There was a time when i loved coffee and could drink anything that was given to me.
But these days, because i have with me .a couple of people who experiment with good coffee, my taste buds seem to have become confused. One day i am drinking good coffee, and the next, atrocious one.
The result is that i have developed some small aversion to coffee.
As long as you are not thinking about something, things go along nicely. But if you start thinking about it, you get confused. Then you have to work on it and gain some expertise, which means, gain some confidence.
Somewhere i read that if a centipede thought about how it walks, it would get into a tangle and sit immobile till some helpful bird comes along and solves that problem.
Is that true?
Thursday, July 31, 2008
The Joy of Doing It
I like the sound of saxophone, but have never heard any serious jazz.
But still I liked to read about John Arnold Griffin III, the tenor saxophonist, who, 5 feet 5 inches tall, was known as “The Little Giant”. He was also often praised, “World’s Fastest Saxophonist” and “Quickest Gun in the West”.
I don’t know how I can give you a link to his music so that we can listen to him play, but there is a wonderful description in The Guardian:
“Griffin, one of the fastest saxophonists in jazz, would hurtle through solos like a snooker player intent on clearing the table in one break, scattering his improvisations with wry quotes, skimming runs and raucous hoots and honks. He would regularly accelerate the most tender of ballads to a sprint, and deliver a blues with an earthy relish that drew on the raw rhythm and blues traditions of his native Chicago.”
(I don’t know whether it is legal to quote like this, someone tell me. If illegal, I will take this out, of course)
If I am writing here about him now, it is because of a quote that I read in his obituary:
“Everybody called me a racehorse, but feeling good is my thing,” he is reported to have
said. He underlines one of our values: Enjoyment.
Griffin has also said this: “I enjoy life, man, I feel fortunate that I’m usually around nice, positive thinking people. I can’t imagine being around a bunch of grumpy cats, fussin’ and fightin’”.
So, let us for a moment remember this acclaimed performer, who once memorably stated, “I like to play fast. I get excited, and I have to sort of control myself, restrain myself. But when the rhythm section gets cooking, I want to explode.”
When you love what you are doing, it drives you, right? You are not in control.
Peace.
But still I liked to read about John Arnold Griffin III, the tenor saxophonist, who, 5 feet 5 inches tall, was known as “The Little Giant”. He was also often praised, “World’s Fastest Saxophonist” and “Quickest Gun in the West”.
I don’t know how I can give you a link to his music so that we can listen to him play, but there is a wonderful description in The Guardian:
“Griffin, one of the fastest saxophonists in jazz, would hurtle through solos like a snooker player intent on clearing the table in one break, scattering his improvisations with wry quotes, skimming runs and raucous hoots and honks. He would regularly accelerate the most tender of ballads to a sprint, and deliver a blues with an earthy relish that drew on the raw rhythm and blues traditions of his native Chicago.”
(I don’t know whether it is legal to quote like this, someone tell me. If illegal, I will take this out, of course)
If I am writing here about him now, it is because of a quote that I read in his obituary:
“Everybody called me a racehorse, but feeling good is my thing,” he is reported to have
said. He underlines one of our values: Enjoyment.
Griffin has also said this: “I enjoy life, man, I feel fortunate that I’m usually around nice, positive thinking people. I can’t imagine being around a bunch of grumpy cats, fussin’ and fightin’”.
So, let us for a moment remember this acclaimed performer, who once memorably stated, “I like to play fast. I get excited, and I have to sort of control myself, restrain myself. But when the rhythm section gets cooking, I want to explode.”
When you love what you are doing, it drives you, right? You are not in control.
Peace.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Octopus Attack
Did any of you read about the policeman who hid himself in the bathroom of a Ladies College Hostel and watched the girls bath?
Shocking, right?
But what is more shocking is this statement from one of the girls who caught him in the act: "When we reached the bathroom, we found a man strangulating some girls".
How many hands do you need to strangulate some girls simulataneously?
Monstrous.
Shocking, right?
