Ramblings of a Nerd With Too Much Spare Time

I came across a very interesting story in my English textbook, that got me thinking some about some serious stuff.  The basic premise of the tale was that judging people based on physical appearance is wrong, and that people we judge to be "good" must be of great mental strength, and have a "good" personality.  But why? These adjectives that we are supposed to attribute to "good people" (like honesty, character, etc.) are, at the base of it, completely arbitrary. (The truth of the matter is that most of us would prefer style over substance, but that's not what I am interested in, now) I am asking a more basic and fundamental question, "Why are these qualities called desirable, and others undesirable?" I mean, why do we think of Lincoln and Gandhi as good, and Hitler and Napoleon as bad?  The obvious answer of course, is "because of what they did." In other words, their actions.  But what makes these actions good an...

Doctors can be cruel people. They can screw around with your head, in ways that none can. To illustrate: (This happened to me last year, I fell down and hurt my arm, and had spent an hour and a half in the doctor's waiting room) Doctor: Sorry about the wait. This is one of the healthiest X-Rays I have ever seen. But when we compare that with yours ...  That's not right. As it is I was really scared. This next incident was told to me by a doctor friend of my dad's. But a little info first.  Going into anaesthesia is one of my favourite memories. They made me breathe this gas smelling like strawberries and you feel light headed for two minutes, then you have the best sleep of your life.  Coming out, however, is not so great. You are alert, awake, and scared out of your mind. Anything startles you.  My friend told me about this poor patient who went in for tonsil removal.   Surgeon (To my friend recovering from anaesthesia) Ah, it's good ...

I've not been feeling like myself, lately, and have been a tad depressed. Now, I'm not looking for pity, I have a saying: "If your looking for sympathy, you'll find it in the dictionary halfway between shit and syphilis" Anyway, I read somewhere that talking to your friends about your problems can be helpful, and would help you lose your inhibitions. So I gave it a go. I talked to my friends for two hours about my problems.  I'm glad to say that I lost my inhibitions.  I also lost my friends.  Now, I talk to auto drivers about my problems.  Two distinct advantages here- 1) It stops him talking about his problems 2) It's amazing how much bloody quicker you reach your destination. 

(Note: I wrote this when I had to appear busy, doing some kind of meaningful work. So this is going to even more crappy than usual. In fact, I added what you are reading now later, to try to pad out the post.) Sometimes, I worry about the future of science. I mean, it's just not progressing like it should. I don't mean to be overly dramatic, or anything, but there seems to be more useful work being done in the pseudo-sciences than in actual ones. By pseudo-sciences, I mean astrology, humanities, and general bull shit. To elucidate, recent studies show that: 1. Buttered bread is 32% more likely to fall buttered-side down, when dropped from heights ranging from 0.5 to 1.5 metres.  2. The average British citizen is has a 80% chance to letting biscuits get perfectly saturated in tea, without the biscuit breaking off.  3. Men who consume more than 80 grams of sugar per day are 97 times more likely to sleep on their left sides.  4. Left handed people, on average,...

As you may have come to know, I am not really the type to travel a lot, with the major part of my commuting being done between the kitchen, toilet, and the musty old room where I store my mridangam. So you will be just as surprised as I was, when I found myself shoving through crowds at Chennai's iconic Central Station. This was my first time in this station, with all my previous railway adventures having taken place via Egmore (Rockfort Express to Trichy and back over ten times).  I got aboard the Kaveri Express that would take me through the 500 Km (approx) to Mysore in the mind-numbingly quick time of 9 hours.  (Do the math. You get around 55 Kph. I have seen Ambassador Cars clock quicker pace.) I fought my way to my seat, and having occupied it, (with a triumphant smirk) I proceeded to put my bag deep under my seat. While immersed in this task, I felt a mammoth force on my rear, as I tumbled forward, Newton's Second Law proving that the path of a heavy suitcase ...

I must confess, I have this terrible habit, when I put stuff in my ear in an attempt to remove wax. My favourite excavatory tool is an old paintbrush that is ideally suited for the specialised task of de-waxification of the outer auditory canal.  Anyway, after one night of particularly vicious violation of my ear, I woke up today, not being able to hear out of my left ear. This was a serious situation, not just because of the various physical manifestations of partial deafness (inclusive of this pounding headache), but because my parents constantly warn me against my disgusting personal habit, lest something like this should happen. It seemed like a dangerous precedent to let them know that they could be right. So I quickly ran to the local hospital, where the ENT Doctor was my father's friend. When I got there, he was seeing a patient, and attempting to remove what seemed later to be a channa bean (fat lentil) from the nose of a five year old. I couldn't be bothered...

