my books and other stories

Who is Kuzhali Manickavel?

2009-09-28T16:47:00.006+05:30

I happened to find an intriguing book 2 days ago "Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings" by Kuzhali Manickavel (I got mine from landmark), and have been obsessed with finding out as much about the author as I can ever since. I found that some of the stories in the book have already appeared in other places. Here is the list of stories i have found over the internet:

The Dynamics of Windows (one of my favorites)
Throwing Rocks at Dogs
Little Bones
The Dolphin King
Welcome to Barium
Everyone does integral calculus
Conversations during a cyclone and a flood
How to wear an Indian village
Cats and Fish
Because we are precious and brave
The domino effect

Most of these sites also have an interview with the author and they are as fascinating as the short/tiny stories.

Go read her stories and be amazed by their unpredictability, humor and sadness.

Punishment??

2008-01-14T13:45:00.001+05:30

I finally finished Crime and Punishment and my roommate borrowed it from me. For him reading it seems to be the greatest punishment, but still he perseveres. He tries hard to read ten pages a day before sleep finally overcomes him. For me, the book wasn't such a strain thankfully. However I found that it required some patience on the part of the reader. It is mentioned in the notes that the book is not so much a whodunit as a whydunit which is true, but it was also described as an easy to read classic.

Currently I'm reading You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers. So far the book can be described as strange, but it has been an easy read when compared with Dostoevsky.

New adventures in Hi-Fi

2007-12-06T18:45:00.000+05:30

Well, maybe not new but what I mean is that I have bought, yes BOUGHT, an audio book of Great Expectations over the Internet. Its an unabridged version of the book read by Frederick Davidson, so the book takes 18 hours and 42 minutes to finish (I have reached chapter 23 of 59).

The experience of listening to an audio book has been great especially since the reader, tries to talk in different voices for each of the characters. I also felt that as Pip grows up as the book progresses, his voice changes from a high pitched tone to a more mature one. However I found that I had to have more concentration while listening than while reading a book.

The book was available in 59 DRM (Digital Rights Manager) protected WMA files, which were not compatible with my Sony mp3 player. However, since I had bought the book, I was able to contact the support team (it's nice when people listen to you if you pay for stuff) and they suggested I write audio CDs (it would take 12 CDs) and then rip them to mp3. Thankfully I didn't have to follow this painful process, but was able to create images of the CDs using Nero software and rip the virtual CDs to mp3.

Drained...

2007-10-10T15:47:00.000+05:30

Heck, I haven't been able to update my blog (to the dismay of thousands of my readers) and worse I haven't been able to read anything much. I blame it all on my job, you feel so drained after getting back home that all you feel like doing is sleep, or in my case flip aimlessly through channels on TV. Maybe I'm not meant to be working, after spending so many years (20 yrs) in school.

However, I plan to change all that. I went and bought a couple of books recently using the money I make. I bought Crime and Punishment to educate myself (and also because on the cover it said it was one of the most readable classics). I also bought Adverbs by Daniel Handler (the author of A Series of Unfortunate Events) because I found what was written on the back cover funny.

Adverbs is a collection of episodes happening to different people that are loosely linked together. But it wasn't a funny book as I expected after reading the back cover. It's a more serious book, where each chapter is based more or less on a single emotion. However, though beautifully written, I felt that the author gave more importance to the style of writing, rather than content.

A Confederacy of Dunces

2007-07-23T18:04:00.000+05:30

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. - Jonathan Swift

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole starts with this quote. After reading the foreword by Walker Percy, I began wondering whether the same thing happened to the author itself. After writing the book he could not find any one to publish his work. Disappointed by this he committed suicide as an unsuccessful writer. Later when the work was published thanks mainly to the persistence of his mother, the work went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I cant imagine a more dramatic story surrounding a book.

I was looking around the a bookstore, to see if anyone is actually buying the new Harry Potter book when I came across this book and couldn't resist buying it. Guess I will wait till a cheaper HP7 comes out before buying it.

After a Storm, Before a Feast

2007-07-04T11:09:00.000+05:30

I have just completed A Storm Of Swords, book three of George R R Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series, and it ends with a very nerve wrecking suspense. Some of the major characters are killed and some have even been brought back from the dead and all the other major characters are in a very critical situation.

However before starting the fourth book A Feast For Crows I have been reading Fragile Things, a collection of short stories by Neil Gaiman. I must say that I am not impressed by the stories. They seem to be very ordinary and feels like ghost stories told around a campfire.

