Arbit Update

This post is exactly what the title says! Its an arbit update. No particular reasons for doing this except that the blog has undergone 3 whole months of total inactivity and it was E-roding all the way to hell.

In the mean time the 5th sem has started and has almost come to a screeching halt(read end) .Yeah, yeah we all know how time files, dont we?Mech in IITM is a weird thing as in it starts in the 4th sem and ends in the 5th. All the other sems are just beautiful decorations to make it a fully fledged 4 yr BTech. The above statement should in no way be interpreted as me saying that mech in IITM is easy or that its a cake walk. Quite the contrary it is the very opposite of cake walk,its almost a fire dance or a fire walk, depending on what you choose to do.

But what i want to get across or imply or shout at your face at this point of time is that my absence from the field of blogging has indeed met a rather gruesome death at this very moment. A complete update on bloggable(read abnormal but not anti social) events that has taken place over the sem shall soon be made.

And my words of wisdom at this point of time is:

"Choice is an illusion of life, the greatest farce that man made himself believe!"

Meebo Time

hey guys..
check out the new meebo widget i have by the side...
now u can chat with me whenever i am online!!!... its way too cool!..
kudos to technology!!!!

THIS IS THE LIMIT

We( inlcudes you, me and everyone else who use internet as a means of communication), are the biggest fools, cowards if this stupid order is carried out...
refer:

van Kalip Times
Lessons Learnt from the Ban on Blogger

for more gory details

F!!*k YAHOO!!!

No one in their sane minds should ever use yahoo for search again. Beacuse its so goddamn stupid. About 10 minuts back, I searched in yahoo the words "some arbit thoughts" (thts the name of yours trulys site"), just to know what ranking it had in the search list. Being the excessively optimistic guy that I usually am , I expected it to come in the first page itself. Quite predictacly it didnt.....

So I moved on to the second page, this time completely SURE that its there. Again!.... it was nowhere to be found. Instead there were links to another 20 stupid sites. Frantically I moved on to the 3rd page , expecting the golden link to pop in out of heaven( or hell, entirely dependant on your point of view). Flabbergasted would be an euphemism.. I scanned the key words which I searched for any typo, spelling error,unwanted or missing punctuations or anything(ANYTHING) which might give me a satisfying explanation.. the harsh reality sinking in i kept goin......

4th page......
5th page......

and so on upto the TWENTIETH PAGE... thts f!!3ck!nG 400 links... FOUR HUNDRED BLOODY ********* LINKS!....


YAHOO HAS SIMPLY REFUSED TO ACEEPT MY EXISTENCE!//


all my egos shattered, humbled down, I decided to give google a try...
the same key words go in...

and guess what ??


"I AM **f!!3ck!nG ** LUCKY"..!!! (pun intended)
hahahhahaaaa,,, the very first link was mine... !!
BALLS TO YAHOO>..... GOOGLE IS MY ALMA MATER... my gaurdian ...
a new era has begun... loyalties that were hard strained has become crystal clear.. .. the path of the righteous man has been laid out... the beginning of yahoo's end has begun!


Important Update::: Today (i.e 18th July) on a repeated search I have found my site listed as the third in the first page in yahoo. I am completely sure that I didn miss it last time.

"Each to his own are the intrepretations made"

Football????

The french are blessed!!!.. Its the only freaking explanation other than claims of sorcery, dark magic, use of extra terrestrial intelligence AND match fixing............

Philosophy(2)

I have been reading a lot of arbit stuff lately. It began with readings on philosophy, and while at it, I read this astounding article on "Psychic Powers" by Helen Savage; Theosophical Manual . Incredibly the writer is pretty convincing in his arguments and also a lot of what he has written makes good sense. Though probably he was pretty farfetched in his ideas on astral energy and their interference, the article in itself was a written with a sound mind and firm background examples were also provided. Then I searched up some stuff on Wikipedia; String Theory and its predictions about 11 dimensions, about dark matter, dark energy(both things about which we have absolutely no idea!) and ended up reading on Chaos Theory and other stuff. Anyone who remembers anything about Quantum Chemistry that we studied will agree with one thing, that its totally vague!. Whatever we are studying, propagating, researching are mainly vague ideas which are idealized to large extents. Its almost as though, because we want to explain something we come up with theories to do it and when found that its inapplicable in certain cases, we throw them off and move on to new theories. This process has been happening on since eternity.

So while going through all these ¨attempts¨that we make to understand ourselves and nature, the picture that emerged in my mind was that of the four blind men groping at the various parts of an elephant and describing an elephant in his own way. Each one can firmly ¨prove¨ why his argument is right and yet nothing makes sense when taken as a whole. So what if this really is the case?? What if we really are blind? In our case it may not be eyesight that we lack..it maybe another sense totally unknown to us. The term ¨sixth sense¨is a cliché, but what if we really lack it and it is the key to understanding life and universe.

To make things clear, I will refer to another imaginary world. Just like Earth, or even better take it be exactly similar to Earth (lets call it E2). The Sun, Moon, planets everything being in the same position and evolution of life proceeding in the exact same fashion. BUT there is ONE difference between the living organisms in E2 and those on Earth. Its that in E2 none of the organisms developed eyesight. Except for this one simple difference everything else is the same.

