather uncomfortable amount of regrets. They say that time is a leveller and doesn’t really care who cries in its wake. Benazir is dead, they say she was great, they say she was corrupt. I guess I’m apathetic. Its long past when being concerned was a force of habit. What I do care is that I’ll turn 21 next month, with not much I can look back upon and feel proud. What am I? An engineering student in a b grade college, sure there is the rather large gre score and vague hopes of a future (like academia ever gave happiness), there is the 140 ‘I.Q.’, something I don’t care about (a long time back being smart counted), there is a smattering of pride in my rather select branches of interest, especially japan, a bunch of oddballs as ‘friends’, and a lot of might have beens..

I’ve survived christmas with a string of murders. Detective novels that is. Now I finished with old Sherlock when I was a kid (he still rules supreme though). So I searched for something old and obscure, and guess what I found. A certain Dr. John Thorndyke. Created by R. A. Freeman. He’s the worlds first fictional forensic scientist (a medico-jurisprudence expert they call him, as opposed to a detective). So instead of the pipe, tweed and glass we have a camera, x ray machine and a microscope. By the way its the first work of fiction which uses x ray for forensic purposes. Now this series might be a bit obscure but at least you have my word (little critical value though I can bestow) that the Thorndyke series is more than excellent. R. A. Freeman has found himself a new avid fan.

Generally detective stories are ‘whodunits’. However this particular author invented a ‘howtocatchem’, i.e. a detective story in which in the beginning you get to know who the murderer is and the story unravels how the detective (or forensic scientist in this case) catches him. This is an excellent style of writing as everything is known and you get to cheer on your hero as he displays his skill and outwits the criminal.

I am in love with Project Gutenberg (now don’t ask what that is). It has given me such rare old works which we don’t hear of everyday. Space opera fiction of 1850’s, legal fictions, detective novels, romances, explorations and works of every kind. A thousand sighs that some masterpieces are forgotten by posterity. Kind of a humbling thought and makes personal regrets seem insignificant.

So 2007 about to end. Life, thoughts, friends, books and an everlasting desire for meaning continues…

Have a great new year.

The Claw

Suppose you are in an ancient city-state. Suppose one fine morning you see the fearsome S.P.Q.R. on the horizon. You know the Roman Empire has an unhealthy interest in your town. You know the legions are marching and the galleys are sailing. (Play the empire strikes back score) There is nowhere to run and not much to fight with. Who you gonna call?

The city was Syracuse, the time 213BC. the Roman Republic attacked Syracuse with a fleet of at least 120 Quinqueremes under Marcus Claudius Marcellus. What is a Quinquereme you ask?

It’s a humongous big (for the time period) warship. It had five rows of rowers, two sails, archers, catapult artillery, ramming tip, the works. The roman had 120 of these not to speak of their legions, catapults.. etc. What they didn’t have was one crazy old scientist (ok.. philosopher) who would pwn them.

Suddenly the roman army was halted with stones falling out of the sky, solar beams blinding their sailors, crossbow fired arrows of an incredible range, and their ghastliest nightmare, the claw of archimedes..

Plutarch writes

.. when Archimedes began to ply his engines, he at once shot against the land forces all sorts of missile weapons, and immense masses of stone that came down with incredible noise and violence; against which no man could stand; for they knocked down those upon whom they fell in heaps, breaking all their ranks and files. In the meantime huge poles thrust out from the walls over the ships and sunk some by great weights which they let down from on high upon them; others they lifted up into the air by an iron hand..

claw_animation.gif (GIF Image, 480×294 pixels)
Marcellus scorned his own engineers, stating,

“shall we not make an end of fighting against this geometrical Briareus who, sitting at ease by the sea, plays pitch and toss with our ships to our confusion, and by the multitude of missiles that he hauls at us outdoes the hundred-handed giants of mythology?”.