Graphic Novels

2007-06-11T10:33:00.000+05:30

Comics may be kids stuff but graphic novels are definitely not. There has been increasing interest in graphic novels and lately even The Hindu's Literary Review contains a section on graphic novels. I became interested in this thanks mainly to my friend who has, at the time I felt, a "strange" habit of collecting comics. Even though I have been reading comics for a long time, I never gave them much thought until I read three of them recently. These books which were so inaccessible are now, with the world wide web, not very difficult to find for anyone who knows where to look.

The first of these is A Contract with God by Will Eisner. It is a set of short stories taking place in a tenement building in the 30's. While not the first, this is regarded as a classic graphic novel. There is nothing special or extraordinary happening in these stories like the usual comics. Just the everyday lives of ordinary people, but still they are made interesting. To keep this blog informative here is a random fact, the awards for comic book excellence are named after the author and are known as "The Eisners".

The second set of books I read was the Akira manga (japanese comics) vols. 1-6. These comics and the subsequent anime movie were what made japanese comics famous. I remember watching the movie long ago but didn't understand much of it. The comic explains many of the issues left unanswered in the movie. The first half is set in the ultra-modern and ordered Neo-Tokyo, while the second half, which I don't remember in the movie at all, is chaos and anarchy. I get the feeling that the creator, Katsuhiro Otomo, likes the second half with more of chaos. Maybe that is the same reason why it is still a teenage cult fiction. It also shows that creating good graphic novel is much harder than usual novels. The whole Akira series is over 2000 illustrated pages long.

The most different and the one I liked the most is Watchmen by Alan Moore. It is a 12 volume series about a set of very human super heroes. I didn't like the graphics very much but reading the series was a whole new experience. Each volume ends with either an article written by one of the characters or one that appeared in the paper. It even has a side tale in the form of a comic book which one of the minor characters reads. Overall a very new experience and it is no wonder that it got a Hugo award which is usually given to Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels. There are plans to make a movie based on this comic book series and is expected to be released in 2008.

Even before all this, good comic books have been available in India. I think I learned most of the Indian mythology from the "Amar Chitra Katha" series. They even brought out illustrated classic novels, and I remember reading Sherlock Holmes stories and Charles Dickens novels for the fist time in comic book form when I was little.

Crabs ALIVE!!!

2007-05-28T12:26:00.000+05:30

Its been a while since I posted something on the blog. I have been too busy/lazy in the past few weeks. Also it was too horribly hot in Chennai to think, let alone sit up and write something. Now I'm back home and it's raining almost everyday. I also find that I'm not expected to do anything around here and the rain stops me from doing anything anyway. So I find I have no real excuse not to update my blog that all you thousands of virtual (in the true sense of the word) readers cant live without.

So anyway let me get to my story. This is a true story and so a lot of the characters are alive but a few have been cooked and eaten. What happened was that a few days back, mom asked the fishmonger to bring fresh crabs. When they arrived they were a little too fresh, a little too alive and jumpy. They started running all over the place with us chasing them. In the end we caught all except the one that went and hid itself in the drain. It's been there ever since and only come out at night. I wonder what it eats and what life in a drain is like. I guess it must be better than getting cooked and eaten. Life in strange like that, one moment you are complaining about how dirty the sea is and the next you are living happily in the drain.

Judging books by their covers

2007-03-26T15:33:00.000+05:30

I know that you are not supposed to but I find I do judge books based on their covers fairly regularly. Just recently I bought this book Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, an author I had never heard of before, just because I liked the cover design. Its got a black cat with green eyes on the cover looking at you, as cats usually do, with mild condescension. Also I liked the fact that it had 'Kafka' in the title and that it was by a Japanese author. I don't know why but ever since watching the movies Lost in Translation and Kill Bill (vol1 not 2), I have been fascinated with Japan - the samurais, hello kitty, tea ceremony, technology, karaoke, crazy anime cartoons...

Coming back to the topic, my friend told me an extreme case of how covers of books affected him. He said that until second standard he never used to do well in class, he even got 0/20 in math. Then in his second standard the cover of his science textbook had the pictures of space ships, galaxies and microscopes and he got really interested in the book and did well ever since. He also says things like part of the reason he did badly in school till second standard was that his father insisted on teaching him (I imagine something like the cartoon where Dad explaining the workings of a carburetor in Calvin and Hobbes); and that he means to learn swimming, violin, karate and get a dog as a pet all in the next few months, so I don't know how much credence I should place in his statements.

The GREATEST movie EVER!!!

