Trivia-3

Here comes this week's trivia. Testing your knowledge in Hindu epics & philosophy?


1. What are the ten Avatars of Vishnu,aka Dashavatar?
2. Who wrote Mahabharatha?
3. How many "Kandas" is Ramayana split into?
4. What are the four different hindu scriptures or Vedas?
5. What does Advaita and Dvaita mean?

Trivia-2 answers

1. Hydrogen, Helium and Oxygen. Madmax scores on this one.

Here are the top ten. Nitrogen , which most of us would assume is actually the seventh most common element.
1 Hydrogen
2 Helium
3 Oxygen
4 Carbon
5 Neon
6 Iron
7 Nitrogen
8 Silicon
9 Magnesium
10 Sulfur


2.The Van Allen Radiation Belt is a torus of energetic charged particles (plasma) around Earth,trapped by Earth's magnetic field. Mano hit it right. Sdpal, that was a good one..:-)

3.The name `India’ is derived from the River Indus, the valleys around which were the home of the early settlers. The Aryan worshippers referred to the river Indus as the Sindhu.

Update: The name Indus Valley Civilization also referred to the Indus river, as Brainwaves,Saumya & Madmax rightfully assumed ..with special reference to Brainwaves:-)

4.When "Gandhi" won the Oscar. Madmax & Sdpal got it right.

5.That image is actually a volcano eruption under the sea. This happened very recently , couple of weeks back ,off the coast of Tonga in the south pacific ocean.
If you observe the image closely, you can see the water in the sea. Kudos to Sdpal & Mindframes.

Trivia-2

Kudos to Mano, Brainwaves and Mindframes for getting atleast one answer right. Collectively, the team got 3 answers right..Cool...Now , for trivia-2.

Questions for Trivia-2

1. What are the three most common elements in the Universe?
2. What is the Van Allen belt?
3. Where was the name India derived from?
4. What 1982 movie had critic Janet Maslin carp: "The Oscar seemed to have been mistaken for the Nobel Peace Prize"?
5. What do you think this image represents?



Answers for Trivia-1

1. Mindframes scores one on this. Yes, comets were referred to as "hairy stars", derived from the Greek.

2.Shoelace was invented in the eighteenth century. Fairly, a new one..Tying the shoelaces right might have been found in the last century..:-)

3. Mano hits it right. Haemophilia is called the royal disease as it was featured prominently among the European royals in history...

4. 1941,December 7 : The navy was playing the "Star Spangled Banner" when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Mindframes, Wish they had been playing "Nakka mukka"..The Japs would have run away instead of attacking..:-)

5. Washington!! Both Sri and Mindframes got it right.

Christian, the lion

Watch this movie...It is really moving..




I watched their interview this morning on the View.They were apparently very happy and Christian shooed away other lions when they tried to ambush the guys. If you search further in You Tube, there are related videos which shows a reunion between the lion's family and them. Just AMAZING!!

Trivia Time - 1

I have decided to post some trivia questions every week . No cheating or googling. Give your answers in the comment section.

1. What celestial objects were once referred to as "hairy stars"?
2. What century saw the invention of the shoelace?
3. What hereditary blood defect is known as "the royal disease"?
4. What song was the Navy band playing at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked?
5. Which northwestern state in U.S borders only two other states?

Answers will be posted next week along with Trivia-2.

Outliers

My takeout after reading the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is that no one is born a genius. Hardwork & training , from an young age is the key factor , added with a dose of luck by being at the right place at the right time. The magic number is 10,000 hours of practice at whatever one is good at, which makes them an outlier. I liked that concept as now I have an excuse of not being at the right place, not being born in a different household, not being in very conducive environment to further my talents etc..Well, you get the gist …

Last night, I was watching Chopped, followed by American Idol as they cater to my interests in cooking and music. And, obviously I was judging the contestants and my thoughts were echoed by the Idol and Chopped judges. That’s when I had an epiphany and I knew what I was an outlier at. Eureka!! I was very good at Judging. What contributed to my success at judging? As the book says, it involved lot of hard work and training, right from when I was a kid. I started judging my peers and made friends with a selected few. Being a virgo helped me to be a good/bad critic, depending on the perspective.Born into a society where every Tom, Dick and Harry judges others irrespective of his stature and skills, my judging skills have been refined over the years. My ethnicity of being an Indian, a culture imbibed with competitiveness and loose talk has honed it even further. 10,000 hours...Pphhtt..I am sure I have put more than that in judging/misjudging people.

