Blissful Life

When you apply skepticism and care in equal amounts, you get bliss.

Year: 2013

  • MAA Utsav 13

    Unfortunately I won't be attending it this year. Nevertheless, here is the event schedule

  • If We Could Start From the End

    “In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people’s home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm!” ~Woody Allen

    In my next year I want to spend time backwards. I start off with an exam and get that out of the way. Then I study hard and understand the entire syllabus. After that, I go to the wards and see the patients. And have discussions with my friends about various ailments. And then end the year with “honeymoon” term.

    Ah!

    In retrospect, it’s so very stupid that we have our exams at the very end. As if the examination is the end. It is supposed to be just the means to the end. And for that, it’s best kept somewhere towards the middle of the year. First half, you need to have lessons, lectures and learning. Then you will have exam. And then you go to the patients.

    Well, don’t read the above paragraph.

    What I essentially feel now is that quintessential wonder. “Why can’t I study 3 months before exams the way I study 3 days before exams?”

    There is no answer. Anyhow. Learning is a very nice habit. Going back to it.

  • How Journalism Can and Needs to Change and Adapt to the Web

    Internet has made traditional journalism obsolete. But we have not realized it yet.

    Newspapers in print were limited by space and functionality, which restricted the stories they covered to only those very few important ones and some fresh stories. Today’s first page news would be buried inside the daily tomorrow, and will be forgotten the day after. There might be a follow up story, but it is published only if it is of enough importance to warrant another covering.

    For the public, this means that there is no continuity. Stories stop abruptly. Promises are forgotten. Impressions fade. They are constantly distracted by newer, more exciting events. And they conveniently forget the older, more important ones.

    • What is up with the investigation of that infamous crime?
    • Where is that famous person now? What is she doing?
    • Which film is that controversial director working on now?
    • What happened to that sincere police officer who was receiving death threats from various points? Is he even alive today?
    • Where is that ground breaking cure for the terminal illness? Why can’t I buy it from the drug store already?

    That is where the internet comes in.

    Blogging sites, and micro-blogging sites have up to an extent relieved the pressure on newspapers to publish all the stories they receive. What is not fit for the print edition, goes to the web edition. Permanent columnists are given blogs which they can update at their own will. And individuals can publish on their own, and link to their stories via micro-blogging sites which then take care of content delivery.

    But it does not have to stop there.

    Newspaper websites can change their form. They can switch to a publish-subscribe pattern. And it needs minimal change to the way they are already working. Here’s how it goes.

    Every news item will have a “subscribe to this story” button on it. A user (identified by emails, or by creating an account on the site) who “subscribes” to a story will get all the follow up items from that story. Those follow-ups which are not worthy for prime attention, will not go on the front page of the website, but they will nevertheless go to the feed/email/equivalent of everyone who has “subscribed” to the story.

    Furthermore, there could even be an encyclopedic division of stories, which a new user can browse and subscribe. That is, on clicking “browse stories” the user would reach a page with many categories listed, like “movies”, “celebrities”, “politics”, “crimes”, “disasters”, “accidents”, etc. Under each category there could be sub categories, like for “crimes”, there could be “rapes”, “theft”, “murder”, “bribery”, etc. and so on.

    Essentially, this website will look like twitter accounts maintained by journalists. Instead of following “people”, the user can follow “stories”.

    But isn’t that what content aggregators do?
    Yes, and no.
    No, websites like reddit and stumbleupon cover only wide topics, not individual stories.
    Yes, Google news has “See realtime coverage” button under each story, but this is “determined automatically by a computer” and doesn’t connect non-contiguous coverage. For the time being, the function I’m proposing is best served by Wikipedia. Each notable event gets its own wiki article, and volunteers update the wiki with latest coverage of the story. This is unreliable, and not enough.

    We need paradigm shift in how journalists cover stories.

    If you are a journalist, and you covered a story once, you should make it a point to follow that story up till its end. You should make sure that promises are kept, that justice is served, that people are not forgotten. You should keep the timelines alive. And do not worry about having no audience, because if something is worth covering once, it is worth covering till its completion. If it is not, then you should not have covered it at first.

    And media will rise as the relentless pursuer of truth.

  • Men May Now Wear Veils

    The law is clear.

    IPC 354A
    1) A man … iv) making sexually coloured remarks, shall be guilty of the offence of sexual harassment.
    …
    3) Any man who commits the offence shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.

    But it is not complete. What is a “sexually coloured remark”?

    • “You are looking gorgeous today” ?
    • “You look stunning in this dress” ?
    • “I would kill to be your husband” ?