2007-03-24T01:21:00.000+05:30

O boy! I just finished watching one of the craziest and weirdest movies ever - Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny starring none other than the GREATEST band EVER (according to their website). It is a musical comedy, but unlike the genre, the music is rock and the comedy is very very weird. Also its got great music, especially the song Classico which is a blend of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and rock.

I know that many people will find the movie stupid or even disgusting and I definitely don't expect it to be a big box office hit, but I love it and urge you to go buy a DVD first thing tomorrow, at the crack of noon.

Books, movies and the weather

2007-03-06T20:40:00.000+05:30

I have finally completed A Clash of Kings, book 2 of the A Song of Ice and Fire series and can now hopefully move on in life (it was very hard to put down such an un-put-down-able book and do other things). A very strange thing about the book is that the author doesn't seem to show any qualms in killing off well developed characters. While I was reading the book, I began noticing some changes. I never used to notice such things as hot food or warm clothes, but as I read more about sleeping in the open and eating dried meat, I began appreciating things more. Maybe I should stop reading fiction and spend more time on news and things that are actually happening!

I also watched a very interesting movie called Brick recently. It is a teen-druggie-school-mob-detective story, but what was interesting about it was the don't care attitude of the main character, even when he is beaten near death, he just seems to get up and says the first thing that comes to his mind. That and the strange camera work and the overcast-about-to-rain sky when it can get really windy and interesting. That is the weather I like the best, just before the rain when the sky is overcast and it gets very windy. I remember imagining as if we were on a ship caught in a storm and running around on the terrace of the house when it gets like that. Maybe that's the real reason I liked the movie.

Some classic movies

2007-02-16T18:42:00.000+05:30

I watched some classic movies recently ('cos I have so much time on my hands), like Rashomon, 8½ and Sunset Blvd.

Rashomon, one of Akira Kurosawa's most famous films, was as expected a great movie. I found the concept of the movie very interesting, and later found out (through Wikipedia, the source of all trivia and knowledge) that there is actually a psychological term called the Rashomon Effect.

8½, by Federico Fellini, on the other hand was the most boring and confusing movie I've seen. I should have listened to the comment on IMDB - "Somebody who is looking for a movie as a two hour piece of entertainment will not enjoy this." I feel that it is like the Ulysses (guess I really have it against that book), which is regarded as a classic more for technical reasons rather than entertainment value.

But for me of the three, the most interesting and the most entertaining movie was the Sunset Blvd. I was really surprised to see that a film made in 1950 could be so stylish and still be interesting for someone like me.

A note on software for mobile phones

2007-02-07T16:48:00.000+05:30

Nowadays with j2me and highly powerful mobile handsets there are a lot of free software available. Here is just a couple of applications I found useful:

E-Book reader: This free program is very easy to use and supports a wide variety of handsets. it is available here.

Webster's Dictionary: This is the complete version of the Websters Dictionary. It requires about 11Mb of space and is available here.

(I just realised that anything simple and/or useful has already been made, and moreover it is available for free!)

Free offline dictionary for mobile phones

2007-02-03T01:20:00.000+05:30

I have a Sony Ericsson k750i phone, but the sad thing is that unlike Nokia phones I can't install freely available software on it (*.sis). I have been searching for a dictionary I can use on my phone for some time now, but since I can only use java programs I couldn't find one anywhere.

So I finally got a small dictionary, the Barron's GRE wordlist (available here), and wrote my own dictionary program. It is not very elegantly written since I don't know how to use j2me very well, but it works and serves my purpose.

If anyone is interested in trying out my free offline dictionary, it is available here: Wordy.jar(279kb). Just copy the .jar file to your mobile phone (should be java enabled).

I guess I have wasted enough time already. Got to get back to my actual work.

A Pathetic Life... and Death

2007-02-01T21:50:00.000+05:30

I was reading The Understudy by David Nicholls at I was surprised by how pathetic the main character was. I mean, whoever writes about an actor whose recent acting includes stuff like 'dead body 1' in a TV show! Also it is as if Fate is out to get our hero (?) all the time. Overall it is a mildly funny but frustrating book (frustrating because you can't reach in and hit the hero when he makes dumb decisions).

I am currently reading How the Dead Live by Will Self, and it is one of the most difficult books I've tried to read (other than Ulysses, which I gave up half way - the patience required for reading that is beyond me). I have just read the prologue and it is really confusing, also the imagery is not very pretty.