I participated in Galaata Idol last weekend. I should have known better. No, I didn’t make it to the next round, in case you are wondering. To my friends’ amusement, who had judged me right as not being a good participant, I decided to test my singing skills in front of a limited audience and three judges. The first judge was an upcoming singer (according to reliable sources) and so was enthusiastic about being a judge. It was obvious that she wanted to contribute for the betterment of the singing society in the bay area and so was very liberal with her comments. We can call her the Paula Abdul of Galaata Idol. The second judge was another lady who had an amused expression on her face which said, “Whatever!! You guys are not that great, but I will anyway give my comments. I am here just because these fans asked me to”. The third judge, apparently has Sangeetham Gnyanam , though not a great singer himself. ( Again, the reliable source at task). He had a bored expression of “Been there, done that. Lets get it over with and select a few.” As you can see, I was sitting in a corner, too busy judging the judges’ comments as well as the participants. Here are some snippets for you..”Shruti konjam missing here and there…otherwise its OK.”, “ You got all the notes right, but you emoted a bit too much” resulting in a puzzled expression from a participant and a firm head shake from me. For the question ” In all the years that you have judged so far, have you met the ideal Idol yet?” Pat came the reply from the Gnyani, “No.” As I said, me being the outlier judge and all, I was thinking, "That’s not the right answer. If some one is that good, why would he or she be participating in Galaata idol". Following the book, if some one is very good, talented and had the right opportunities, he/she would have made it big in India by now.
Now, start thinking and find out your talent in which you have put atleast 10,000 hours...I am sure we can all be outliers...Just need to bring it out..:-)

Amazon's Kindle a minor report

After nearly 1.5 years since the original Kindle was released, version 2 came out late last month and I plunged and got myself one of those. The device like its predecessor uses E-Ink -- A technology that is radically different from current LCD or CRT displays. Basically the display is a dull plastic like surface that has embedded in it millions of spherical bubbles. Each bubble has some colored particles (black and white to make this easy) and the two particles have opposite charges. The top and bottom of the plastic has circuitry that can induce a charge. So if you want to make the sphere look a certain color, you charge the circuit with a charge that will attract the color particles you want to the top. By doing this to each sphere (each represents a pixel), you have a page typeset with what you want. Also unlike regular displays, this display is not a light source... the reason your eyes smart at the end of a long work day in front of your computer.

There are a handful of different e-ink readers in the market and some precede the first generation Kindle. What sets them apart from the Kindle is mainly the content and access to it. Amazon setup the Kindle with a Sprint 3G chip built into the device. So you can pretty much buy an e-book from anywhere (without a computer) as long as you have Sprint coverage in your area. The cellular charge is hidden from you and as far as you are concerned you don't deal with Sprint. You bought the device from Amazon and you buy books from Amazon. Thats pretty much it-- Bingo! the first set of devices were sold out in 4 hours and took many months to come back in stock. One cannot be sure if this is due to the huge success of the device or because Amazon created an artificial shortage of Kindles. Either way, the orignal Kindle evoked a lot of passion among a lot of book readers. Almost everybody loved the e-ink display and almost everybody hated the 80s retro look that the Kindle sported. But function usurped form and people kept buying. Oprah endorsed the Kindle in own of her shows sometime late 2008 and sales practically exploded.

