A Few Changes

Dear readers,

Please note that as of today I am moving my poems and stories to their own independent space. Kindly find the links to my other blogs in my sidebar.

I have also added a "Follow this blog" widget to all my blogs, so please take advantage of the same. I have also listed the blogs I regularly follow in my sidebar.

This blog will, of course, continue to host general articles, which do not fall under stories or poems.

Happy blogging.

2008 Darwin Awards

Yes, it's that magical time of year again when the Darwin Awards are
bestowed, honoring the least evolved among us.

Here are the glorious top 10 winners:

1. When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended
victim during a hold-up in Long Beach , California , would-be robber
James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered
down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked. And
now, the honorable mentions:

2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a
meat-cutting machine and, after a little shopping around, submitted a
claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent
out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine
and he also lost a finger. The chef's claim was approved.

3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car
during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman
had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.

4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus
driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be
transporting from Sarare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit
his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered
everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers
to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very
excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn't
discovered for 3 days.

5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious
head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he
received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying
to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was
hit.

6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the
counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer,
the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which
the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and
fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he
got from the drawer... $15. [If someone points a gun at you and gives
you money, is a crime committed?]

7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided
that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window,
grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it
over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the
would-be thief in the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store
window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.

8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man
grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the
woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher.
Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in
the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of
the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he
replied, 'Yes, officer, that's her. that's the lady I stole the purse
from.'

9. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a
Burger King in Ypsilanti , Michigan , at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and
demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't
open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered
onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The
man, frustrated, walked away. [A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER]

10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked
on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police
arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor
home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man
admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his siphon hose into
the motor home's sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle
declined to press charges saying that it was the best laugh he'd ever
had.


Cheers!

Letter to Ganesh

Dear Ganesh,

 

Greetings from an old friend! Hope this letter finds you in the best of your health and humor. I am sure that your appearance on television has made all your friends as happy as it has made me.

 

My friend, the reason you are being celebrated is not important. What matters is that the entire nation saw you and heard you on prime-time television. What an awesome sight you were! I tell you, those words you spoke – so matter-of-factly, so confidently – absolutely nothing could even as much as attempt to suppress them. There was something about the camera, which had got fixed on your sinister smile as you spoke those abso-damn-lutely striking words!

 

I recall you having said, “I don’t care! Why should I? They should learn to drive safely. I am not responsible for their incompetence...” Stunning, my man! You were simply sizzling!

 

“If only they had,” you had continued in the face of the camera, “mastered the art of swerving their vehicles clear of the obvious little obstacles without causing a major roadblock, they would never have to complain about a thing!” I say! You were pounding the audience with one revelation after another. You were unstoppable.

 

The press indeed did a laudable job of pushing a great soul like you into the limelight. You deserved it. So what if a southbound express bus had collided into a northbound tourist car? What if five individuals had been immediately transported to meet their maker? What if seven others had come oh-so-close to bidding farewell to their miserable existence on earth? Why should it bother you? Why should the press care?

 

Dead men tell no tales. The injured had been rushed to a hospital kilometers away from the location, and hence were indisposed at the moment. The driver of the express bus had vanished, as drivers of express buses are normally expected to, immediately after the incident. Therefore, the only source of information the press had was you, and you didn’t mind. They made you their hero for the evening.

 

This is a secular, democratic republic. You have rights in this country. Yes, you have every right to come driving a JCB or a Quick Concrete Mixer on wheels, to park it in the middle of the busy National Highway, and to pop out for a steaming cup at the roadside tea shack. After all, your vehicle can take good care of itself. Let the rest of the world worry about themselves, or better still, let them try out the practical curriculum at swerving free of the ‘little obstacle’ that you had so considerately left behind for them.

 

Congratulations, Ganesh, my friend! You seem to have struck the right chords with our press. You gave them an interesting story to broadcast, and they made you a celebrity in return. You have learnt, and taught us all, the ultimate formula that leads to definite fame.

 

Many thanks and regards,

Fearfully yours,

(Signature and Name)

 

Silk From Milk!

If you know that Spiderman is just a comic, a cartoon, a story, or a fantasy, then it is perhaps time to unlearn what you know and look up to the mad scientists.

Scientists have injected spider gene into mammals like cows and goats, to begin working during the stage of lactation, so that the milk protein can be used to produce silk. They call this silk BioSteel because it is very strong. As strong as the material used in a spider's web.

Read more about it here:

http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/MammalCellSpiderSilk.html

Possible uses include lighter but stronger bullet-proof vests; biodegradable yet hardy sutures; and tougher aerospace components.

Unbelievable? Believe it!
.
.
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A Case For Perennial Existence

Nothing is ever created or destroyed. Things just are, and they are in a state of perennial flux.



Our interpretations, which depend on our perceptions, in turn depend heavily on a relativistic model of the world-view. What appears to be a point from one frame of reference might indeed be a line in another dimension. What appears to be a line might indeed turn out to be a square when the plane of vision is rotated laterally.

All (wo)man-made measuring systems are extremely limited, in the sense that there is nothing absolute about them. For example, the spatial distance between any two given points is never absolute, but is relative to their plane of observation. Time is a purely conceptual and relativistic measuring convention, since time cannot be measured independent of space. It is an illusion that we have conjured up for our convenience.

