Awww! I am so smitten!

Baby porcupines... so heartwarming!

India Files: This is outrageous!

A textbook used at schools in Rajasthan compares housewives to donkeys, and suggests the animals make better companions as they complain less and are more loyal to their "masters", an Indian daily reported on Tuesday.

"A donkey is like a housewife ... In fact, the donkey is a shade better, for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents' home, you'll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master," the newspaper reported, quoting a Hindi-language primer meant for 14-year-olds.
The book was approved by the state's ruling (party name deleted) government but has sparked protests from the party's women's wing.
State education officials in Rajasthan, known for its conservative attitude towards women, said people should not be upset by the comparison, the paper said.
"The comparison was made in good humour," state education official was quoted as saying. "However, protests have been taken note of and the board is in the process of removing it (the reference)."

This is bad. Really really bad. I am at a loss for words. Related news pieces (Google News) can be found here.

Dear Google, you crack me up!

Here's something I picked up from the Official Google Blog.

Cupid's algorithms
4/01/2006 12:00:00 AM
Posted by Michael Krantz, Product Manager, Google Romance
Ever been on a date and wondered "What on Earth am I doing with this person?" Or perhaps you wished there was a way that you could instantly find your perfect match, and then go on a date during which everything just went right?
Wish no more: Google Romance, a beta product currently incubating in Google Labs, uses cutting-edge personal search algorithms to help you find your soulmate, then sponsors your first Contextual Date with said soulmate-to-be in exchange for showing you highly relevant advertising that just might help Cupid's arrow find its mark. Does it really work? Ask our internal beta testers -- if you can find them, that is. Not a single one has shown up for work in days.
So why not give it a try yourself? You've got true love to gain, and only your faith in psychographic and contextual advertising software to lose.

Google's neverending ways to keep the user smiling are reaching new levels. The following links are April Fool pranks over the past few years. This year's Google Joke was particularly funny. Check them out! Each of them is ideal for office-timepass! :-)

• Google Romance
• Google Gulp
• Google Lunar Jobs
• Google Pigeon Rank
• Google Mentalplex

The FAQs and Take a Tour options are hilarious. I urge you to go through these, trust me, you won't regret it.

Chennai d'un plat

Guess what I came across browsing the net! Chennai across almost a hundred years! I have more of such photos, but didn't want to flood this blog with pics only.

Figure 1: Spencer Plaza, 1910 (Chennai)

Figure 2: Spencer Plaza, 2006 (Chennai)

Figure 3: Chennai Central, 1925 (Chennai)

Living in a box

50 % reservation for SC and ST in IITs and IIMs. Aaargh!
The buzzword is globalisation. The world is talking freedom. The world is zooming past us in the healthy race of free competition. Towards development. Away from narrow-mindedness. We are stuck in a one-way in a different direction.

We are chaining ourselves again, after 60 years of freedom. When the entire world is looking up to India for its brains and its "Highly Skilled and Educated" professionals, it is pathetic that we in India still have issues like the caste system. On Wednesday this week, this news article caught my eye. And my disgust as well.

Increase SC/ST reservations: Arjun
NDTV Correspondent
Tuesday, March 28, 2006 (New Delhi):
Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh has written a letter to all states asking them to pass a legislation to increase reservation for SC and STs and other backward classes from 22.5 per cent to 49 per cent. [more]

The youth of the country are actually contributing the maximum to the growth of the country. IITs and IIMs are the few remaining institutes in the nation which still attach importance to merit more than anything else. Now the government is trying to take away that too.
My disappointment is not just due to this. Dear reader, please do not misinterpret this as something against SC/ST and OBC groups. I am against the OFFICIAL existance of such diversity!
My proposal is that the people in the country will see the light of equality when the government removes the

Enter Caste (GE/SC/ST/OBC/Other): _______

from its official fill-out forms! Increasing quota of one kind neither ensures equality nor does it bring us any closer to it. When the offices take in people based on fulfillment of requirements alone, where is the question of inequality?
I have had this discussion with a few friends while taking the complete idealist side, i.e. Eradicate official existance of such diversities. These are some of the responses I got:

D (Junior from IITM, 2nd year Civil): What the hell! Giving a quota of 49.5% is pointless - it in turn makes the general category the oppressed ones! But one can never settle on an optimum number which makes all parties happy!