But what is more shocking is this statement from one of the girls who caught him in the act: "When we reached the bathroom, we found a man strangulating some girls".
How many hands do you need to strangulate some girls simulataneously?
Monstrous.
Heartlessness
In what is a meandering tale, where improbable events are narrated in a convoluted language, Michael Chabon has his character, Zelikman, say this:
“I want nothing to do with soldiers, armies, chains of command. All the evil in the world derives from the actions of men acting in a mass against other masses of men.”
We all know enough history to know what faceless men who clip staplers to papers and push files are capable of. Pity is, they don’t think they belong to a massive force of oppression. They usually think they are doing their duty, and take pride in it.
All they care for is attendance, notings, and of course, the pay check at the end of month.
“I want nothing to do with soldiers, armies, chains of command. All the evil in the world derives from the actions of men acting in a mass against other masses of men.”
We all know enough history to know what faceless men who clip staplers to papers and push files are capable of. Pity is, they don’t think they belong to a massive force of oppression. They usually think they are doing their duty, and take pride in it.
All they care for is attendance, notings, and of course, the pay check at the end of month.
Predictive Sciences
Come Friday, we are to fast between nine in the morning to six in the evening. Then we wash ourselves to clean us of the contamination of solar eclipse.
More than a billion people will be in the shadow of the Moon on that day, and most of them will be observing some kind of ritual, I bet.
But I read that the first recorded episode of eclipse was made in the reign of some Chinese emperor called Zhong Kang, some two thousand years before Christ.
What that record tells us is this:
“ In the fifth year of Zhong Kang, in the autumn, in the ninth month, on the first day of the month, there was an eclipse of the Sun, when he ordered the Prince of Yin to lead the imperial forces to punish Hsi and Ho”.
What did the two jokers, Hsi and Ho, do to invite the wrath of the Mighty Emperor? Did they bring about the eclipse by some magic?
No. They were astrologers in the Imperial Court of China who failed to forewarn the emperor about the impending doom. And they had their heads severed by order of The Emperor.
Now, astrology has had some severe repercussions. But if you are an astrologer, or even otherwise, it is better to hedge your bets. They have learnt their lesson and have grown so successful in this, now we don’t expect their predictions to come true.
We call them Meteorologists, of course.
More than a billion people will be in the shadow of the Moon on that day, and most of them will be observing some kind of ritual, I bet.
But I read that the first recorded episode of eclipse was made in the reign of some Chinese emperor called Zhong Kang, some two thousand years before Christ.
What that record tells us is this:
“ In the fifth year of Zhong Kang, in the autumn, in the ninth month, on the first day of the month, there was an eclipse of the Sun, when he ordered the Prince of Yin to lead the imperial forces to punish Hsi and Ho”.
What did the two jokers, Hsi and Ho, do to invite the wrath of the Mighty Emperor? Did they bring about the eclipse by some magic?
No. They were astrologers in the Imperial Court of China who failed to forewarn the emperor about the impending doom. And they had their heads severed by order of The Emperor.
Now, astrology has had some severe repercussions. But if you are an astrologer, or even otherwise, it is better to hedge your bets. They have learnt their lesson and have grown so successful in this, now we don’t expect their predictions to come true.
We call them Meteorologists, of course.
Let's log here
Myself and Baskar were thinking about having space for all of us to share and express views, thoughts, news etc. This is more like the times when we all used to meet in person some 10, 15 years ago. This could probably be the virtual room where we log in to log.
Looking forward to meet you all over here. It's our blog.
Looking forward to meet you all over here. It's our blog.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Discipline
Suppose you visit one of our religious discourses. The bearded man- it is always a bearded man, never a bearded woman- says, you have to control breath, control food, control your senses, control your thought, control your speech, control your actions, control this, control that.
When you come out of the lecture, and go home in a crowded bus, you are in a foul mood, so much so, you want to control the man standing on your left feet, and throw him tumbling out into the skies, whirling like a dervish.
What is the use, you say, of all this control? That freak speaks rot.