The Kite Runner

2007-01-20T22:35:00.000+05:30

I have seen this book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseni, in book stores and road side book sellers for a long time now, but never bothered to take a second look. Finally two weeks back I got myself involved in digitizing one of our hostel libraries (the list of books is now online and can be accessed here), and was surprised to come across some very interesting books and The Kite Runner was among them.

The book is about Afghanistan and is written in the first person. It talks about the life in Afghanistan from the monarchy before the soviet invasion to the present situation, and also about how the rest of the world reacts to all this. I was so engrossed by the book, the way it was written and the haunting images it throws up, that I began believing all of it, taking all this to be autobiographical. I was so relieved later to find out that this is indeed fiction. This is apparently, according to wikipedia, the first English novel written by an afghan, but the events in the book could very well have been true.

Shantharam

2007-01-17T17:27:00.000+05:30

After a very long time I've finally finished Shantharam, and it left me a little unsatisfied. It is the actual story of an Australian who escapes from a high security prison and comes to Bombay in the 80's. He then learns Hindi and Marathi, lives in a slum for 2 years, starts a free clinic for the slum dwellers, joins the mafia, gets in and out of a heroin habit and even fights with the Mujaheddin. It is as action packed as you could ask for, and it is all based on a true story!

I really liked the first half of the book (around 500 pages of a 936 page book), where it focused on things we take for granted in India. It was nice to see how a foreigner takes them. But then the amount of action in the book just put me down. So is a foreigner living in the slums the only thing amazing about the book? No! It is much more and I would really recommend this book to anyone. It must be because I am reading The Kite Runner, another great book and comparing with it that I'm feeling this way.

Happy New Year

2007-01-01T10:08:00.000+05:30

Happy New Year everyone!

But really what is there to feel happy about? I mean, we are in 2007 now and still we don't have teleportation or invisibility or colonies on other planets or even talking refrigerators! It is so sad that science is so far behind science fiction.

But we do have youtube and blogs and the diet coke+mentos experiment to entertain us. So I guess there are things to be happy about.

Selling your soul

2006-12-03T16:43:00.000+05:30

A simple procedure to get someone to sell his/her soul:

1. Place the individual in front of a decision problem
2. Keep interest+insecurities+doubts+uncertainties on one side
3. Keep assurance+something routine+a fat wallet on the other side

In most cases, the outcome is very predictable. (but s/he may still end up feeling crappy without the soul)

The Old Man And The Sea

2006-11-29T11:30:00.000+05:30

I've been worrying about too many things recently so I decided I should take my mind off things by doing some light reading. So I borrowed the Old Man and the Sea from a friend and it looked like a very small and easy book. IT WAS ANYTHING BUT EASY AND LIGHT. I really wonder whether I was in the right mindset to appreciate the whole book, but I did like it and learned some interesting things. Like for example

'Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.'
'I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland'
'Be careful or you will fear even the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sox of Chicago'

I realise now how close I was to fearing the Reds and the White Sox.

The Internet

2006-11-16T18:01:00.000+05:30

The Internet is a truly amazing and powerful place. One cannot imagine doing any literature survey without google scholar (yeah! I love google) or Citeseer nowadays, at least in computer 'science' (I'll tell a story about it sometime). I thought that the Internet reached a new high with Wikipedia, with thousands of articles in various languages. The concept of an encyclopedia that anyone can edit is a very revolutionary idea, and according to Nature magazine the accuracy of Wikipedia is comparable to that of Britannica. But I realised the true power of the Internet when I chanced upon the Uncyclopedia! Why thousands of people from all over the world would bother to create a parody of the Wikipedia, where the only rule is that the articles have to be funny, is beyond me. I guess the real power of the Internet is, like they say about Democracy, with the people, and it is actually true in this case.

As an example, here is what the two have to say about Democracy:
Wikipedia
Uncyclopedia

Google

2006-11-08T23:36:00.000+05:30

I am really impressed by Google's services and features, especially its user interface. I wrote this post in google docs and the features like spell check, fonts styles, revision control, auto-saving and collaborative editing are really amazing. It even has a dictionary for adding new words to the spell checker. Even Blogger-Beta is pretty cool, sure it goes down sometimes but the features are really nice. And all this with one gmail account! I have been trying to get people to use these by sending invitations to gmail, but they all say, "So what! Its just another FREE email service". But they don't know! Gmail has almost unlimited storage, at least for how much ever you will be needing, in-browser chat, and lots of other cool features. I am slowly shifting all my Yahoo! services like photo album, groups and mail to their google equivalent like picasaweb, google groups and gmail.