A (Old classmate, currently a Law student): How do you expect to do something like that? You can't suddenly remove the entire system offiicially. There are many people from backward villages who benefit a lot from such quota systems.

R (Classmate, IITM, 5th year Chemical): Government does it or not, people are never going to treat each other on an equal note. A good percentage of Indians (of many age groups) still know what caste (lower or upper) a person belongs to from just the name. The prejudice of inequality lies in the eyes of the people and hence it's in the system.

I agree with both A and R. My response to A was that we can atleast phase the quota and reservation records out of the administration. The success of establishing equality does NOT lie in giving chance to a citizen whilst tagging him as a lower caste one. It lies in removing these caste systems entirely. The caste of a person should not even feature in application forms etc.
My response to R was somewhat on a parallel note. The administration systems are what run the country. Personal prejudices of people are not going to affect the country's policies that much, if the government maintains a firm ground in establishing equality. Whether or not a lower caste person is allowed to set foot in a house belonging to an upper caste person, his chance to participate in competition should be just the same as anyone else. And not by being in a quota for reservation, instead all should start on the same platform, and fight for the same goal.

India has to stop living in a box.

Just around the riverbend

The Iraqi blog called Baghdad Burning by Riverbend, an anonymous Iraqi woman, is up or the $52,000 Samuel Johnson Literary prize. The blog, which chronicles three years of war and occupation, documents the impact of the war on the lives of ordinary people.

An anonymous Iraqi woman nominated as a contender for a literary award for her blog of the Iraq war and its impact on ordinary Iraqis. Up against 18 other books out of 168 entries.
Using the internet as her outlet, the Iraqi author, who says she is in her late twenties, chronicles her anger and fear during "three years of occupation and bloodshed" in Baghdad. She also calls for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

Spring should be about renewal and rebirth. For Iraqis, spring has been about reliving painful memories and preparing for future disasters. In many ways, this year is like 2003 prior to the war when we were stocking up on fuel, water ... We're doing it again this year but now we don't discuss what we're stocking up for. Bombs and B-52s are so much easier to face than other possibilities"

Excerpt from Baghdad Burning
... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...

Riverbend began the blog on 17 August 2003. She wrote: "I'm female, Iraqi and 24. I survived the war. That's all you need to know. It's all that matters these days anyway."
She said she worked as a computer programmer before the invasion but then lost her job because it became too dangerous for women to travel to and from their workplace alone in an increasingly lawless society. Small literary publisher Marion Boyars bought Baghdad Burning last year, classifying it under the genre of biography and memoir. The publishing house has said it knows Riverbend's identity but respects her wish to remain anonymous.
One of the articles, And the oscar goes to (posted 6th March, 2006) is not intended to be funny. You can feel the air of bitter sarcasm and disappointment. I respect you and admire you, Riverbend!
It amazes me how this happened. I urge my the readers to actually go through Baghdad Burning. Apart from the literary genius the author is, she leaves me awestruck with her simplicity and sincerity. I am moved. Deep. The scene of US in Iraq is way more than what the media emotes. Every article strikes you. Strikes you hard.

Much ado about the title

The title Mostly Pointless is inspired by Mostly Harmless, a novel by Douglas Adams, the fifth and final book of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It is described on the cover of the first editions as the Fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers trilogy.

The title comes from a joke early in the series, when Arthur Dent discovers that the entry for Earth in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy consists, in its entirety, of the single word "Harmless". His friend Ford Prefect, a contributor to the Guide, assures him that the next edition will contain the article on Earth that Ford has spent the last few years researching - somewhat cut due to space restrictions, but still an improvement. The revised article, he eventually admits, will read "Mostly harmless." The excerpt from the book is quoted below.