But this had little effect on them since the Romans were in such terror that if they did see a piece of rope or wood projecting above the wall, they would cry “there it is again,”declaring that Archimedes was setting some engine in motion against them, and would turn their backs and run away, insomuch that Marcellus desisted from all conflicts and assaults, putting all his hope in a long siege.

Ships lifted up into the air, and smashed against the rocks by gigantic cranes!! Scorching heat beams!! Barrage of arrows all mechanically controlled!! This in an age when they wore togas and rode in chariots. Archimedes rocked, he single handedly gave the romans no end of trouble. Unfortunately the food ran out and the city surrendered. Not before completely humiliating Marcellus’ grand fleet.

And of course they killed Archimedes. Legend has it it was his last wish to finish some geometrical problem he was drawing in the sand.

… a Roman soldier, running upon him with a drawn sword, offered to kill him; and that Archimedes, looking back, earnestly besought him to hold his hand a little while, that he might not leave what he was then at work upon inconclusive and imperfect; but the soldier, nothing moved by his entreaty, instantly killed him.

An Interesting Life

May you have an interesting life
–Chinese Curse

First of all an apology to a certain divebomber, I’ve dropped the idea of a blog contrasting the principles of the two greatest space operas ever simply because no one else will understand the joke.. And I don’t feel like joking..

Wishes have a bad habit of coming true. Never wish for a respite from boredom. As has been said

After a time, you may find that ‘having’ is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as ‘wanting.’ It is not logical, but it is often true.
–Spock “Amok Time,” stardate 3372.7.

Now for the blog proper. As a kid I have always been an avid anime fan (anime is Japanese animation for the uninitiated), however I stumbled across this on some site.. Brought back fond memories.. Its.. er.. really educational.. Stop reading in case of extreme disgust and/or headache.

Anime Physics

1. Law of Metaphysical Irregularity
   The normal laws of physics do not apply.

2. Law of Differentiated Gravitation
   Whenever someone or something jumps, is thrown, or otherwise is rendered airborn, gravity is reduced by a factor of 4.

3. Law of Sonic Amplification, First Law of Anime Acoustics
   In space, loud sounds, like explosions, are even louder because there is no air to get in the way.

4. Law of Constant Thrust, First Law of Anime Motion
   In space, constant thrust equals constant velocity.

5. Law of Mechanical Mobility, Second Law of Anime Motion
   The larger a mechanical device is, the faster it moves. Armored Mecha are the fastest objects known to human science.

6. Law of Temporal Variability
   Time is not a constant. Time stops for the hero whenever he does something ‘cool’ or ‘impressive’. Time slows down when friends and lovers are being killed and speeds up whenever there is a fight.

7. First Law of Temporal Mortality
   ‘Good Guys’ and ‘Bad Guys’ both die in one of two ways. Either so quick they don’t even see it coming, OR it’s a long drawn out affair where the character gains much insight to the workings of society, human existence or why the toast always lands butter side down.

8. Second Law of Temporal Mortality
   It takes some time for bad guys to die… regardless of physical damage. Even when the ‘Bad Guys’ are killed so quickly they didn’t even see it coming, it takes them a while to realize they are dead. This is attributed to the belief that being evil damages the Reality Lobe of the brain.

9. Law of Dramatic Emphasis
   Scenes involving extreme amounts of action are depicted with either still-frames or black screens with a slash of bright color (usually red or white).

10. Law of Dramatic Multiplicity
    Scenes that only happen once, for instance, a ‘Good Guy’ kicks the ‘Bad Guy’ in the face, are seen at least 3 times from 3 different angles.

11. Law of Inherent Combustability
    Everything explodes. Everything.

    • First Corollary – Anything that explodes bulges first.

    • Second Corollary – Large cities are the most explosive substances known to human science. Tokyo in particular seems to be the most unstable of these cities, sometimes referred to as “The Matchstick City”.