A low trick

2006-11-05T20:30:00.000+05:30

I was given A Game of Thrones as a gift by my friend and I feel that it was a very low and dastardly thing he did. I mean, this humongous (around 800 pages), un-put-down-able, compelling fantasy fiction is just part 1 of a 4 part series, and now that I've finished reading it (now I have all of last week's work to be completed), I just have to have the rest. The best thing I liked about the book is that it is strangely a story about men and not about elves and orcs and the rest, like the usual fantasy fiction.

In other news, a new bookstore has been started in campus and now I don't have to go outside campus anymore. Guess given a couple more years, I won't even be able to find my way back from Adyar.

One more thing, if you have time to read all this, then you should definitely read this. It is one of the funniest blogs I've come across.

What about Bollywood then?

2006-10-25T18:07:00.000+05:30

The snob in me doesn’t even want to be associated with them. But really if you are objective enough then you'll see that there are good movies here also. It is just our (or am I generalizing from my experience) innate urge to criticize everything that prevents us from ever accepting that they can be good or fun to watch.

Of course, all this is the result of watching Lage Raho Munna Bhai yesterday. I wouldn’t even watch it for free and my friends had to force me to! (What are friends for anyway, if not to teach you things). And I did learn a lot. I learned that it is okay to laugh watching a bollywood comedy, that it is okay to hum a sentimental song (pal pal har pal…), that you are not cool when you criticize Gandhiji and most importantly that Bollywood movies can be fun to watch. (Also it is nice to hear Vidya Balan call "Murali..." with love in her eyes).

So that is my advice to anyone who thinks like me (and I think this applies to you), go watch Lage Raho Munna Bhai.

Sensible hollywood movies?!!

2006-10-16T23:35:00.000+05:30

Can there REALLY be!! After watching movies like MI3 (here is what my friend thinks of the movie) and very recently The hills have eyes, you'd think VERY UNLIKELY. But joking aside, I have actually watched a few outstanding movies.

Everyone must have watched Crash by now, and if you liked that then you'll really like American Dreamz. It is a satire about America and shows like American Idol (there is also an Indian Idol now grrr...). I felt it was a lighter version of Crash and I really liked it. The other movie I really liked was Thank you for smoking, which is about the spokesperson for the tobacco industry. These movies though funny are also a little cynical and really gets the point across.

Eventhough it is not a big-budget hollywood movie and doesn't belong here, I also liked Primer. What I really liked about it is that it is about a couple of engineers, and so few movies are. It is as if WE are completely ignored by pop culture. Here is a comic from phdcomics on the topic.

Guess you get some idea about how my "research" is going now.

Development and apathy

2006-10-10T18:39:00.000+05:30

Development and apathy are ruining India. This was what Medha Patkar said during her talk yesterday in the campus, to an auditorium filled to overflowing. But how can something like Development be bad for a country! After all, the government does claim that we have moved away from the 'food-clothing-shelter' priorities and it is time now to concentrate on international trade and globalization. We have come a long way and now have infinite choice in almost all products from soaps to cars - it is very easy to forget that 'food-clothing-shelter' is still a major cause of concern for a vast majority of people, sorry like Medha Patkar asked us to remember, to the citizens of of this country. For as she said, we do sometimes forget to consider the homeless and destitute as citizens who have the same rights and privileges as per the constitution of India as the rest of us.

The second half of the lecture was on the government's policy of creating Special Economic Zones (SEZs), special regions allocated to multi-nationals with almost complete autonomy and special privileges like electricity and water at very low cost. The creation of these special zones require land, and she said that whatever be the price, selling land is a tremendous loss. For with the land we are selling all the natural resources and bio-diversity which is often overlooked or as most often happens swept under a carpet of red-tape. This explains her stand and that of Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) on the 'land for land' policy.

But sadly after a captivating lecture of over one hour and half, the first question that was asked was about the involvement of the famous film star, Amir Khan in the activities of NBA. It really proved her point on the apathy of the general public, which is more interested in the sensational than the relevant. Like she said we are indifferent to any disaster unless we are directly touched by it.

Living in a campus, almost completely removed from the real world, it was important for all of us to have listened to this lecture.

IQ

2006-09-24T14:27:00.000+05:30

Just finished Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes and really liked it. It is very well written and it makes you feel everything that is happening to the main character, Charlie Gordon. The only flaw I could find in the book is the human testing after testing only on mice. But I guess it should be allowed as artistic liberty. The best thing about the book is that it makes you question whether intelligence is really good for anything. Other than boosting your ego and making you feel supercilious towards others, a high IQ doesn't help you make friends. As a genius or as a retard you can't really relate to others, but you may be happier as a retard since you don't know it. It may be better to be mediocre and blend in.