Suppose now I come and tell you, “I have mastered the art of self-denial, Carl Lewis says”.
Would it make you feel better?
I suppose not.
Not even if you knew what his record is.
Living
Suppose you are not feeling well. You are not really ill, but you feel tired and drained out. Your child wants to play with you, but you push him away. Your wife wants to talk to you, but you yell at her. You are thinking a thousand thoughts, but nothing particular comes to mind. You are feeling hopeless, and you want to moan.
Suppose now I come and tell you, “We all live in the land of the dead, Kabir says”.
Would it make you feel better?
I suppose not.
Suppose now I come and tell you, “We all live in the land of the dead, Kabir says”.
Would it make you feel better?
I suppose not.
Monday, July 28, 2008
The Seed - A Story
I think it was yesterday, but I am not too sure. I was talking with my cousin who had come visiting me; not really talking, but grazing various issues, as you generally do when you have made up your mind to go but are not really sure when.
All of a sudden he said that we human beings think we are on top of the evolution tree, but it is not a fact. He opened my eyes, really. Because he followed it up by saying, if all the cell phones failed, and the airplanes crashed, we will find it very difficult to survive like this.
We are all getting more and more dependent on medicine to survive. Suppose something happened so that the medicines can’t be distributed properly, or some madman took over the world, and outlawed the production and distribution of medicine, what will happen to the human race?
He says that about ninety nine point nine percent of our genes won’t be passed on, however selfish they are. The only genes that would get passed about would be that of the madman, who would ensure that he got the proper medicines for him and his children.
So the most selfish gene survives, I said.
That is wrong, he replied. The medicine of the present day is not like that in the past. Knowledge of that sort is not easy to come by. It needs a large pool of people to maintain the health of the unfittest Homo sapiens. In about three of four generations, the children of that selfish dictator, he said, would mount the thermometer on surgical cotton, and worship it with a garland of capsules. Then the great God, Hippocrates will fail, and humanity will be wiped out.
What about the selfish gene? I asked him, it ought to survive. It always knows how to do that.
May be, said my cousin, who is an avid reader of Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, you should listen to my story.
SEEDS
Molwick, the Archdeacon of BleeterWelterLabs, frowned. He didn’t like what he saw before his eyes.
There, very much before his eyes, lay the mold of Spirofyfum CocciLunge Bettisplurgyta. It was of an unusual odour, an odour he hated to inhale. There was some contamination, and the malodorous mold seemed to sneer at him, what with its pale purple spores.
Molwick need not have frowned, for within a month, scientists all over the world of the Planet Cymbal, joined him in frowning, and their frowns did not clear sooner than that of Molwick.
For in Bingerland, suddenly all milk turned into reddish curds.
In Matawabe, those who ingested the grishorn fruit were disoriented, as if they were drunk.
In Gerbsland, the green fields of the crop Pylliopiran, displayed astonishing behaviour. When the distant Microwave Towers of the Pleizaidy Power Plant discharged the surge of Power in a boom not audible to human ears, the Pyllopiran Flowers turned towards Pleizaidy, and bobbed about in the winds as if rocked by some urgent song.
All perplexing.
The Archdeacons of the Planet Cymbal, held animated conferences, visited one another, published reams of papers and bound them in volumes that were consigned to the dark, cavernous stacks of the university libraries.
They went some way further, only when some bot like structure landed smack on top of the telescope on Mount Mrkaclkrin Observatory, and before the astonished eyes of their Astronomers, grew into a thick film which reflected light.
Their knowledge received a fillip when, some hours later, the radio antennae of the Temple of Lord Bhuyrava grew spores which improved the audio reception by an unimaginable extent.
And when the latest version of xPod was released, the mystery was solved.
Jules Frigherz Lai, who in the city of Kertynhia, had bought his xPod after standing in the head of a queue of 75000 people for a very patient 223 days, had run out of food and water and was in a dehydrated state. However, he was the first to get the xPod in his city. Demented with happiness, he stumbled out of the store, waving about his jewel of xPod to frenzied cheers of adulation.