12. Law of Phlogistatic Emission
    Nearly all things emit light from fatal wounds.

13. Law of Energetic Emission
    There is alway an energy build up (commonly referred to as an energy ‘bulge’) before Mecha or space craft weapons fire. Because of the explosive qualities of weapons, it is believed that this is related to the Law of Inherent Combustability.

14. Law of Inverse Lethal Magnitude
    The destructive potential of a weapon is inversly proportional to its size.

    • First Corollary – Small and cute will always overcome big and ugly. Also know as the A-Ko phenomenon.

15. Law of Inexhaustability
    No one *EVER* runs out of ammunition. That is of course unless they are cornered, out-numbered, out-classed, and unconscious.

16. Law of Inverse Accuracy
    The accuracy of a ‘Good Guy’ when operating any form of fire-arm increases as the difficulty of the shot increases. The accuracy of the ‘Bad Guys’ when operating fire-arms decreases when the difficulty of the shot decreases. (Also known as the Stormtrooper Effect)

    Example: A ‘Good Guy’ in a drunken stupor being held upside down from a moving vehicle will always hit, and several battalions of ‘Bad Guys’ firing on a ‘Good Guy’ standing alone in the middle of an open field will always miss.

    • First Corollary – The more ‘Bad Guys’ there are, the less likely they will hit anyone or do any real damage.

    • Second Corollary – Whenever a ‘Good Guy’ is faced with insurmountable odds, the ‘Bad Guys’ line up in neat rows, allowing the hero to take them all out with a single burst of automatic fire and then escape.

    • Third Corollary – Whenever a ‘Good Guy’ is actually hit by enemy fire, it is in a designated ‘Good Guy Area’, usually a flesh wound in the shoulder or arm, which restricts the ‘Good Guy’ from doing anything more strenuous than driving, firing weaponry, using melee weapons, operating heavy machinery, or doing complex martial arts maneuvres.

17. Law of Transient Romantic Unreliability
    Minmei is a bimbo.

18. Law of Hemoglobin Capacity
    The human body contains over 12 gallons of blood, sometimes more, under high pressure.

19. Law of Demonic Consistency
    Demons and other supernatural creatures have at least three eyes, loads of fangs, tend to be yellow-green or brown (but black is not unknown), and can only be hurt by bladed weapons.

20. Law of Militaristic Unreliability
    Huge galaxy-wide armadas, entire armies, and large war-machines full of cruel, heartless, bloodthirsty warriors can be stopped and defeated with a single insignificant example of a caring/loving emotion or a song.

21. Law of Tactical Unreliability
    Tactical geniuses aren’t….

22. Law of Inconsequential Undetectability
    People never notice the little things… Like missing body parts, or wounds the size of Seattle.

23. Law of Juvenile Intellectuality
    Children are smarter than adults. And almost always twice as annoying.

Well, did you survive that? If yes, I congratulate you and would like to cultivate your acquaintance. And don’t ask me for the link of the site where this masterpiece is swiped from.

Light and Dark

Kirk: At times you seem quite human.
Spock: Captain, I don’t think that insults are within your prerogative as my commanding officer.

Kirk: I suspect you’re becoming more and more human all the time.
Spock: Captain, I see no reason to stand here and be insulted.

Had a weird diwali week. Started will a fever on the big day, then best friend had domestic trouble on dhanteras, then work trouble and finally a sister reveals a few closet skeletons on bhai duj. Well, being an agnostic I shouldn’t believe in luck, but was a bit angry. Did my best to console friend while getting major cold shoulder, tried to put sister on track imitating yoda, spock, musashi and stereotyped big brother, kind of worked through the work trouble and still sneezing like a bullhorn..

And to a certain wiseguy, blogging includes e-journals, I checked (wikipedia no less!!), blogging doesn’t just mean preaching about environment or darfur, instructing how to compute perfect mass ratios and specific impulses of interplanetary rockets, how to build your own quantum computer etc etc. So there!!!

