"Fear the blobfish"

So I came across this hilarious piece of writing in the LA Times. Click the link and read. No, I mean it. Read it fully. Done? Good.

You know it is about the blobfish and you have to admit, it is somewhat unnerving to look at. It is like revolting scene in a movie that you cannot take your eyes off of. It is like the fender bender on the freeway that everyone has to have a look at, craning their necks in weird angles and causing traffic to slow down to a crawl.

So, what is my point with this post? Just this. We seem to have forgotten what it is to have a good laugh at something. We take everything we read, and wring it through our own spectral biases and then react either in sheer delight or scathing scorn. Somehow everything has gone in the direction of "you are with us or against us" that seems to be pervading everything and everyone these days.

I really am hoping that the pendulum would veer toward the center at some point, and soon.

Random Randomness

Things that I can never stop pondering about - well, there are always too many things. But the one thing that always fascinates me is the true measure of randomness. In short, how random is random?

For all practical purposes, we use calculated randomness - a random generator that has an initial seed. And that is the bias that prevents it from being truly random. It is like approaching infinity. Once you feel you are there, there is always something more. And more. And more. So, how do we actually achieve randomness?

Well, I suppose one way is to not strive for randomness at all. (Gulp! That is not a solution is it?). Well, maybe if we shrunk our perspective to something smaller, then events happening in that purview just might appear to be random. Note the keyword. Appear. Maybe that is all there is to it. True randomness doesn't really matter as much as the appearance of it. So typically human isn't it - the reality does not matter as much as the appearance of reality.

One final word I suppose - lack of bias or randomness maybe is crucial for a lot of our current applications and things, but in the grand cosmic scale of things, maybe everything is truly random and yet really programmed. Yes. Programmed, and random. Together. And yet disparate. Now I am totally confused. Heck. Who cares. Its 07/07/07 07:07:07 PM. Now, I have exactly one year, one month, one day, one hour, one minute and one second to come up with another such random tripe disguised as a blog-post. Boy, the summer heat is really causing my brains to go awry :)

Good to be back

Life is changed. I am changed. The day has changed. And so has the year. I have a right-shoulder to lean on ( and a left-shoulder too: albeit belonging to the same person :P). But she and I won't let one thing change...our love for writing.

It is good to be back.

Washington Post: Gender? It's A Gray Area.

Here we go again. Another attempt at reasoning out why women are, well, women, and men are, shall we say, men.

See the single-page, printer-friendly view of the article and you can as well decide if you are going to agree or disagree.

Louann Brizendine, a Bay-area shrink, writes in her book "The Female Brain" that men and women have different systems for the brain. And her choices are rather telling. Women have Mac. And men? PC. (Sniffle. No wonder my girl thinks I am on the verge of a memory-overloading crash all the time. Atleast, now I know and have my excuse. It's my circuits. )

Some of the stuff that's apparently discussed in the book (hey, it's on my library check-out list, so can't say for sure without actually seeing it) does actually seem like tired-old rehashing of stereotypes, and the Wash Post article does make it appear like it's just a tired-old rehash with out basis in truth. But none-the-less, they make for one hilarious read. To wit...(quoted verbatim from the Wash Post along with added commentary of my own in green)

- Men think about sex every 52 seconds while women think about it about once a day. Man, I gotto wonder how they decided to estimate or measure that one.
- Women speak faster on the average - 250 words a minute to 125 for a typical male (now, I know a few women that are quite good at speed talking, but then, if you tune in to the typical radio network, you hear men that are quite adept at speed talking as well. Makes you wonder about the legitimacy of this specific comparison...but then I digress) and also adds that women use 20000 words a day while men use about 7000. This does make me realize what some men complain about when they say their wives talk too much. Its not that they talk for longer time as much as they cram too much in the time they speak...
- A woman knows what people are feeling while a man can't spot emotion unless someone cries or threatens bodily harm. Oh boy. I surely can't complain or contradict this one. Because I for one surely refuse to "interpret" what other people are thinking, without any external sign of it. But then, what do I know? I am a man.

But at the very least, it does add fuel to the gender stereotypes prevalent in our societies, and maybe, at its remotely best possibility, has stumbled onto something that is really significant. I doubt this latter possibility, but I am just willing to keep an open mind until proven otherwise. Definitely worth a peep from your local lending library, if only to laugh at the hilarity of "reasoned deductions" that are likely nothing more than convenient twisting of facts.

Perpetual Error Correction

A swinging pendulum is going about its lively, frolicking and music-filled way from this way left to that way right, on and on and on for perpetuity. If it were to have intelligence, would it wonder at its fate? Would it think of itself as a device thats not just swinging to-and-fro in a merry never-ending dance, but rather as a contraption that is ensnared in its own fight against the spirits of nature - its own version of perpetual error correction?

