Oh Gee..! Mr. Gee

He was a man who was as contended with himself as a spectator of beauty peagent . Very few things stirred him. He was one of those not known for his humility. Even while counting sheep to go to sleep, he had a smile knowing that the sheep he conjured was one of the most perfect, beautiful specimen of this world. Yes, that was our man.

He got an invitation to join an online book club from a friend. Not a voracious reader himself, he still decided to join it. Hmmm…Now, he was one who liked stimulating his brain every now and then and was happy when he had to choose a name for the user id. Something that defined him just right, neither too flashy nor too humble. He was called a Geek by many and decided on the name “GeeKey”. Why, one may ask. Why not, Geeky? As I said, our man always has a smug look on his face, knowing that he is always a tad bit different than others and prides himself over it. Once joining the book club, he saw that there was a “Send Invite” button , helping him to invite his online friends. Little did he know that the software had automatically selected all the members of his contact list, a list which included a bunch of friends, professors, professionals, people he had rarely spoken a word or two to ,people he had never met, people he hated, people he would rather not keep in touch with, past colleagues and so on. And out goes this mail inviting every one to join his book club. Nothing embarrasses our man easily, but this one scored it. To mend things, out goes another mail to everyone apologizing for the previous mail. But, the contact list also had some persistent lot who wanted to know who Mr.Geekey was. Oh!! Gee !! What happened to Mr.Geekey , you may ask. He is busy answering to all the mails from friends, professors, professionals, people he had rarely spoken a word or two to, people he had never met, people he hated, people he would rather not keep in touch with, past colleagues and so on. And not so self-satisfied any more, are we Mr.Gee?

Our online id's

All right, dunno if this has been blogged before, nevertheless no harm in trying again. Several of us contribute to this blog. We all have our unique id's. Some prefer to keep their names (Mano, Meera and Saumya). Others blog under different names (mindframes, survivor, brainwaves and of course Mad Max). Is there a reason to why we choose to use a pen name as against our real names?

I'm a big fan of Mel Gibson and one of his earliest movies (that i saw) was Mad Max. Somehow liked the character and thought it sounded "chic". Gibson is Max and the movie really does drive you nuts. Cars, chases, fights blah blah. Neways, Mad Max it is for me.

On the Road

Several years ago, we were on a family trip cruising towards the Grand Canyon. Our car seemed to start losing control. My brother, the driver, managed to get it to a graceful stop on the shoulder. We realized we had a flat. The tire was like shredded cheese and we had a long distance to travel before the next city. I can't remember now whether we had a cell phone. The road seemed to stretch forever on both sides, walking was out of question, it was a mile or so before we could get to a public phone. We started flagging other drivers to see if they would stop. Finally a truck driver stopped to give us a hand with changing the tire - we did not even have the right tools - bad contingency planning! If not for that good hearted guy, we would have spent hours on the road trying to get help.

Ever since that incident, I pay attention to other cars that look like they may be stranded on the highway. But that is all I do, I pay attention, I feel sorry for them, but I never have stopped to offer help. I don't feel particularly proud of it. In fact, this irrational fear of strangers embarrasses me. Yesterday, there was a woman jay walking on the road, who seemed to be lost in her own world, she could have very well lost her way and seemed to be in obvious need of help. I felt sad and was hoping she'd walk away from the road rather than towards it, but I did not do much more. My capability to look away and ignore a situation amazes me and somehow, I wish that atleast sometimes I didn't have the "Namakku yen vambu" attitude. I would be really proud of myself the day I actually stop and help someone.

Memoirs

For all the cricket lovers, here is a treat of some of the best. The editing is really nice and the background track sits well with it. And watch for the grand finale. That is COMMITMENT!

A fifth of Americans can't locate US in the world map- Answered by a teen pagent contestant

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7620686268212703476

Food for thought

Here is an interesting experiment.

Background: Imagine that we are in a forest and there are N tigers roaming around. They have not eaten anything for the last 10 days and are very hungry. As a rule they will eat any meat except their own. Let us assume that rabbits are popular food among the tigers.

Constraint: If a tiger eats a rabbit, it will be automatically convert into a rabbit. Now it is fair game to other tigers. The tigers are aware of this constraint and will act rationally. Self preservation is more important than satisfying immediate hunger (thanks to Mano for pointing this out).

Scenario: One rabbit accidentally enters the area where the tigers are prowling.

Question: Will the rabbit ever be eaten? If yes what would be the general condition under which the rabbit is likely to be eaten or not?

Relatively Simple

We went to a Thai restaurant today. There is this person in our team who always goes for the spiciest version of the food. Believe me, this is the kind of spiciness that you should really avoid... This particular place even has a scale from Thai Hot to 1 star Thai Hot all the way to 5 star. This friend of mine was trying out the 5 star. In comparison, I was trying the mild version and was sweating all over... The idea of tomorrow morning is already haunting me..:)..Anyway, I was wondering what it would be like for him to taste my mild fried rice. Would it be spicy for him or just plain bland? There are often times when I have wondered why the quest for something, more often than not, changes our baseline definition of our current state. For example, when someone is poor, they want to become rich. But, when they get richer, they still want to get richer, or rather, they still think they are still poorer. Expressing one's thoughts is another example. The more effort one puts into understanding something that looks complex, their perception of simplicity changes.

I was reading up on Relativity by Einstein. For the person he is, he considers certain elements of his thought process to be very simple and rudimentary, so that even a caveman could understand it..:) But, my understanding, or should I say, my perception of what he is trying to say baffles me. If not anything, the only thing that I learnt from this book is that the perception of things change dynamically. In other words, nothing changes in absolute domains. It is just our perception. Think about it, when we get richer, our definition of richness changes. As we get faster, our notion of time and distance changes. As we learn something that is complex, our definition of simple changes. Complexity becomes the new simplicity. In Einstein's words, if Gulliver had shrunk or expanded when he entered Lilliput or Brobdingnag according to the scale of its inhabitants, he wouldnt have noticed anything different. In real life, interestingly, thats what happens all the time. Our scope and vision transforms itself based on what we know at that point of time. Though this might sound like a "simple" statement, this is one of the fundamentals which was key in formulating the principles of relativity.

Some fun for the summer

I thought this video was decently done thought others might enjoy it. The editing is pretty neat, though the dialogue delivery calls for more. But sure as hell was fun watching.

Video

Head over heels

A friend of mine suggested that I do a search on google for the word (retupmoc), computer written in reverse order and lo behold, the output

Google Search Results

Now click on the first link

Entering the first link

now that is super cool. I'm pretty certain you guys must have noticed this before but no harm in enjoying it yet again.

Time Flies?

I was thinking about the expression, "Time Flies by Quickly" slowly... One can look at it at a piecewise level of granularity or in wholesome. Let us try to analyse it. If time flies by quickly, that should mean that every day, hour, minute and second involved should fly by quickly too. Is it true? Usually, when we are less occupied, we feel boredom. What it means is that, we are striving hard for time to pass by and it really doesnt "fly" by quickly. However, when taken to macro level, we look back and if we dont have anything interesting to report, we think that time flew by quickly, when it really should have been the other way around... Another view on that would be, if we are very much involved in doing something, we dont realise how much time was spent. That would mean that, if we are doing something that we like, we lose the notion of time and time does fly by quickly. Interestingly, in this case, we have a lot to report as we look back. So, it seems to me that, our notion of time at a piecewise level of granularity is not the same as looking back after a period of time in its entirety. Where is the discontinuity? Something to think about??