Ehm.. now that I’m done ranting here is what caught my attention.. Are you aware of who actually invented examinations? Come on you must have wondered (wanting to build a time machine, to hell with Einstein’s laws, go back and…) well the Chinese..
Second question.. who invented ‘academic dishonesty’ (read cheating)? again the Chinese!!
wikipedia says

Academic dishonesty dates back to the first tests. Scholars note that cheating was prevalent on the Chinese civil service exams thousands of years ago, even when cheating carried the penalty of death for both examinee and examiner.

whew!!
The Chinese were pretty cool in other ways too.. they invented aerial warfare!!

The earliest documented aerial warfare took place in ancient China, when a manned Kite was set off to spy for military intelligence and communication.

manned kite.. beat that!!

and not just the Chinese, a judicious use of the internet over the last week resulted in me getting to know a few things about Indians, Greek, Mayans, Egyptians… After reaching the Romans I was a bit overwhelmed.. these guys had their catapults differentiated by ordinance pieces and ranges!! and Archimedes is rumoured to have used solar beams to fire and gigantic cranes to sink Roman galleys.. and everything from paddled ships to multistage rockets by the Chinese..
So well, the ancients were pretty smart in many ways. I wonder at times what would have happened had certain unsavoury parts of history not happened at all. Would we be building interstellar drives? But then we have always risen higher than the deepest we have fallen.. perhaps we aren’t hopeless..

I was caught up in all this yesterday night. And then the anger was gone. Somewhere in ancient Egypt a young engineer would have been feeling angry too being the butt end of some cosmic joke. That didn’t mean there would be no pyramid.

Diwali would return next year. The Light overcomes the Dark and we will have the last laugh (even yoda can’t put it better, but spock can, pointy ears rule!!)

Of Princes, Vulcans and Sisters

Spock- Had I been human, my response would be, Go to hell!!, had I been human..

I’ll be direct on a point, my minors ended today so I’m a bit giddy and my thoughts wouldn’t be cogent or have any distinct sense of purpose in this blog (but think about it, is there any sense, at all, in anything?). I’ll begin with the subject of the exam today, ‘Organizational Behavior’. For the uninitiated it teaches elementary organizational and management skills (a most essential part of engineering curriculum according to some.. nope..not the way its taught here). The point is it had something about Machiavellian tactics in some chapter. Now again, for the uninitiated, old Mach was a medieval scholar who thought, basically, that all humans are scumbags, ergo, the only way to manage (rule, lead, command) is to be a scumbag. Thinking about the old twisted doofus led me to think about his book ‘The Prince’ in which the prince follows old Mach’s tenets.. thinking of the Prince let me to think about another fictional character, the halfblood prince, Severus Snape. That brought back old fond memories of the seven books. But then I had always liked snapey, even before he turned out to be the martyr hero, he was the only character which I felt a kinship to (something about being an INTJ). Now Snape wasn’t as bad as old Mach’s prince, sure he manipulated for the greater good but then dumby was worse now wasn’t he..
That led me to think about my own ‘codebook’ (if you will). I worship logic, not power. I’ve been accused of being a wannabe vulcan so many times that I watched star trek as a kid just to find out what a vulcan was..
Anyway all these thoughts were running in my head when I was giving my gre treat (finally ‘they’ managed to get a treat out of me, vile sponges) and I was weighing them (the thoughts not the friends) and thinking exactly how should one lead our miserable existences. Then those adorable idiots started making their usual conversation and suddenly one asked whether we will still remain friends when college is over.. that set me thinking or rather pushed a few cogs in place. We are all idiots (at least old Mach was a bigger idiot than I am). Logic is all well and good but still a silly grin from my band of adorable idiots makes me grin even more inanely. Power is useless. Spock too had a friend. And Snape died for love.
By the way one sister has got a ‘testimonial’ on a social networking site from me (I swear its under duress!!) and another plans to talk the night away on phone.. I respect the philosophy of logic but otherwise I’m finding certain management tactics, old medieval stooges and assumptions of human behavior sheer illogical garbage. Cheers people, I’m off. Hail Terra!! (Hail Valkhanir too my pointy eared brethren, live long and prosper!!)