    If you follow this definition (which you’re bound to by law), you cannot seduce a woman without sexually harassing her. If you can’t seduce a woman, how can you ever dream of having sex with her? If you can’t have sex with any woman, how can you satisfy your biological urges?

    For resolving this Gordian knot, we shall take a cue from the Holy Quran.

    • 33:59 [edited for men] “Tell thy husbands and thy sons and the men of the law-fearing to draw their cloaks close round them.”
    • 24:31 [edited for men] “And say to the law-fearing men that they cast down their looks and close their eyes to not look at women, and let them wear their head-coverings over their eyes, and not see anyone except their wives or their mothers, or the mothers of their wives, or their daughters, or the daughters of their wives, or their sisters, or their sisters’ daughters, or their brothers’ daughters, or their men, or those whom their right hands possess, or the female servants not having need (of men), or the children who have not attained knowledge of what should be hidden from men; and let them not strike their feet so that what they hide of their manliness may be known”
    • 33:55 [edited for men] “It shall be no crime in them as to their mothers, or their daughters, or their sisters, or their brothers’ daughters, or their sisters’ daughters, or their men, or the slaves which their right hands possess, if they speak to them unveiled”

    We shall walk around wearing veils. Not looking at any woman, not giving our natural tendencies a chance to arouse our masculinity. We shall refrain from talking to women, from thinking of them as potential mates for courting, from having romantic pleasure. We shall abstain from sexuality.

    And we shall castrate ourselves.

  • I am Alive, yet

    The paucity in posting was because of two very important things.
    1) I got other things to do. Lot of friends, lot of things happening. I will write them down here in no particular order.

    I got broadband: This happened only about a month ago. And counter-intutively, it didn’t lead me to posting more here 😛 Because by the time I had gotten broadband, I’d forgotten this blog. Anyhow, the broadband connection is 2-8 unlimited, BSNL Combo plan which costs me Rs 701 per month inclusive of everything. That means I have a longer day because I now don’t sleep at 9 right after dinner, but instead at 3 right after the free usage begins and I’ve queued things for download.

    I quit facebook.
    A lot of things had been happening in facebook. There was a lot of groups, a lot of people I was following. Even the MMC&RI confessions page which was fun to read. But I realized that I didn’t have any time to waste on reading all those useless things from the endless wall. And deactivated facebook.

    Digital Library became gaming hub:
    This was essentially after Sammscrithi’13. There was “reign of games” which had NFS, and counter strike and fifa being played multiplayer in the first floor of auditorium. Essentially, those games reached our digital library which had by then became defunct as a youtube browsing center because probably we didn’t pay the bills. So, an hour of counter strike after dinner, can make you alert for three hours of pathology.

    Among other things, I created a bot for whatsapp, hike was released, bbm was released, anyhow 2k11 whatsapp group had to be split into two – main group and extended group.

    Bhavika became class representative along with Abhilash Mayya, replacing Fadnis and Pratibha. The voting for Bhavika was particularly interesting with the votes being equal for her and Sri Raksha at the end. And interestingly Saraswathi hadn’t voted till then. But she couldn’t vote after that because then everyone would know whom she voted for. So, we called up everyone who was absent on that day and finally it was Bhavika who would become academic secretary after Anusha.

    I have been consistently scoring low in most exams, because, I have been giving no time at all to studying. Which means, I can’t continue this post to write about exams, hostel, college, my ICMR project, or anything. Anyhow, I will try to post about each of them when I’m bored studying. Bye bye for the morning.

  • 6 Things To Do When You Are Stuck In The Elevator With A Girl

    For the introverts

    1. Check your smartphone. See if someone has left you a message. If not, play “Temple Run 5” or “Angry Birds Lift”. Act, the same way you would when you are confronted with someone you hate, like there is something really interesting happening on your 4 inch display and keep stroking it with your fingers.

    2. Stare at the floor count. See if there’s any change in the speed at which the numbers change. Think of what you will do if the elevator fails and shoots to the ground.

    3. Think hard, or act like you are doing so. Assign yourself the task of saving the world from alien invasion or climate change. And rake your brains for a solution. If you are a dumb medical student, scratch your head and twirl your beard, as if you are answering an essay question.

    For the extroverts

    4. Talk to the girl stuck with you. If you don’t know her, ask her what she is or where she is going. See if you can make her smile. If you do know her, just shut the fuck up and start talking to her already.

    5. Flirt with the girl. There is nothing as boring as a casual conversation.

    “Hi” “Hey!” “What do you do?” “I work in the grocery store, what about you?” “Oh, I work in the other department” Weird silence. Trnim… (Announcement) “Ground floor”

    If you are good at it, flirt with the girl and make her eyes twinkle.