Obviously then, the changes one observes around oneself are only relative to some original frame of reference where one may be observing from, and also to the angle or dimension in which one may perceive them. As long as the original frame does not change, ones perception will seem to be consistent, thereby giving one the pseudo-confidence that what one sees is the absolute reality. A different frame, angle or dimension would offer a dissimilar perception, and would bring one to a different conclusion.

However, when all relativistic views are dropped and a holistic model applied, things begin to get simpler as well as clearer.



I am a strong believer in Destiny; I was destined to be. How could one not believe a blatant truth? Moreover, had I even chosen not to believe it, it would work anyway! Owing to this, I am expected also to believe in concepts like rebirth. I would say that the two topics are independent of each other, and strong faith in one need not translate to an unflinching conviction about the other.

Traditional ideas about rebirth heavily rely on the extremely relativistic model of life discussed above. Birth and death are relativistic concepts. Nothing is created or destroyed; things just are, distributed into varied forms of energy.

At a lower cognitive level, things are in a constant state of flux, of change, evolution. But at the holistic level, such change or flux is hardly evident. Whether we look at the subatomic level, or at the cosmic level, all things are one. They are neither born, nor die. They simply exist. They change from one form to another; they vibrate; they evolve. Owing to the fact that time is a relativistic measuring system (a grand illusion, as I have clarified in yet another monologue) the question of past, present or future hardly arises. Therefore, Karma is also an illusory concept.

Hence, everything is permanent, existing in one form or another। It is our awareness that tells us that we are. Remove awareness, and we will not know that we are. But we still will be. It must be understood here that detaching awareness does not lead to liberation, at least not in the traditional sense of the term. All those unconscious people in the hospital are not liberated souls. Salvation is not lack of awareness, but is simply a state of extremely refined awareness; call it super-consciousness if you will. It is this refined awareness, which saves us from painful bondage.

It is our intellect that questions about our being, or about our being again. It is our double-edged sword of logic that severs things and concepts in a futile attempt to understand the secrets, the mysteries of our existence. The more we sever, the farther away we move from the truth. Intellect is a general mental capability that involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn.

However, one must understand here that there are several concepts in the cosmos that one cannot comprehend by the aid of the intellect alone. While some ideas may be too complex for our intellect to handle by itself, some others are so simple that our intellect cannot work with them.

For example, when we look for "Intelligent Life" elsewhere in our universe, do we even know what signs we are looking for? We land up looking for symptoms of life as we know it, using our limited reason and logic to decide and judge. What makes us so sure that all life must be limited to show the symptoms as we know them? Why do we believe that there cannot be life outside the perimeters of our understanding? There could be "intelligent life" out there, which our intellect may not even recognize as "life".



They say that people could be born again as people at various levels, or as animals at various levels, depending on something they call Karma. I have not heard anybody talk about people being reborn as an inanimate object - like pen stands, cars, the fire in the volcanoes, the water in the oceans, the grains of sand in the deserts, the mountains, the asteroids, the galaxies... Nor have I heard of people being reborn as something intangible - like an idea, an emotion, heat, sound, or any other subtler forms of energy. Wonder why not!



We are neither born, nor do we die. We simply are. In one form or another, regardless of what it might be. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are one with the cosmos, because we are of the same elements as everything else around us. Names and forms might vary, but we have been, are, and will be.

Happy Post

The best way to read this post is to have family/friends/colleagues sitting with you as you read it out. Ask your friends to listen to you carefully as you read out each line aloud. And hey, you should be listening to yourself too! Okie, let's do this.

Ha ha ha ha ha!
Haha haaa ha ha ha!
Hahahaha haaahahahaaaa!
Haha heeeyyy haha ha! Haha hoooh! Hehehe!
Haha hohoooo! Haha haha!
Haha hehe hoooo! Hahaha!
(Hehehehe... Are you listening to yourself?)
Ooooohh hahaha, haha haaaaa, heheheee!
Hahahahahahahaaaa! Haha hahahaha!
Hooohaha, ho hooooohaha!
Ho ho ho hahahahooooohaha! Hahahaaa!
He hehehe hooooooh! Hahahahaha!
(You know what you are doing, right?)
Hooooooohahahaaha! Hahahoooohahahahaaaa!
Heheheheheeeeyyyyy hahahaahahahaaaaaahahhaaaa!
Hehehehehehehehe! Hehehehehehehehe!
Ooooohh hahaha, haha haaaaa, heheheee!
Hahahahahahahaaaa! Haha hahahaha!
Hooohaha, ho hooooohaha!
Ho ho ho hahahahooooohaha! Hahahaaa!
He hehehe hooooooh! Hahahahaha!
(Your friends are listening to you, right?)
Hooooooohahahaaha! Hahahoooohahahahaaaa!
Heheheheheeeeyyyyy hahahaahahahaaaaaahahhaaaa!
Hehehehehehehehe! Hehehehehehehehe!
Oooooooooooohhhhh my goodness! Hahahahahaahaha!
(Don't stop. Repeat the above lines one more time.)


If you enjoyed this exercise, do it three times a day, every day.

JUST LAUGH!
Be happy. :)

Cheers!

Gems

The man who goes with the crowd will
Get no further than the crowd.
The man who walks alone will find
Himself in places no one knows about.