Here is what my brother thinks about the book.

Building your vocabulary

2006-09-19T00:41:00.000+05:30

Well, there are two ways of going about it – the long & easy way and the quick & hard way, but sadly no quick & easy way. The first method may take years but involving nothing, but reading whatever you like. This is a very relaxed and reliable way of improving your vocabulary, you learn new words very slowly but you can be sure that you will not forget them. But if you are preparing for competitive exams like GRE this is an impractical way of doing things. That’s where the second method becomes essential – mugging up a humongous wordlist. It is a very tedious process and involves a lot of hard work, but you do get quick but unreliable results. So that is what I have been trying to do the past week, trying to cram in the Barons wordlist. But as wordlists go, the Barons is not bad, I mean the example sentences do contain a kind of wry humor. It’s almost like watching a Woody Allen movie – very intellectual, taxing and mildly humorous.

Absence and some good books

2006-09-10T23:40:00.000+05:30

I took a three week break from college and went to my brother's place. It is so strange that when you are out of the college and facing the real world, things like blogs and emails become so insignificant. When in college I check my email(s) at least every hour, but in the last three week I have checked only twice. But then you are not so jobless when you are outside the college (you actually have to do some work and not just sit in front of the computer and pretend to).

During this time, I finally finished Of Human Bondage and liked it very much. But I think that if you are going to read only one of Somerset Maugham's books then you should read The Razor's Edge because that is a much better book. Never mind all the hype surrounding Of Human Bondage.

I also read Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie which was highly recommended by my brother. It is a very colourful and imaginative tale. I think the author was having a lot of fun while writing it and so it contains lots of amusing lyrics. But in the end, I think it is just a children's book and not one of Salman Rushdie's serious works.

But the best book I read during this time was Not the End of the World by Geraldine McCaughrean which is about what might have actually happened aboard Noah's Ark. The main character in the story is Timna, Noah's daughter, but the book also provides the perspectives of the rest of the family and also of the animals on board the Ark. The book went on to win the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year Award. But I really think that the book is for grownups too. It is very brutal, especially the scene of the birth of the wildebeest calf on board the Ark, and very thought-provoking. By giving the perspectives of the people and the animals on board the Ark, it makes you question whether there is really any difference between them. It is a very short book but will keep you thinking for a long time.

Things ain't what they were...

2006-08-22T11:44:00.000+05:30

A friend was telling me the other day, that he was wasting all his time watching Dragonballs. DRAGONBALLS!! Of all things! And it got me thinking of today's cartoons, and how they have become the mindless talking heads and the excessively 'cute n cuddly' creatures. Look at POKEMON, I cant make any sense of it, but all the kids are obsessed with it. There is some kind of card game too. Oh, how I miss Topcat and Bugs Bunny. Those were real cool cartoons. I even like Dexter's Lab and Samurai Jack which are somewhat recent and Simpsons of course (I think it is for grownups). I guess I'm just getting old, but the friend I talked about is older than me :)

The Wisdom of Age

2006-08-12T03:04:00.000+05:30

It’s been a nice week, with the new students coming and I being able to delude them into considering me as a wise senior. It is always nice to meet new people; with all their enthusiasm and exuberance. And succeed in getting them to look up to you (wish it would stay that way). I think this year I will extend all my help in making the new students feel right at home, especially the girls and there are quite a few this time.

Also, today I watched some random tamil movie which had Bhavana in it. It made me an instant fan of her. I guess it takes a tamil movie to make a mallu actress appealing. After the movie me and my friend went for a coffee and ended up talking about school, life, love, girls and almost everything under the sun till 1:00 am. 'Twas time well spent (especially when I have one month left for GRE).

Emergence

2006-08-06T04:00:00.000+05:30

Why do birds fly in formations? Why do wolves hunt in packs? How does the queen ant direct the activities of the entire colony?

Are birds so very intelligent that they communicate among themselves, decide on a leader and then fly in a specific formation? It has been seen that an individual bird is not capable of planning such a complicated process. These phenomena are nowadays termed emergent behavior, where the individual units are simple, yet the overall system is extremely complex.

