Sethusamudram

The VHP has called for a nationwide road blockade protesting the construction of the bridge between India and Srilanka, apparently giving the reason that it will destroy the existing bridge below the sea which was built by Lord Sri Ram. Mythology is fine. But people shouldn't be so idiotic as to be doing something like this. Anything like this can happen only in India!!

Independence ?? Huh!!

Even Andra Pradesh is pondering over implementing the quota system that has been kicked off in UP!

"An empty mind(a politician's mind (most of them!)) is a devil's workshop!". Or you can equally say that "An empty mind is a politician's workshop". The meaning remains the same.

Only God can save this country. But i don't think he will get a chance for anything due to all the quotas and reservations and all the crap happening.

But wait!! which caste does God belong to?? hehhe!!!

We are celebrating our Independence day tomorrow. Independence from what??? The British ?? I think thats the only Independence we got in the real sense.

My country doesn't have independence from poverty, corruption, power-politics, crippling infrastructure, quota systems, red tape, diseases, naxals, terrorists in kashmir and bla bla bla. If you open the news paper you will see a whole lot of issues like this.

You guys must be thinking that i am one of those guys who just complain and do nothing. sirf bolnese kya hoga?? (talking won't help).

But atleast i complain !!

(Majority of India is like this)

I am sure that 100% of the people who are reading this blog will not have any sort of serious problems and will be pretty happy in life to celebrate Independence day. But what about the rest of India? Independence day doesn't mean anything to them!! It is still a daily fight for food and shelter.


I am ashamed of the current state of affairs in India. My head hangs low in front of other people when they talk of India as a poor and corrupt country. I cannot defend my country. Because thats the truth.

And our people raise a lot of hue and cry about Indians who have settled abroad. I don't think its wrong. People find that the quality of life is much better there than in India and hence they decide to settle there. At the end of the day everybody is selfish and would like to have a good life!

Somehow not so proud to be an Indian today!! Miles to go!

Jai Bharath! Vande Mataram! and Happy Independence day!!!!

Supreme court Rulez : NO to OBC quotas!

Some news which made me happy today. SC says no to OBC quotas. Check out the story here.

Simply APJ

Which president can do this? check out the story here.

Another interesting chat

He: do you believe in God?

me: i am actually in confused state. my logical mind is fighting with me nowadays to prove god
what about u ?

He: I support your logical mind....

me: hmm.... but i have believed in god all these years .. so i think it will take time for me to actually reject god completely
its difficult

He: true.. we cannot become atheists overnight.....

me: ya

He: I believe there is God which is nothing but your Self Confidence....its the greatest power

me: very true, but still we cannot delete god!! :)

He: correct...but I wonder...who created the world and the universe...and what is the purpose for which we are here??..any thoughts and opinions on this ??

me: there is no purpose for which we were created... we were just created by accident - we are a by product of evolution. time and space is still a mystery - i think, we cannot find as to when all began or when all will end or how big is this universe ... time and space are infinite quantities
what say ?

He: may be...not sure...but dont you think...time and space are defined by humans ...and just a concept...not concrete quantities

me: thats true ... do you know that if we travel fast time will actually slow down

He: ya....

me: relativity

He: true....

me: all i can say is we quantify those bcoz science needs things which are quantified to work on

He: very true, so ...what do you think...what should be our aim in life?? is it just surviving ??

me: ya... food is the basic need of life... we all do whatever we do for food... bcoz we dont like to be starved to death.. and other things we do is to keep us occupied till we die - like studying, working, entertainment. also we want to propagate our genes .. so we get married and pass on our genes to our children...
thats it :)

He: i feel man wants to live for ever ..but cant do that..so tries to live thro his children...
but i am not sure why we should survive and propagate...??

me: u r asking the purpose again .. .our genes have been coded like that :) they make us reproduce and pass our genes its inbuilt [or only the genes which do that have survived]

Attention!!

Its 3 AM. I woke up and I am unable to get back to sleep. One thought is going round and round in my head and I thought I should let it out and then get back to sleep. One of my friends had told me this long back and it has popped out now all of a sudden.