There were several things that were still problematic with the E-Ink technology. For one the display was slow, as a matter of fact it was so slow that the Kindle could not give you a cursor that could be moved by you across the screen to position on a word (for dictionary lookup or menu selection). Instead they had to create a LCD strip to the right of the e-ink display and you rolled a roller to move a highlight on the strip to correspond to the line on the e-ink display. Menu's worked the same way, selection was on the off-e-ink screen LCD. The original kindle also had long buttons on the edge of the device for the next/prev page, which made accidental page turns too frequent for the reader's comfort. As a matter of fact, many people complained that you couldn't pick up the kindle without turning the page.

With the Kindle 2 release last month, Amazon has pretty much addressed the most severe of the prior Kindle's shortcomings. The e-ink display is about 20% faster, so now you can move a curson on the display with a 5 way joystick thingy. Refresh is still slow, when moving the cursor fast, there are times the cursor shows up under 3 consecutive words (the prev two have still not refreshed out). but works okay enough for you to get the cursor where you want. The ergonomics are fabulous now, the buttons have been made smaller and they now click inwards. Accidental clicks- Ta Ta. Battery life has increased and internal memory increased to 2GB. With that comes the good old Apple strategy of non-removable batteries. You need to send the device to Amazon if you want the battery replaced (Boo hoo). The display also can now feature 16 shades of grey as opposed to 4.

These details apart, what does it actually feel to read from the Kindle? According to Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, the device should melt away in your hands only to leave you and the Author's words with you. I must say after finishing about two books on the device-- Yes. It certainly delivers a very pleasing reading experience and then some.

Some of the problems it solves for me are definitely peculiar to me and some of the problems are universal to books. Right from childhood, I have suffered from dust allergy- not just any dust, more specifically house dust. Of which the worst offenders are the fine particles that disintegrated paper leaves behind. The kind that most people would hardly sneeze at- would leave me doubled over. This pretty much ruled out most library books and the only books that I could reasonably read were new ones. If I wanted to read books from a library, a pretty elaborate setup was needed to filter the air between the book and my nose :)

The next problem is something we have learnt to work around-- holding a rather heavy paperback. Most of us have managed to convert this into an art that in itself would require a separate blog to ink out. Two handed grip is common too- but not for long bouts. You can all breathe easy- the Kindle is a joy to hold and its light. Its got enough heft to feel solid without bogging your hands down. When I first saw the Kindle (2), I wondered why there were thick plastic areas around the display. Now I know... to hold it. It works beautifully.

So its all rosy right? NO!

First obstacle is the rather high entry point. At $360, a price that can buy a lot of paper books, its not making it easy for people to jump into the Kindle band wagon. Second is DRM. DRM is a kludgy solution (in my opinion) to fight a real problem (piracy). The limits that E-Books you buy from Amazon has imposed upon it, border on being downright silly.

This is not a review of the Kindle, just a quick report about a device that uses a technology, which has the potential to be a rule changer. Now I look forward to rainy days, a cozy couch, a Kindle in hand and a hot cup of coffee in the other and a dust free reading experience.

Oscars

I watched Oscars like millions did. Some random points that came to mind: I did clap when Slumdog Millionaire reaped in the awards, but the logical side of me couldn't concede that the movie was worth 8 of them. I would call it a nice enough movie, but just that. Not great, not wonderful - tad better than mediocre. Another example of how right place at right time far outweighs merit.

And then, of course some "Body" comes along and does an illogical thing, and basks in the narrow glow of publicity it brings. They gifted the children a concrete house and claimed they are working for the upliftment of conditions in slums. My head reels - how?! By moving the children who already made some money to a concrete house? How does that equate to "working for upliftment of slums"?

I loved the way Danny Boyle jumped up and down like Tigger in Winnie The Pooh when he won his Oscar. It was a helpful reminder that we all have a child in us, and sometimes takes hard work finding it. I watched with amusement as the cameras rolled on the best dressed women. I couldn't help comparing the style to the women in South Indian villages who tie a hard knot with their "ull-paavadais" just covering their breasts and dropping down below their knees, as they took a bath in semi-privacy (a term used for not bathing in a closed bathroom - say at the well, or in the courtyard in their homes)"Ull-paavadai" is the inner skirt worn underneath a saree.