His face was on every channel and he had his three minutes of fame, during which, speechless from hunger and thirst, he displayed the full gamut of emotions, as hundreds of questions were thrown at him, and lights flashed from hundreds of cameras and he heard the whirr of hundreds of video recorders.
When Jufer, as he was popularly known to his friends, got home, he assembled his deliriously admiring friends, and plugged the xPod to his PC.
But alas, after playing the theme song and label of xPod, the screen of the PC dissolved to display waves of dots washing over its tiny pixels.
Jufer received good-natured jeers. He and everyone knew, the xPod had been infected with a virus.
Rashij Bhuchara, who was the hardware man among them, took off his sweatshirts, and sat down to rewire the PC.
And after a long time of fifteen minutes, when Bhuchara switched on the TV, mayhem broke, and spread over Planet Cymbal within six hours.
For in that xPod, which had been infected by the mycrypod of the latest version of the iPod that had been embedded in the brain of a teenager in Planet Earth was a Cymbal Shattering News, which the youngster, in a belated return to sanity, had downloaded from the BBC News.
When all the Archdeacons of Planet Cymbal gathered together with the intelligence they had mustered from the infected xPod, they knew this:
Planet Earth was located in a galaxy many a mile distant from them.
The Planet Earth had been driven by technology and insanity.
The inhabitants of Planet Earth realized their insanity only when their doom had grown very near.
And in a grand act of insanity, egged on by PProffessor RRichhard DDawkkins, who had in turn been egged on by MMastter RRichhard DDawkkins, Grand Dictator of the Selfish Genes, the Scientists of Planet Earth had decided to protect the Selfish Gene.
They had liberated the Selfish Gene from the casement of human body, and put it in a Mill of Gene Replication, where protected from the vagaries of human will and divine weather, it spliced and replicated the Selfish Genes, and spewed them into space, and continued to spew for all eternity to come.
Entrenched within tiny, invisible bots, the Selfish Genes had traveled and had found a home in Planet Cymbal.
This the learned Archdeacons deciphered, and when they had deciphered and their knowledge was complete, they all gathered together, and with an informed public, took the only choice available to them, and took it unanimously.
Seven days later, the citizens of Planet Cymbal washed themselves clean, and after inoculating themselves with suitable antiselfishgenes, they all crowded into suitably scrubbed airships, and though with a heavy heart, but with a nimble feet, abandoned their beloved Planet Cymbal to the machinations of the Selfish Genes.
All of a sudden he said that we human beings think we are on top of the evolution tree, but it is not a fact. He opened my eyes, really. Because he followed it up by saying, if all the cell phones failed, and the airplanes crashed, we will find it very difficult to survive like this.
We are all getting more and more dependent on medicine to survive. Suppose something happened so that the medicines can’t be distributed properly, or some madman took over the world, and outlawed the production and distribution of medicine, what will happen to the human race?
He says that about ninety nine point nine percent of our genes won’t be passed on, however selfish they are. The only genes that would get passed about would be that of the madman, who would ensure that he got the proper medicines for him and his children.
So the most selfish gene survives, I said.
That is wrong, he replied. The medicine of the present day is not like that in the past. Knowledge of that sort is not easy to come by. It needs a large pool of people to maintain the health of the unfittest Homo sapiens. In about three of four generations, the children of that selfish dictator, he said, would mount the thermometer on surgical cotton, and worship it with a garland of capsules. Then the great God, Hippocrates will fail, and humanity will be wiped out.
What about the selfish gene? I asked him, it ought to survive. It always knows how to do that.
May be, said my cousin, who is an avid reader of Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, you should listen to my story.
SEEDS
Molwick, the Archdeacon of BleeterWelterLabs, frowned. He didn’t like what he saw before his eyes.
There, very much before his eyes, lay the mold of Spirofyfum CocciLunge Bettisplurgyta. It was of an unusual odour, an odour he hated to inhale. There was some contamination, and the malodorous mold seemed to sneer at him, what with its pale purple spores.