    For the drunk horny extroverts who are single, or who don’t mind getting their marriage broken

    6. Hit on the girl. Compliment her and make her aroused. Make sure she is single and is up for a game. Exchange phone numbers. Make her feel comfortable and while parting maybe gently touch her on the shoulders and say “see you soon”. Then follow that up with as much romantic foreplay as you can, and try to get laid soon.

    But never ever go faster than how fast the girl wants you to go. This is what Tarun Tejpal and all other idiots get wrong. If she doesn’t want to talk with you, stop talking. If she doesn’t respond to your flirting, shut up. If she feels uncomfortable, stop the lift at the next floor and get out of it. Do not ever fuck things up by making any unexpected advance, because even if you do not end up in trouble you will ruin the chances of your entire gender on being comfortable around a lady.

  • On Facebook

    Facebook is an excellent social networking tool. It has features that makes reconnecting with old friends nostalgic, sharing photos beautiful and staying connected seamless.

    And that’s where it ends. Facebook is not the best content discovery tool. It can show you news from only those people you know or follow. Technically it can show news from world over, but it doesn’t by default. That immediately restricts the sample size of links you chance upon.

    You can actually change the defaults and use Facebook like a feed reader, by liking pages of a good content creator or a good content curator. And then going through a myriad of settings to make all of their posts visible to you.

    But Facebook defaults to “suckery”. In an effort to make page owners pay for advertisements, Facebook buries page posts deep inside news feed.

    And then, Facebook, by default, gives the microphones to all your crappy friends and turns the volume up on all of them, simultaneously!

    Even if you quit reading twilight after the first few chapters, you can relate yourself on Facebook to Edward Cullen in classroom. You get to read everyone’s mind, without even listening. Unlike Cullen here, you have to turn off each single person who litters.

    And in such a system, diversity dies off. You post about what your friends post about which is what their friends post about which is what their friends post about which is what you post about. It’s like inbreeding depression. And this leads to the same stories recurring on your wall day after day walling (pardon the pun) you from all the different, never–thought–about things that actually happen on the internet. You will be stuck with Modi’s comment on Rahul and Rahul’s comment on Modi and Modi’s comment on Rahul’s comment on Modi and Sachin Tendulkar’s comment on Bharath Ratna, and Bharath Ratna’s comment on Sachin Tendulkar, and your neighbour’s comment on Sachin Tendulkar and your friend’s comment on your neighbour’s comment on Sachin Tendulkar and then Modi’s comment on that. And to vie for your attention, each news source will add more masala, more drama to each story they post. While the internet goes forward with splendid things.

    Click here to deactivate your Facebook account now.

    And then, decide on one standard news site, one standard niche site and one standard content discovery tool, and live a beautiful life.

  • Assorted List of Things 20-Something Should Know

    This post on Making254movies:
    26 Things Every 20-something Should Wish to Know

    It needs a little restructuring so that we can actually remember it and apply to our lives. First, go read the post. Then, revise it below.

    To begin with:
    2. Invest in yourself.
    23. Habits now, will stick till the end.
    25. Don’t worry about things that aren’t good about you, spend time on the good ones.

    Knowledge:
    7. Get educated formally.
    22. College won’t take you everywhere. Educate yourself.
    10. Keep a personal library.
    26. Learn the art of rhetoric.

    Health:
    9. Take care of your body before it’s too late.

    Finance:
    12. Have a budget.
    24. Save money.

    Relationships:
    1. Don’t feel urged to go behind a girl.
    4. Don’t cohabit outside marriage.

    General social life:
    6. People let you down. Expect it and learn from it.
    20. Be charming, help others.
    8. Put people together. 
    19. Stop trying to save everybody.
    13. Don’t compare yourself with others, say on social media.

    General life:
    5. Don’t necessarily go with hype.
    11. College -> Confusion -> Real life. That’s the order it comes in.

    Innovate:
    3. Take jobs that need travel.
    15. Take values out of crappy jobs. 
    17. Be passionate, be willing to fail.
    16. Accept failures, move on.
    14. Keep changing your plans, as needed.
    21. But don’t listen to unimportant people.
    18. Explore.

  • On Disposing Garbage From My Reading List

    Up until two months ago, I would have been heading to facebook.com if I ended up in a long queue for chappati at the mess. No, I wouldn't waste a lot of time reading worthless status updates. I'd only click on external links and read articles (which feigned importance).

    And then, I deactivated my facebook account (as I've described here on quora).

    I started reading more of thehindu.com, and my textbooks.