The most famous example of an artificially created emergent behavior is the Conway’s Game of Life. You can get an interactive introduction to it on this MIT website. Other examples include the stock market, where there is no single specific global leader or controller and yet the prices remain stable; the internet where any website can be created anywhere and yet they are all reachable from any point. Basically, it has been argued that every complex system can be explained using a simple set of rules.

Another related topic is the Cellular Automata, which is an arrangement of finite/infinite units and the behavior of each unit is decide only by its immediate neighbors. Thus the Game of Life is an example of a Cellular Automation. It has been found that using very simple rules, random numbers can be generated (a very difficult problem for deterministic computer systems) which passes all standard tests for randomness.

These surprising results have prompted people to question whether nature is truly as complex as imagined or whether it is made up of simpler rules which we are unable to find. In his book, A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down, Nobel laureate Robert B. Laughlin tries to explain the physical world using these emergent properties. And Stephen Wolfram in his controversial book, A New Kind of Science, studies Cellular Automata and suggests that existing methods of mathematics and the sciences are inadequate to explain certain properties.

For a good introduction to Emergent Behavior and Cellular Automata you can look them up on Wikipedia

Gratification

2006-07-22T20:27:00.000+05:30

I got my hands on Wuthering Heights from a friend recently. This classic was such a failure when it was first published that the author Emily Bronte went to her grave believing her only novel to be a failure. It seems like such a terrible punishment to an author, especially when the work is regarded as a masterpiece after his/her death. It brings to mind one of Oscar Wilde’s famous quotes:

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about

Yesterday, I finally finished A Tale of Two Cities. Even though there were quite a few coincidences in the book, I think it is one of the best I’ve read, and are essential to the tale. Truly, this book has the most famous starting and ending lines in literature. Just before the end Sydney Carton, the most unappreciated character in the book, is said to be at peace and to have enough a sense of being gratified to think:

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known

But in the real world, the public can be so ruthless, letting a great author like Emily Bronte die unappreciated during her lifetime.

The lesser of two evils

2006-07-15T12:29:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer: This post was written when in a non-serious mood. The author would like to state that he does not support terrorism in any way and that he thinks it an unforgivable crime. He would also like to apologize if anyone finds the comments mentioned here offending

Terrorism is bad. It kills a lot of people.

But then again, trains are also bad. They also kill a lot of people. In a year, I am sure that trains kill more people than do terrorists.

So when terrorists attack trains, it is like when Godzilla meets King Kong. Also as in these gore fests, it is always the innocent bystanders who suffer the most.

Cube Life

2006-07-08T20:31:00.000+05:30

I live in a cube – 343 – 7³ – that’s my room number. But you can’t complain about the room, it really is a cube (as promised). The walls are at perfect right angles with the floor and the ceiling, and of exact dimensions too. There is just enough space for a bed, two chairs - one for hanging my dirty laundry and the other for draping my towel on (I sit,lie and sleep on my bed), a table and a shelf for my books. Just perfect for your average cubeite. Makes you wish you had some cardboard boxes to decorate the room with, then it would be really picturesque

?!!

2006-07-01T11:23:00.000+05:30

In 'A Tale of Two Cities', Mr. Dickens (or Charles but never Mr. Charles) writes,

... I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly.

This is the first time I have come across a usage of 'disinterested love'. I have heard of disinterested opinion and a disinterested judge but never its usage with love. I don't even know whether it is a nice thing to tell someone, still I like it a lot!

Hey Maugham, what the Dickens?

2006-06-29T15:30:00.000+05:30

I had been reading ‘A tale of two cities’ as an e-book on my mobile (hope Mr. Charles doesn’t turn in his grave). But then I went and bought a real book – Of Human Bondage. The temptation of holding a book and reading it (kind of like having a cake and eating it too) was too great for me to resist. Thus I began reading two great books at the same time.

The styles of two authors cannot be more different. Maugham is extremely descriptive and the book is often described as an ‘autobiographical novel’. The characters are so alive since they are written from life. I could really relate to Philip, maybe not his tempestuous, obsessive love, but his shyness, love of reading, obstinacy and vanity. Then again, I found the book very similar to ‘The Razor’s Edge’.

On the other hand, Dickens is full of satiric humor, that is at the same time very thought provoking. I do not think I have understood all that is implied in the book or that I will after a second or third reading. Each sentence seems to have been written after a lot of thought and deliberation. The book makes me feel like I have been sleeping all these years (this is my first Dickens) and makes me want to read all of his books.

In ‘Of Human Bondage’, Mr. Maugham writes,

… there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. … But in England you get neither: you’re ground down by convention. You can’t think as you like and you can’t act as you like. That’s because it’s a Democratic nation. I expect America’s worse.