Almost all the dazzling clothes were of the same bathing-in-courtyard style, and most of the colours were the same tried and tested variety. But, speaking with a sense of negative fashion IQ , I am not the person most suited to make judgements I am afraid.

I scoured the crowd and found only 2 women wearing a pair of glasses, but the same was not true of Men. Are men more comfortable with glasses or are women more self-conscious about the bespectacled image?!

Transported

Whenever I got into a bus, I have been mostly shielded by the friendly faces of drivers and conductors. I think it is a very honorable profession, especially in India, where one has to cater to hundreds while making sure that they are all transported safely. I always felt safe traveling alone in a bus, even at night. During my 11th and 12th grade, just standing behind the driver near the hot engine made us feel secure from all the eve-teasers, who were a tad too many in Trichy. Even though the drivers were mostly poker faced, I used to be greeted with a slight nod of the head, which was enough to make me feel good. Be it a very young flirtatious conductor or the stern brother/father types, they will be there to guard you once you enter their domain.

When I was in college, I never minded breaking my journey just to get home as soon as possible instead of a direct route bus. And so, it was all the way from Erode-> Mettur-> Dharmapuri -> Krishnagiri -> Hosur-> Bangalore. Many a conductor has stopped the bus, with a bang followed by “Old..down” , on seeing me running towards the bus, to the annoyance of the passengers, who had to disperse their formations at the steps of the bus, just to let me inside. There have been times when the conductor has made sure that a drunkard or a shabby guy does not come and sit near me. No questions were asked; just a pleading look from me did the job. Sometimes, the fatherly conductors might look very stern but when it comes to protecting you, even the looks were not needed.

What prompted my thinking about the aforementioned souls, you may ask. Last night, on my walk, engrossed in “Masakali”, I didn’t realize that I was almost tripping towards a bus stop, and that on seeing me walking at a brisk pace, the driver of a Cisco shuttle assumed I was rushing to catch it. Now, these shuttles run every five minutes or so. He could have just gone on his way as another one was right behind. But, no sir!! He cannot carry the guilt of leaving a passenger unattended. Now, I was in a dilemma with thoughts reeling in my mind,…Is he really waiting for me? Oh!! Shit, all the junta is looking at me . Do I run? If I run, the misunderstanding might become more pronounced. What do I do?.. With all the apprehensions in my mind, I was walking with an almost imperceptible jog and reached the shuttle when he opened the door, with everyone waiting for me to get in. Thoughts and more thoughts… What do I do? Do I just ignore and continue walking or do I follow in my dad’s footsteps, get in the bus, talk to the driver for a couple of minutes and let him know that I was just out for a walk. I chose to be the friendly pedestrian, looked straight at him, smiled with a wave of my hand. He laughed and with a nod, closed the doors and zoomed past. I continued with “Rehna Tu” ,smiling to myself, slightly embarrassed, transported to my teens…

What do future anthropologists do?

Anthropologists are forever finding evidence on some tablet or inside some godforsaken cave, telling us all about life in the era. I mean when we see caves full of paintings showing tigers being strung with a sleek bow and arrow, we know that the cavemen weren't launching supersonic jets, followed by rockets to the moon and just dumbing themselves down in the paintings! They really were slaying tigers with sophisticated weapons of their time such as bows and arrows. Then, as time went on, people discovered the funny thing that starts with an 'h', that essentially is between drawing and script writing, and used that to depict what was going on. Mythology grew from a combination of bad paintings and imaginative minds. There was some record-keeping albeit one left more to imagination than to facts, but something!

The clay tablets yielded slowly to the tree bark, and the cryptic grew more descriptive. The three barks became parchment rolls and then the Chinese saved the day by coming up with paper. So far so good - you see paper, you can figure out what is written there. You see a tree bark with a sign engraved
Z *big heart sign* X, and can figure out that Z loves or loved X, and was daft enough to proclaim love on a tree bark, after probably getting his or her hand chiseled a couple of times with the rough stone used to engrave their undying love. But, we still know what happened, so long as the bark survives, we know that Z and X were in love at some point.