Molwick need not have frowned, for within a month, scientists all over the world of the Planet Cymbal, joined him in frowning, and their frowns did not clear sooner than that of Molwick.
For in Bingerland, suddenly all milk turned into reddish curds.
In Matawabe, those who ingested the grishorn fruit were disoriented, as if they were drunk.
In Gerbsland, the green fields of the crop Pylliopiran, displayed astonishing behaviour. When the distant Microwave Towers of the Pleizaidy Power Plant discharged the surge of Power in a boom not audible to human ears, the Pyllopiran Flowers turned towards Pleizaidy, and bobbed about in the winds as if rocked by some urgent song.
All perplexing.
The Archdeacons of the Planet Cymbal, held animated conferences, visited one another, published reams of papers and bound them in volumes that were consigned to the dark, cavernous stacks of the university libraries.
They went some way further, only when some bot like structure landed smack on top of the telescope on Mount Mrkaclkrin Observatory, and before the astonished eyes of their Astronomers, grew into a thick film which reflected light.
Their knowledge received a fillip when, some hours later, the radio antennae of the Temple of Lord Bhuyrava grew spores which improved the audio reception by an unimaginable extent.
And when the latest version of xPod was released, the mystery was solved.
Jules Frigherz Lai, who in the city of Kertynhia, had bought his xPod after standing in the head of a queue of 75000 people for a very patient 223 days, had run out of food and water and was in a dehydrated state. However, he was the first to get the xPod in his city. Demented with happiness, he stumbled out of the store, waving about his jewel of xPod to frenzied cheers of adulation.
His face was on every channel and he had his three minutes of fame, during which, speechless from hunger and thirst, he displayed the full gamut of emotions, as hundreds of questions were thrown at him, and lights flashed from hundreds of cameras and he heard the whirr of hundreds of video recorders.
When Jufer, as he was popularly known to his friends, got home, he assembled his deliriously admiring friends, and plugged the xPod to his PC.
But alas, after playing the theme song and label of xPod, the screen of the PC dissolved to display waves of dots washing over its tiny pixels.
Jufer received good-natured jeers. He and everyone knew, the xPod had been infected with a virus.
Rashij Bhuchara, who was the hardware man among them, took off his sweatshirts, and sat down to rewire the PC.
And after a long time of fifteen minutes, when Bhuchara switched on the TV, mayhem broke, and spread over Planet Cymbal within six hours.
For in that xPod, which had been infected by the mycrypod of the latest version of the iPod that had been embedded in the brain of a teenager in Planet Earth was a Cymbal Shattering News, which the youngster, in a belated return to sanity, had downloaded from the BBC News.
When all the Archdeacons of Planet Cymbal gathered together with the intelligence they had mustered from the infected xPod, they knew this:
Planet Earth was located in a galaxy many a mile distant from them.
The Planet Earth had been driven by technology and insanity.
The inhabitants of Planet Earth realized their insanity only when their doom had grown very near.
And in a grand act of insanity, egged on by PProffessor RRichhard DDawkkins, who had in turn been egged on by MMastter RRichhard DDawkkins, Grand Dictator of the Selfish Genes, the Scientists of Planet Earth had decided to protect the Selfish Gene.
They had liberated the Selfish Gene from the casement of human body, and put it in a Mill of Gene Replication, where protected from the vagaries of human will and divine weather, it spliced and replicated the Selfish Genes, and spewed them into space, and continued to spew for all eternity to come.
Entrenched within tiny, invisible bots, the Selfish Genes had traveled and had found a home in Planet Cymbal.
This the learned Archdeacons deciphered, and when they had deciphered and their knowledge was complete, they all gathered together, and with an informed public, took the only choice available to them, and took it unanimously.
Seven days later, the citizens of Planet Cymbal washed themselves clean, and after inoculating themselves with suitable antiselfishgenes, they all crowded into suitably scrubbed airships, and though with a heavy heart, but with a nimble feet, abandoned their beloved Planet Cymbal to the machinations of the Selfish Genes.
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