It is about our need for attention. Whatever we do, we do it so as to be noticed by others or we do so, to seek attention. Attention by others is the food for our ego. We need to sustain some level of ego in ourselves to do whatever we are doing. Otherwise we will become depressed. The engine will stop working. And spousal love is the peak of attention we get.

May be, most probably, I am writing this to seek attention and feed my ego!!

There is a pub called ‘The Forum’ here in Stellenbosch. They have an amazing menu with all kind of witty sayings. I borrowed one from them to take back to India. One of the sayings:

“Son, a woman is like a beer. They smell good, they look good, and you’d step over your own mother just to get one! But you can’t stop at one. You wanna drink another woman!” (Homer Simpson to Bart)

Chat with Narayana Murthy

In this chat with Karan Thapar in Devil's advocate, Mr. Narayana Murthy talks about India's imminent need for quality political leadership. Please do read it.

Google gets hard on Microsoft!

I found this news article today which tells that Google has raised objections on Vista's new features. According to the article:

1. It is difficult for users to disable Vista's integrated indexing and search
2. If a second desktop search application was installed, the computer would slow down as two competing indexers churned through the hard drive
3. Microsoft's search was the only tool allowed to generate results in Vista's search bars, which appear in several places, including the Start menu, in the Windows Explorer file manager and in the Control Panels main display

If Microsoft believes that its desktop search is so good that users will not switch to other desktop searches, then it should not be doing this. It should just allow users to choose whatever they want. Anyways, I have not used Vista till now and i don't know how the product looks like. Probably i should take a peek.

Why do people fight ?

I happened to collect some data on wars and was curious to chart their trend with time. And i came up with this chart.

Its pretty interesting to see the war trends and speculate about the reasons as to why wars increased or decreased at some times.

Of course this is the data the we have recorded and there might have been many wars which could have gone unnoticed. But i am assuming that this data is mostly correct.

By and large, the wars before 500 BC were very less and looks like people hardly fought, as the population was very less and there was no need to fight. But we can see that people still fought. I think these wars must have been fought, solely, to establish supremacy over others and nothing else.

But the wars began to increase from 800 AD. I associate this closely with the increasing population and decreasing resources. People were also exploring a lot and that eventually lead to a lot of conflict.

Then we see a meteoric rise in the number of wars fought starting from 1500 AD. This must have happened because of the technological advancements made at this time and looks like the wars are never going to end.

I guess the 2nd world war was the bloodiest and most of the wars nowadays are usually conflicts and not full scale wars.

We cannot afford a full scale war now with all the nuclear, biological and what not weapons. Cities can disappear within hours and they are going to be costly.

What i have written is just a birds eye or a satellite eye view of the wars. I am sure it will make an interesting study to chart wars along with other factors. But as Ford said 'History is mostly bunk'. What historians write is history. The data is unreliable. With the advent of internet and
online media nowadays, i can say that events are being recorded with a high degree of precision and accuracy. We can rely on data nowadays.

But yes, Time can distort anything!!

Unconditional Love!!

I happened to have this interesting conversation with a girl I found on chat. It was a good and intelligent chat and we were discussing a very debatable topic. Hope you will find this interesting.

(The words in italic are comments by me after reading the chat once again. Of course, this is purely my point of view, and it may be wrong)

Me: if one goes on thinking... nothing really matters ..
But that life will be very boring

She: well..nope
i don't think so
a lotta things DO matter

Me: like ?

She: Family
Career
Friends...
Physics
Mathematics
and a million others

Me: hmm ..... i think we have created so many artificial [emotional] needs arnd ourselves that we think we need all these ...
one question still puzzle me as to why we are here [I guess its pure accident... there is no reason. we are just a by-product of evolution and we exist. that’s it] !!

She: well...we are here..to think, to feel (love),to see and understand beautiful things[I think its exactly the opposite: we think and feel and understand things. therefore we are here. we have surpassed all other species in this arena and hence we are here. Otherwise we would have gone extinct like the Dodo]

and all in all we are [just another brick in the wall !! [this was a spontaneous addition and itsounds true]]here to ask why we are here [ we are here. hence we ask this question]..and to learn the answer through its steps!

Me: but thats only science...