Many times, when I notice people falling into traps and troubles of their own making, again and again, with no flicker of recognition of the recurring issues in their memories, no sign of hope of resolution in their desultory faces, and I am put at deep wonder - are we just the human version of pendulums, stuck in perpetual error correction mode?

Coffee. Healthy. No Kidding.

Far from being unhealthy, coffee offers perks.
(Forbes.com, via MSNBC online)

Whodathunk it?

Un-flippin-believable.

Coffee in moderation is good. Yay!

Now, I don't have to feel too guilty about swigging a cup o' South Indian-ishtyle filter kaapi or a Starbucks latte or a Circle K or AMPM java every work-day morning!

Predicting the future..the science of self-fulfilling prophecies..

Quite a few of us have, at various times, been tempted to know what is in store in our futures. Maybe we will not care to admit it, but we are sorely tempted to know what is coming.

And we are not alone..people are so desparate to know what is in store for them in their futures, it has spawned a thriving industry in the so-called science of fortune-telling. Also known as divination, and astrology, it is becoming increasingly popular than ever before, what with the break-neck speed at which the world seems to be moving these days.

Now, this begs the all important question..are these so-called predictions really true? Are the celebrated examples of divination and predictions just flashes in the vast pan of astrological predictions? We are treated to this example of a wonderful temple in Tamil Nadu, where supposedly the history of your life and your future is written in "olai chuvadu" (engraved palm leaves). We are shown spiritual gurus who, supposedly, just by looking at your face, and by holding your hands near your wrist, can tell you what has happened in your life and what is coming. Sometimes it just goes beyond the realms of normal understanding for a human mind. I mean, come on, there is only so much logic you can attribute to the fact that an absolute stranger has just recited your family history.

But, with all these examples, there is the cynical mind in me that still asks the question..arent most astrological/divinations just the beginning of what must be called a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Let us take an example of an oft-heard prediction..you are bound to have success when you are &* years old. Now, it is ingrained in your mind that you are bound to be successful when you reach that age. And boy, Lady Luck and Senorita Success do smile on you at that time, and you end up believing that it is the prophecy that rang true. Or is it? Isnt it just as likely that you heard that prophecy, and you believed it to be true. And hence it found a place in your subconscious mind, where it kept driving you toward this "goal". Yes, I am saying that your hearing this prophecy actually caused you to set that as your goal. And your every day actions and reactions that followed it, were just your actions gearing you toward achieving that goal.

Like that street-smart song in Rangeela "Yaaron sun lo zara.." which chides people for believing in the fate as predicted by lines of the hand (palmistry) as opposed to their own hard work, I just wish people would quit trying to "see" what is coming, and instead, plot their own strategies and plans for the future.

The future is what we make of it, and not what is purportedly written in the fate. Afterall, fate is what we make of our lives and the lives of people around us. So instead of indulging in the inexact science of fortune-telling and then trying to gear our lives toward what some stranger predicted, let us, for a change, try to re-gear our lives to achieve what we are truly capable of.

Like Lord Krishna tells Arjuna in the epic poem Mahabharath, we are not here to question our existence and to worry about consequences of our actions. We are here to do a duty, and to do our duties to the best of our abilities. Let us not get our capabilities muddied in the predictions based on the lines drawn up in our hands and on our heads. And then, the future will be what we want it to be..

Swiss.....Cheese.....Holes

You walk to your local Subway restaurant....you pick out a foot-long veggie max on Honey Oat Bread, and you are asked...would you like some cheese on it? You say yes...Swiss please...and out comes sliced swiss cheese with the trademark holes....

So what do you think caused the holes? Did someone sit there and poke holes into the blocks of cheese prior to shipping? You wish! Well actually it turns out, someone did sit and poke holes in it..well, not exactly holes, but air bubbles which became the source of the holes in swiss cheese.

Yes, the very same bacteria that contribute to the fermentation of milk to cheese, are the culprits behind these holes. Turns out, three types of bacteria are added to the fermentation process. Lactic acid, an interim by-product of the fermentation process, is consumed by one of the bacteria - a certain Propionibacter Shermani, or P. Shermani for short (awfully close to P.Sherman of the P.Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way Sydney (Finding Nemo) fame aint it?). Result of the consumption of lactic acid? Carbon di-oxide, which gets trapped inside the fermenting milk and ends up as air bubbles that contribute to the holes.

To put it crudely, the eyes (as the Swiss call it) are a result of certain bacteria passing gas!

Bon apetit....