"What? Harmless? Is that all it's got to say? Harmless! One word!"
Ford shrugged. "Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and only a limited amount of space in the book's microprocessors," he said, "and no one knew much about the Earth of course."
"Well for God's sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit."
"Oh yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it's still an improvement."
"And what does it say now?" asked Arthur.
"Mostly harmless," admitted Ford with a slightly embarrassed cough.

- from The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Mostly Pointless is plagiarised? Yes, you could safely say so. Remixed, may be. For the uninitiated, here's a list of all the five books of the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers trilogy.
> The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
> The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
> Life, the Universe and Everything
> So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
> Mostly Harmless (I haven't read this yet)

A chance to start

Here's a photograph I stumbled upon while I was aimlessly browsing the Internet. (Click here or on the image for an enlarged version).

The photographer has beautifully captured the reflection of the man walking on the rail track. Nice, huh? I wouldn't connect the essence of the poem to the picture, but I guess it is space well used.

Here's another I got from the website - it's called There is no limit. This photograph has been taken with a similar intention - to present a perspective to the viewer... as in this case - a view from the feet, upwards. Gives a sense of depth (height?) to the image.

The source website - Pravs World has more of such messages against well taken photographs.

An idle mind

With The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart playing in the background, I am increasingly realising that I want to make an entry in the blog, but I am not sure what to write about. Quite a few readers have probably read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The best part of the book, according to me, was not the extremely fast paced story. I like some perspectives he brought out, and in the course of doing this made me think a little about the creation of earth and life.

One of the first subjects Brown introduces in discussing the works of Da Vinci is the number PHI. The infinite nonrepeating decimal 1.6180339887...

I never had the opportunity to take serious classes in studying art, so I've never been introduced to the concept of PHI in the field of art. The Divine Proportion. Brown writes "PHI is generally considered the most beautiful number in the universe."

PHI is derived from the Fibonacci sequence. It turns out that PHI has a role as a natural building block of nature. Plants, animals, and even humans possess dimensional properties which adhere to the ratio of PHI to 1.
For example, in a honeybee community, the females outnumber the males by 1.618 to 1.
The ratio of each spiral to the next on a chambered Nautilus' shell is 1.618 to 1.
"Sunflower seeds grow in opposing spirals." The ratio of each spiral to the next is PHI to 1. This is also true of spiraled pinecone petals, leaf arrangement on plant stalks and insect segmentation.
Da Vinci studied corpses and discovered the Divine Proportion in human bone structure. The distance from the tip of your head to the floor, compared to the distance from your navel to the floor is PHI to 1. You'll find the same ratio with hip to floor divided by knee to floor, finger joints, toes, and spinal divisions.

Another such number is PI. I guess we are more acquainted with PI than with PHI. π is also transcendental, as was proven by Ferdinand von Lindemann in 1882. This means that there is no polynomial with rational coefficients of which π is a root. An important consequence of the transcendence of π is the fact that it is not constructible. Because the coordinates of all points that can be constructed with ruler and compass are constructible numbers, it is impossible to square the circle, that is, it is impossible to construct, using ruler and compass alone, a square whose area is equal to the area of a given circle. (Courtesy: Wikipedia)

My question is - is this natural adherence to laws quoted as above a role played by God or is it something science can explain? To rephrase - we have seen scores of such examples where science (like geometry) and nature follow rules and laws which are similar. Like, objects of fixed volume tend to acquire a shape of miminum surface area - a sphere. Science has managed to explain this.

Can the natural and frequent occurance of PHI and PI in various aspects of nature and the arts be explained by science alone? Or is there a mystical factor associated with all this which brings in God - an omnipotent governing ruler?

Are somethings really beyond reason?

Numero Uno

I am just trying out all the fuss. Weblogging.
Hoo laa laa.
This is my first post. And a prayer for longevity.
And I think I need to change my photograph soon.