She: it ain't

Me: i think love and such stuff is purely taught to us starting from our childhood... [and, as it is said in 'The selfish Gene', we show altruistic behavior with our relatives because they share a lot of similar genes than all other people. The more similar genes, the more we like them!]

She: it is everything
every field

Me: i disagree.... all the emotions that we feel are really because we are trained to feel that way [i really wonder as to what would happen if some kid is raised in an isolated chamber and trained in everything through computers and some hi-fi technology and books. After he is some 20 years would he really have the capacity to feel emotions. Are emotions really necessary? ]...
i dont think eve and adam felt that way!!

She: well...that is stupidity...

Me: well... its my point of view ! may be stupid

She: i don't call your point of view stupid
all i am saying that...the emotion i feel towards my mother is not artificial
and the feeling my mum gets towards me when i was born and now..that i am a part of her is not artificial

Me: hmm... well... i never told that they are artificial... the very first moment after u were born - all u need is some air and some food... but eventually u start "developing" emotions and liking and such stuff...
one develops such things ..

She: no. my mother feeds me
My mother lets me out to the harsh world delicately

Me: see - that’s called trading... u love ur mother ... She loves u ... [I really love my mom. All i am trying to understand here is the process by which it came into existence]

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Me: love is purely circumstantial

She: it is not my dear. love is unconditional [i wish there was a thing like this. The world would have been a far better place]...if it is circumstantial then it ain't love..you are mistaken!

Me: it is conditional.. for ex... u cannot start loving me instantaneously !! u need to have some situation/motivation/precondition to start doing that !!

That was the end of the chat and i guess its still incomplete. You guys might be thinking that i am fellow with no heart (i dont know why heart got associated with love though!! ) and who does not know what love is. Thats not the fact. I have experienced love from my parents, relatives, friends and lot of other people all through my life till now and its on. I also love/like lot of people in my life.

All i am trying to tell here is that there has to be a trigger for any kind of love. It cannot be created out of nothing. There has to be a reason and there is nothing as unconditional love.

Open Source Genetics!

Am currently reading this book - 'DNA - the secret of life' by James D Watson, in which he chronicles various events that started after the discovery of the double helix by himself and Francis Crick in the 1950s. Its a nice read if you want to know new things on DNA. At least i did not know most of the stuff written in that book.

One fact that struck me most and makes me very uncomfortable is that, often science is closely associated with commerce. This is very true nowadays in case of genetics and in the era where the scientists work to find something before anybody does and patents it; i.e. you have to be the first one to find it otherwise all the effort is gone waste. If you cant patent something then its of now use.

Take for example that there is some research going on to find the gene associated with some disease X and team A and team B are working on it spending lots of money and time. Suppose team A cracks it first and patents it. Then team B cannot work anymore on that gene. In other words no other person or company can use the information discovered by team A to discover drug or to do anything on that gene. Its the sole property of team A now! and only they can work on it.

How does this sound to you ? Its sounds absurd to me. It practically stops everybody who want to work on that disease and hence reducing the probability of the drug being found for that gene.

I do understand that those scientists must have put a lot of money to come till that point. But closing further access to others or giving permission only on large sums of money simply beats me. May be they should work out a model where in they get back all the money that they had put in and some profit. But money really complicates things. When you know that you can milk money out of something, I guess you will.

Why cant this work like open source software ? Here companies develop things and distribute it for free. But they eventually benefit from the users of the software and all the associated training, enhancements and everything related to the product. If anybody uses open source software, it has to be open source as well.

If we translate this idea to genetics, it will be like this: If team A decides to put its discovery in open source, then any further discoveries resulting out of this have to be open source. Sounds simple. But its not as easy as software. We are dealing with humans here and we tend to exploit whatever we can out of the discovery. Its a matter of life and death.

At the end of the day it looks like money matters to most of the scientists today. I always thought that, it was only pure curiosity and the desire to find things, that drives them. Unfortunately thats not the truth.

At least pure physics is free from all this patent stuff i guess. I don't think anybody would benefit from a discovery which predicts the size of the universe!! It is pure knowledge. But who knows.. may be one day! thats why we patent stuff.

Its a debatable topic: Should Genetics be made open source ?