To us, here and now, it appears thus

I am just tired, depressed and down and out - Maybe its december, Maybe its that I am a tad poor than I hoped to be or maybe its just because the future seems bleak and uninspiring. Or maybe its all of these things. I find the motivation in me to do anything has been drained. I am just feeling lazy, cueing up cancer with all those incessant marlboros.

Hoping for a better day tomorrow.

Signing off,
Vishnu Vyas

You know you’re old when, that new and upcoming superstar that you think is really hot is actually younger than you are.

Sigh, yet another sad day to reminisce over missed opportunities.

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here. So, just to get back my “writing” spirit and please the gods of the blog world, here I am with something that many might find mildly funny.

Anyone who has used emacs enough would have automatically got into the habbit of typing C-x C-s, to save whatever it is that is in their buffer. But if you have used it as much as I’ve, then you would have gotten into the habbit of doing this so often, that you do it unconciously, whenever you are near any sort of keyboard. Infact I was totally oblivious to it untill a friend pointed it out.

The response is automatic, reflexive and almost uncontrollable, just like Tourette’s syndrome just for those who have used emacs - an Emacs Tourette’s Syndrome.

 Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.

If this girl could say “Athu!!!” with the passion those three exclaimation marks imply, she is undeniabily thamizh!

Signing Off,

Vishnu Vyas.

East or West, home is the best, goes an old saying. Many a time, one would silently smile at such witticisms, but only rarely does one realise the truth behind such sayings. Leaving home, a place which has been so good to me, is more than simply getting on a flight and saying goodbye. Its a weird emotional experience, that brings forth bountiful emotions you never knew you had.

India - Its the land of my fathers and forefathers, an eternal connection that I could never sever, it’s a part of me which would never depart from me, and to which I hope I never depart from. Its too complicated to put it in words, for some emotions are necessarily beyond words.

So, India, my love, my mother, my motherland, I bid you adieu, but donot forget me as I won’t ever forget you. Remember well, for this parting is only that of time and space and not that of heart or mind.

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas

My closest friends would know precisely what that means, others would have to wait for some more time

With Scott Adams chiming in about atheism and people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris taking up the pedestal as the public faces of atheism, which have long been empty, atheism seems to be the new ‘in-thing’ as it was during the times of Nitzsche and Russell. I’ve been speculating about what motivates the religious to be religious in the first place. And I’m taking Hinduism for analysis. Primarily for three main reasons. One, I’m more familiar with the Hindu scriptures and mythology than with that of other faiths. And secondly all my blood relatives are self-professed Hindus. So, I have had more real experience quizzing them about their faith.

Thirdly, and most importantly Hinduism is what one would compare to ‘Theological Anarchy’. Having no core dogma (or having multiple dogmas), no organised system of faith, no requirements or for that matter anything else. Many Hindus across the world and even across India get flared up with the same issues that are considered ’sensitive’ - things like conversion, defiling Hinduism, Ayodhya etc.. . On a more practical note, I’ve seen people both in a remote corner of Tamil Nadu and somewhere in the heartland of Gujarat feeling the same thing about those sensitive issues and identifying with one other, even though if they were ever to meet face to face, chances are that it would be highly unlikely that they would even like each other.

Why is it that Hindutva politicians like Modi and friends are able to whip up similar emotions in such a diverse cornucopia of people within India? These are what I will be trying to answer, to the best of my ability here. But, at the end, they are nothing more than wild speculations and I wouldn’t want to treat them as a final thesis on the question of religion and faith.

The most ironic thing about Hinduism, is that most Hindu’s apart from being some vague form of theists aren’t really concerned about scriptures or Hindu philosophy. Many are even ignorant of the wonderful stories, which certainly counts as great literature that abound in Hindu mythology. Further more, many are even unaware of the Hindu pantheon and the relationships among each other. Most have their favourite deities and a bunch of festivals which are universally celebrated, without any thought to the motivations or even the reasons of why the festivals exist. So, that throws strict theology out of the window. The second thing is that its not about God or Gods. Most often, the issues are not against atheists, (which is there, but never comes to the forefront) but against other fellow theists. Because, if it was just about gods, why would anyone object to accepting god, but in a different way? It isn’t about ethnicity either. Then why?

My conclusion would be that it appeals to a sense of identity. Humans, being intrinsically social animals, need identities. A group to identify with, a sense of real comfort. A sense of belonging. All you need is to give a name, and you automatically give it a form, for that is the nature of identity. A group as amorphous and ideologically disparate as the Hindus can subscribe to a common identity, only because there is one - of being a Hindu - which in essence is no more than a name. If this thesis is in essence correct and being given thus, then is there any solution to the problems of conflict that are prevalent in our times? What identities should one appeal to, for the sake of promoting the greatest good for all? Questions I desperately wish I had the answers…

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.

Flickr, a mature online photo-sharing product from yahoo with clean looks, nice features and a decent enough free-version. Now comapre that to zooomr, something which has a prediliction for being in beta for a long time, has a more cluttered user interface and misses some important features of flickr.

Then why do I like zooomr better than flickr? Is it a geek thing or is it just me? (A more meaningful and useful comparision of the two later).

Shameless plug : Here is my flickr page and my zooomr page.  If thats not enough, I torture myself in coming up with small photo-essays here (link).
Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.

In this alarming article in MSNBC, Mike Ratiff answers the question in the affirmative. Even though this applies only to American institutions of higher education, I’m sure the situation is only slightly different here in India. I’ve blogged about my feelings regarding this issue before.

But one thing that sure did catch my eye was this about negative learning.

We were startled by the extent of what we call “negative learning.” When courses are not offered or required, the students forget what they knew when they entered as freshmen

I’ve seen this phenomena happen right before my eyes. Many of my friends in college who even though were genuinely smart, let their skills atrophy and were dumbfounded when tackling problems that inevitably required those skills. What was the most alarming part of all that was their sheer callousness in their attitude. Even when I pointed out that they were things that they had learnt in high school, they behaved as if it was entirely natural to forget the important skills and basic knowledge that was supposed to be the foundation on which higher education was built.

Though their attitude is partly culpable, I for one, put the blame squarely on the staff and faculty who have pretty much the same attitude. Its a sad state of affairs here and unless something drastic happens the future seems pretty bleak to me.

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.

While I was at CAIR (Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics) I was amazed at the irreverance towards hardware. There were computers, mini-towers, powersupplies, office copiers almost everywhere and they were using it for all sorts of purposes. From quick paper-stands to the kitchen sink.

But when ever you see a nice spick and span datacenters, with airconditioned looks on prime realestate, You wonder what they are housing there - a utility or endangered animal species. Computers and primarily datacenters are utilities and they should be treated with the same kind of irreverance that you treat your diesel generator or air-conditioning condensor with. Put them in some hidden corner, devoid of human intervention. There were netware systems that could do this for years, to think modern systems couldn’t is foolishness.

And finally sun has realised this and is trying to create a market niche in precisely this segment with their blackbox servers. They are built out of a standardised shipping container. It already reeks of “Made In China“. This is a step in the right direction, lets see where this takes Sun.

(Link).

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.