Reflections on Dickens and Japan

On Japan- If the heart was ever not just an instrument of circulation, I gave it away to a landmass!!

My second blog, I have been reading Dickens and was tempted to start it with some flowery line like ‘With great palpitation of heart..’, anyway thought the better of it. If the kind reader deigns to wonder what is my business reading novels and writing blogs during my minors rest assured I’m likewise nonplussed to the situation and it makes no sense whatsoever to me (hehe, pardon the verbiage). And yeah, the prophesied disaster came true in my first minor but the next two were substantially better and all in all the exam scenario is not as despondent as it could be.
Back to Dickens, read Martin Chuzzlewit and Nicholas Nicklebey in two days.. good works and the usual gestalt of pathos, satire and hope which is characteristic of old Dickens, he does have a tendency to bring out rather sad parts though.. He is a genius in human nature and his hopeful endings are what I need during these exams. Am reading Dombey and Son now and was howling with laughter for the past few minutes..
Got my official mail from ETS yesterday a 4.5 in analytical writing, for me anything above 4 goes though I was hoping for a 5, I guess the 1530 had to be tempered..
If you want to pick up on lost history a bit, I would recommend the Meiji Restoration and the Bakumatsu before it (Japanese History), believe me I find it to be more sanguinary than the French revolution and just as complicated. I have never read of a rebellion in which the rebels were actually in support of the emperor (mikado vs. the shogun in this case)..
Anyway the usual tale of patriotism, cowardice, bravery, slaughter, heroism, terrorism, barbarism, selflessness, selfishness etc etc on both sides, interesting stuff though. I do so admire those brave Samurai, slicing each other up with such finesse and the brave Shinsengumi and the brave Rebels and brave.., anyway I simply got to travel to Japan, to Kyoto,when I can. Till then I’ll have to be content with wikipedia, anime shows.. for a rough idea of the story (quite warped) see The Last Samurai (hate Tom Cruise though)..
Well this is it then, a rather hasty attempt at ‘blogging’. I’ll go back to reading D and Son and you can carry on doing whatever you were doing. Goodnight!! (or rather oyasumi nasai!!)

Ramblings..

I need to vent, rant, regale.. you get the picture. Two things may happen when we face storms in our pathetic existence, we give in to despair or we become philosophers (which is worse).. Though I’m stranger neither to blogging or cheap sophistry the only reason I’m typing inconsiderate of decent grammar, incoherently, when all decent folks must be sleeping is because I have an exam in 5 hours.. But you, brilliant reasoner, must have deduced that by now wouldn’t you? I gave up blogging an year back simply because there was nothing I could think of and write and whatever I did was pedestrian drivel and I’m afraid I’ll revert back to excessive verbiage, blatant cynicism and whining publicly just to steady my jangled nerves (all characteristics of a brilliant raconteur). But I’ll try anyhow.. The closest I felt to what I’m feeling now was the dawn before my GRE exam, it was the day I had realized that the world had to be a sphere!! (both because of my almost fainting before it due to sheer nerves and my inability to stand straight after it due to ecstasy) see I got a 1530 in it (ha take that cruel spherical world!) and believe me I’ll gloat about it till I turn 60..

but today is different.. today is the day I’ll crash my air castle (its just a minor and I’m a third year, shame on me for cowardice).. I keep going on and on about honor and decency in my head, all that disappears precisely when I need my courage and wits about me, I do stay where I need to stay and do what I need to do but I wish at times I would live like those wonderful samurai types who can stare down tough times..

anyway enough for now, need to study, I promise my next blog will actually be a blog.. please do read and be au revoir!!