The printing press and full blown books were a blessing. Suddenly, everything you needed to know about any nook and corner of the world was available in some book somewhere. Great! Then, you did not even need books to get information, all you needed was access to the net. E-reading became cool. Now as we move on towards paperless functioning, a most disturbing thought just struck me, and I do not wish to be taken frivolously here. I am as serious as a rabbit running from a fox on a wintry night can be.

What if future historians are like me? It could very well happen that one gene triumphs in the coming generations and that gene is my technology retarded gene, couldn't it? It is not that I can't operate technology - I just can't keep pace. By the time, I figure out how to use the remote to change the setting on one contraption, the remote changes, or worse the contraption is gone! Let me think of some gramophone records that my father prided himself on - in fact, I reluctantly got him to get rid of the foghorn after decades, knowing that we could never listen to another gramophone record again, and the space is better used in conserving the tape recorder for the next 2 decades, before it too meets the same fate?!

So, some songs that were only there in the gramophone records no longer exists, same for some songs on tape too. You get the picture. Now, with the internet, and the blogosphere, most news and creative writing as moved to the e-medium. What if future generations are unable to retrieve these great gems of the era- voltages may change, servers change, the electronic medium destroys just as soon as it creates!

Well, I suppose the graffiti on the world heritage sites would still tell us who loves who, but what if future archaeologists only get the Harry Potter books, and believe life was that - they have no method of knowing it was a fantasy world?!

I haven't even started on the Modern Art phenomenon yet. If those were the paintings left for interpretation, I can barely imagine what it would come out as.
Pray tell me what you can make out of this?http://www.milesmodernart.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/modern-art-41108-24x48-w.jpg

I can almost hear you sigh that if these are the kind of gems of writing the future is missing, they are better off without it! But I stand by my notion that 50 years from now, when there is no paper, record retrieval will be all the more difficult, and a blip in Earth's history - 500 years later, that era might well be a dark one

PS: Ahhhh..hieroglyphics that is the "h-word"
PS1: How curious it is that I typed this blog out, and then couldn't connect to the net to publish it, and had to snuggle up to the husband to help me?

See what I mean and what I fear for?

Generation "gap?"

The blog by Saumya on nourish-n-cherish got me thinking. Instead of expressing my thoughts as a mozha-neelam comment, I thought I will blog about it. It is a topic that has been in my mind for a while. The questions are simple and is centered around the current generation of people in comparison with our previous generation. By previous generation, I mean people who were born in 1940s-1950s. Are we, as a community more social and friendly? Are we more selfless in our deeds than them? Are we smarter? Are we flexible and adjusting?

Call me old fashioned. But, in my opinion, our previous generation (I will restrict this to Indians) seem genuinely friendlier and sociable than the current generation. While I can't miss the touch of hypocrisy and sarcasm sprayed all over in the previous generation, there is a special sense of caring, that is unequaled. I have seen numerous examples of cases where a relative of some kind would be taken care of through their college till they get to work. As I grew up, I've never found anyone considering the act of cooking for others to be a chore. Even when an uninvited guest shows up, people used to go crazy about cooking them good food...

My question is not whether the current generation will or will not do what the older generation did? But, I don't see that as commonly as I used to, before. There could obviously be more reasons... Is it because we are more independent (esp., financially)? Is it because, our importance to just our family has grown exponentially? Is it because, we are wrapped up in a more competitive and expensive world where everyone needs to work to take care of their own family that there is no time for "others"? We do adore Darwin's theory and tout ourselves as being smarter than the previous generation. Does it mean that, smartness is inversely proportional to being sociable? Is it because, the community has overgrown from being limited to villages or townships to global? Should there be a dilution factor applied as the community size increases? Or, is it just being rational? Can I say that, courteousness superseded rationality in our previous generation... Is it just that the more closer we get to rationality, certain "random acts of kindness" disappeared? All said and done, everyone likes to be treated with kindness and be considered special, at least by a few... If rationality or being smart is what stands in the way, I don't know if it is a good idea to be rational.... Oops, I have gotten into an infinite loop in analyzing rationality now...;)