Makes you really wonder about India if the ‘land of the free’ is so restrictive, or wonder about France and Germany.

The Bookstore

2006-06-25T19:34:00.000+05:30

Over the ages, the bookstore has always played a central role in shaping the human society. The place has a certain charm about it. Really when you stop to think about it, you realize that all human activities have been, are and will be associated with the bookstore. A place of desire (when you see a book that you really want) and wonder (when you see its price). But the bookstore also has a soul, only you may have to search for it. Take yesterday for example, I went to this great bookstore (quite near the college too), and saw ‘Of Human Bondage’ which I’ve always wanted to read. When I looked at the price I was literally shocked - Rs. 508. Hmmm… how can I ever square it off with my conscience? But I was in luck yesterday, I found a low cost edition of the same book (after a lot of (soul?) searching) for Rs. 120 which I can explain to my conscience. So that’s my story - the soul of a bookstore.

hmmm... maybe I should go out more often and go some place other than a bookstore or a library.

ps. I haven’t started the book yet. Been reading ‘Tale of Two Cities’, my first ‘Dickens’. Still, better late than never.

Depression

2006-06-05T21:39:00.000+05:30

Some made the long drop from the apartment or office window; some took it quietly in two-car garages with the motor running; some used the native tradition of the Colt or Smith & Wesson; those well-constructed implements that end insomnia, terminate remorse, cure cancer, avoid bankruptcy, and blast an exit from intolerable positions by the pressure of a finger; those admirable american instruments so easily carried, so sure of effect, so well designed to end the american dream when it becomes a nightmare, their only drawback is the mess they leave for relatives to clean up

These are from 'To have and have not' by Ernest Hemingway, I guess it is to be expected from an author who later does the same thing, but this time uses a shotgun. I was trying to figure out which was the most depressing literature I've read, I guess it has to be 'Love' by Toni Morrisson (even though there were quite a few close contenders like 'Mrs. Dolloway', 'Catcher in the rye' and it even beat 'Desperation' by Stephen King). 'Love' is about a dying resort town and the two women who live there, but really the book is about depression.

Proof

2006-06-04T18:08:00.000+05:30

'Proof' is one of the best movies I've watched recently. The movie is about this great mathematician who goes a little crazy and dies. Now his daughter, Gweneth Paltrow, brings out a notebook containing a proof on some theorem on 'prime numbers'. But no one would believe that she did actually write the proof. The best thing about the movie is it doesn't become trite or over simplified. What I mean is that usually when there is a movie on a technical topic, they just show a bunch of formulae or when they show a hacker, he types a lot of stuff on the keyboard and hey presto the security system is breached. The only complaint I have is in the choice of 'prime numbers', aren't there hundreds of important unproved theorems in mathematics? Its always prime numbers in movies take 'PI' another excellent movie but still its on 'prime numbers'. I guess that is the most accessible mathematical conundrum that everyone can identify

Not so great

2006-05-29T20:52:00.001+05:30

I've been reading 'Inkheart' by Cornelia Flunke (suggested to me by a friend as a great fantasy fiction). Well he was wrong, Inkheart is not such a great book (too kiddish and girlie) . The thing is, I do like fantasy - not only great stuff like TLOTR but also new works like the Inheritance trilogy. Maybe the book wasn't ment for me, but I really did not like it. As with any other book once I start, I can't stop until I finish it. So it was a complete waste of time. But then again I found this quote at the begining of a chapter

A strong and bitter book-sickness floods one's soul. How ignominious to be strapped to this ponderous mass of paper, print and dead man's sentiment. Would it not be better, finer, braver to leave the rubbish where it lies and walk out into the world a free untrammeled illiterate Superman?

With books like these I do see some point in the quote

The world according to Marcus Aurelius

2006-05-26T13:07:00.000+05:30

There is a passage in "The World accordint to Garp" where Garp reads the following quote of Marcus Aurelius in a bookstore in Austria,

In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapours

and comments that he must have written it when in Austria. That seems to summarise everything about the book. Even the most profound (and depressing) passages are painted with a twist of humour. Like everything about the book, every sentence, seems to have a multitude of meanings and emotions attached with them. I want it to go on for ever. All the small stories and the dreams of the characters within these stories. Everything is so vivid. Like it says in the cover, 'the book makes you laugh, makes you weep and above all makes you think' and its TRUE. This is one of the most readable and also a must read book I've come across.