    And that's when I realized that there's a difference between articles that you land up on after surfing social media, and articles from high quality news sources like The Hindu.

    For example, till a friend told me about how sad it is that naive criticism is floating over the web and social media about Sachin receiving Bharath Ratna, I didn't know that people could even think of blaming Sachin for being conferred a prize.

    But did I miss anything by not reading such hate-posts? No. There will be thousands of opinions about every event that occurs. Not all matters. A vast majority of opinions are fit for not even the trash can. Unfortunately, we meddle ourselves in all that rubbish, all day.

    If I go to Google News, it's again those articles which are "hot" that is displayed more prominently. And those are most often not the ones that are comprehensive accounts of reality. People tend to click on eye-grabbing headlines. And sites like NDTV capitalize on that by publishing "news" that sounds more like gossip.

    A comparison

    Hindu article:
    Heading: C.N.R. Rao bemoans lack of funding for science
    Relevant section:

    For a brief moment, Professor Rao lost his cool and criticised politicians for having given “so little.” “But for the money that science receives, India, I suppose, is doing well,” he said.

     

    NDTV article:

    Heading: Bharat Ratna CNR Rao calls politicians 'idiots'

    The same section:

    Venting out the dissatisfaction in the scientific community over "inadequate" funding, Bharat Ratna awardee and eminent scientist Professor CNR Rao today had an angry outburst as he called politicians "idiots" for giving them "so little".
    …
    "….why the hell these idiots, these politicians have given so little for us. Inspite of that, we scientists have done something," Prof. Rao said, losing his cool.

    This, as I come to know from wikipedia is called sensationalism.

    Which of the two articles above are people more likely to share on facebook or google or twitter? We don't have to speculate. The answers are on those links for everyone to see. At the time of writing, there's 155 fb shares, 5 tweets and 3 google+ shares for one. And 1.3k fb shares, 200 tweets and 137 +1s for the other. Which's which is anybody's guess.

    It's natural for any business to try and maximize their revenue. And we can't actually blame them for trying to entice us into reading their articles. We should blame ourselves for continuing to promote such valueless journalism. We should stop reading them.
    I'm not here to blame media barracks for sensationalism. I'm here to help you out of it. Human beings are naturally curious. But we don't want anyone to exploit our curiosity for their ulterior motives. Let's preserve our curiosity and apply them to find solutions for problems that genuinely need our attention.

    To Do
    There's only one thing to do. Mercilessly prune your reading list. Whenever you find a sensational article, remember how the author of that article must have been forced to write insensible incredulities to vie for your attention. Then, simply ignore it. Ignore your urge to open and criticize and comment and share. Ignore it and keep your mind fresh; to read a beautifully written, thought provoking, inspiring, educating article. Like, this.

  • Why Bother Writing?

    Thoughts are vague. No matter how clear a thought is to you, it would not be fully formed. That is, till you decide to write it down.
    When you write down anything, you assign an (imaginary) audience to it. And you start explaining your idea. Any explanation has to go down logically. Every digression will have to be thought through to its completion. But this is lacking in “just thinking” about it. Your brain deceives you into believing that everything is logical and that branches of thoughts are self explanatory or irrelevant, or somehow not any which require that it be pursued.

    Thinking gives a false impression of completeness. Writing makes a thought concrete.

    It is like a construction. You can plan everything down to its last detail. But it is only when you start building it that you realize which structures are vulnerable and what modifications are necessary in order to make the building stronger.

    And that makes writing difficult.

    So difficult that when people actually sit down and try to write, they give up, and worse, they think of writing as a futile exercise because they have “already thought everything about it”.

    You get my point. If you are thinking that you have thought everything about something, you should be able to write about it without any difficulty. If you find writing about it even slightly difficult, it means that you have missed out some critical piece of thought in your mind tree. It’s only when you’re forced to write, that it becomes complete.

    So, write.

    …

    PS: Writing this made me consider another related process – “talking”. Wouldn’t talking also force us to solidify thoughts? I think the answer is “Yes, but…”.
    Pros of writing:

    • A written document can be read by anyone, any time.

    Cons of talking:

    • Conversation gets very messy if you try to go back and delete a wrong word from one of your previous statements, and come back and continue the sentence and then change another word in the previous statement, and so on. There is absolutely no way to delete a paragraph.

    Okay, from the above point onwards, I’m considering only digital writing. And I seriously don’t think anyone will be writing with pen on paper any more.

    Perceived pros of talking that is levelled by internet:

    • In a conversation with an interested soul, you might get help from the conversational partner to finish your thought. Blogs with commenting system set up lets anyone else forge a new direction from your idea.