I am not on Facebook, Twitter, Orkut (remember that?), or any of their equivalents. There, I said it. No procrastination, or beating around the bush. Straight to it. No transitional material. I have a topic to write about, and I am going to so, without any further ado.  My reasons for not jumping on the Social Networking bandwagon are varied, and I maintain that they are mine alone. If anyone feels differently, I will be happy to engage in an open minded debate in the comments section.  Twitter, as the name suggests, is just for twittering, or tweeting, to use the modern lingo. But I have discovered the ultimate escape from twitter- the proverbial GodMode option. So now using twitter for me will be just as surprising and refreshing as reading Harry Potter again (for the eighteenth time) or playing Mario Kart Wii, or proving that entropic changes alone are not adequate criteria for judging spontaneity of reactions. I know the way out, the ultimate Tweet, that can...

Note: This blog just hit 100 readers, so I realised I must be doing something right. So I decided to do exactly the opposite, and you are most likely to have your personal choices decimated in what follows.  The past few days have given rise to significant causes for celebration, and not just because Modi became PM. I have finally reached that stage of proficiency on the mridangam that my right thumb has started swelling up and is causing me intense pain.  Just FYI, the mridangam is a Carnatic percussion instrument. But calling it an "instrument" is like calling Pokemon a "game", or like calling Albert Einstein "quite smart". The mridangam is over 2000 years old, and is made out of jack wood, cow hide, and a paste of rice, iron fillings and manganese. Mine is around three feet long, and weighs close to 12 kilos.  "But," you say, "Why should this swelling be a cause of happiness?" I'll tell you why. It finally signifie...

The Free Things in Life are the Best We have reached that stage in our beloved hamlet (by a long shot) of "Sennai", to use colloquial lingo, where Summer has really kicked in. To be honest , the city seems to go through some yearly transformation from late April to early July, much like the December Peter Vidufying Season. I call this Sennai's Summer Syndrome. (Nice alliteration, don't you think?) The most obvious sign of this is the drastic rise in temperatures. The sun goes from Microwave Mode (July to March) into Let's-Roast-the-Shite-Out-of-Them mode (April to June).  I'm not kidding. Temperatures hover around 40 degrees C  (that's 313 Kelvin, to you nerds) and the sky is characterised by a depressing pale, white colour, like even the Vibrant Mid day blue and Sunset Red have gone away on vacation.  The people too change. Everyone becomes more irritable, especially my neighbour-mama, who sees fit to launch a string of expletives at me, virtu...

Reductio ad Absurdium, or Something of the Sort I was talking to my friend, regarding football, when he said the most amazingly pragmatic, yet absurd statement of all time- "It's just wrong to see 22 men with no priorities in life running around with a ball. Won't it be more fair, if they could run around with 22 balls instead?" Actually, they run around with a total of 44, but that's not the point. (Pardon the crude double entendre).  At face value, the sentence is true, none can doubt it. These men have no sense of responsibility, towards themselves, or towards society. I mean, what is the point of spending your twenties and thirties, your most productive time of life, playing a game? Yes, I said game, for it is one, it is not a sport. A sportsman is one who has been tried and tested by life, and has come out on top. A gamer is a person wasting time playing for self gratification.  There, I am going to say it. Without meaning to offend anyone, I fe...

I wrote this article a short while ago, to be published in The Hindu Young World, but it was rejected, due to it's depressing subject matter.  The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men Wind Up to be the Same If you thought I was going to deliver some useful information in the course of this article, you are sadly mistaken. Using knowledge I gleaned from topics ranging from Statistical Mechanics to Pokemon, I have put together common ideas that rule our universe, and highlight the pitifully small role played by us in it's path. Using flawed knowledge and faulty logic, I have reached an inevitable and depressing conclusion.  The desire for constancy is a natural urge of mankind. It is what made hunter gathers settle down and become farmers, it is what prevents us from changing our nationality every day, it is what prevents meat eating tigers from becoming pure vegans. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Change is the nature of the universe. I find it too big a coin...

It seems like just a few minutes ago I was trolling through the net, looking for people to annoy, and hey-presto, I found you! Now, I didn't mean to create this blog, so don't expect great or informational or even sane posts, for that matter.  Just to let you know what this entails, you need to know something about my literary style.  I have none, not the wit of Wodehouse, not the grace of George Shaw, not the &@£# of Dickens. (Go on, fill in the blank. It says something about your personality.) I tend to wander from subject to subject much like a brown pantomime horse on drugs. I'm also not known for my analogies.  I'll try to keep things clean, but I may engage in the occasional use of profanity. For situations that thoroughly deserve them, I'll disguise it through hyphenation.  That's about it from me.  Read another one of my posts. I dare you.