So you can imagine an entire race of human beings on E2. They have the same intelligence as we do and will of course be very much inquisitive and curious about everything happening around them. In the course of time (progress will certainly be slow.. but it will happen) they will develop tools and other structures. Their entire life will revolve around sounds and they will attach to sounds more importance than what we can ever imagine. They might form social organizations, might even split into groups based on how different they sound to each other; any such crap may happen among them. But the important factor here is that they will have no clue… absolutely no clue that there is such a thing as sight that exists. Things that seem so apparent and simple to us may seem to be the greatest mysteries to them. During the course of time, they might come up with their own explanations about the workings of earth and like ourselves through the process of trial and error finally arrive at some theories which might help them ¨develop¨ in certain areas.

But the irony here is that no matter how much they think, no matter how much they develop they will never be able to comprehend the realities of the universe. They will never even begin to imagine that there are planets and stars and solar systems and galaxies. They will never ever understand the phenomena of light and other optics. All their theories and discussions will be based on ¨sounds¨and ¨touch¨ just like our theories are so much dependant on ¨sight¨. It’s not a fault; it’s just the way we have been built.

So the point I want to say here is that just like the blind human beings on planet E2, what if the real human beings are also lacking on that extra sense of perception which is required to unravel the mysteries of the universe. I know it sounds totally pessimistic and negative, but I am equally sure that no one will be able to convince the blind beings on E2 that there is an extra sense of perception present in this universe . How do you explain colors to someone who has never seen ANYTHING?.... If this really is the case then whenever we are seeking to solve any universal mystery we are like the blind beings of E2 groping around trying to explain universe from the ¨sounds¨that they can hear. This might very well expalin why the different branches of our science never seem to converge and at many times seems to be totally divergent on several aspects. When taken alone most branches are ¨pretty ¨ well explained, but if u try to combine them the result is disastrous.

There are some more points which i would like to add to this discussion. I will either write a new post or update this one in the coming days. So meantime. just think about it.......

P.S. I came across this new article on Epistemology . It sheds some light on how our knowledge is influenced by our perception. Do give it a look

Review:- Mulholland Drive

yesterday i saw this movie called the "Mulholland Drive""and i just loved it. It was directed by this guy called David Lynch and he shows you that actually there is no limit to how varied and different movies can be made, instead of just following the used trails. i dont think it was much of a big budget movie either... sort of like "Memento"..only a bit more confusing!!!..

guess i will watch some more David Lynch movies and put more commenst later.....

P.S..

for all the dumb fucks like me who didnt understand a damn thing while seeing the movie, I recommend this Ebert's review. . and Everything you wanted to know about Mulholland Drive
.. somethings will make sense after reading this!

Lost- Theories

i have been reading on and on about LOST...and now i think i am LOST!!!!

check out these sites...

http://www.thehansofoundation.org/
retrieversoftruth.com
http://www.djdan.am/
letyourcompassguideyou.com
http://thedharmainitiative.org/4-8-15-16-23-42/

and last but never the least...


http://www.lostpedia.com/

Review- Lost

man.. i gotta write this down somewhere.... LOST is THE BEST!!!!.. no other tv series, movie, whatever can never come close to this in the complexity of the plot involved,,, there are some 10 main characters and each one has a history that so nicely ties up with that of everyone else..... plzz guys do ureself a favour and watch the seasons 1 and 2!!!... coz if u don then u r missin somethin in ure life!!!..

.. and being the ardent wolverine fan that i am.. i was at loss of words to describe X MEN 3... it SUCKED!!!... and yea i mean it... the whole plot cud hav been dealt with a lot better.. the dark phoenix storyline was so powerful and it was totally wasted... i can only hope that in the future someone will remake the movie on the same storyline... well thts it!


P.S... anyone who has already seen LOST please join the sawyer fan club tht i started... SAWYER ROCKS!!!

Poem- Enlightment

this is a poem that i wrote almost an year back.. somehow it makes a lot more sense to me now...


Enlightment

....................

The more whimsical the choices looked,
The less oriented were the aims so booked.
The sepulchral outcry of my inner beast
Frothed a reaction, less violent, yet a feast.
The unnerving soul, bounded by a totally nerved body,
And the harmonic mind, giving help, thus remaining gaudy;
Took no care, nor notice, and continued unabashed,
Still the blind images and deaf sounds flashed
still frothing reactions, now all too well lashed,
Suddenly they stopped, something amiss it seemed,
And so the loss is felt, with intensiy yet to be dreamed
Recognition , light of dawn, proves black to be blacker
With returned heir's right usurps throne of the weaker,
Unleashes the beast,and promises never to go darker..

Great Link

Domain Maximus: Sidin's guide to the greatest Indian cricketers of all time especially that period between 4 and 6 pm last week

Embarassment is the first step towards knowledge through experience!!!....

Eugenics in LOTR????

eugenics!!!..ever heard of this term.. sounds pretty weird .. rite?..... recently i came across this term and when i did some diggin up via wiki and others a lot of interestin stuff hav come up... this thing was kinda lik the hottest thing in genetics till bout middle of twentieth century and then took a beatin to become one of most taboo things to be even talked about...

to quote wiki" Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of traits through various forms of intervention "... and its greek derivation would be "well born" or "good breeding"

now thts the literature.. now wat this thing really meant was tht in human race there are both better ones and the worse ones, and to improve human race as a whole selective breeding of humans must take place so that the new generation be better.... this was not only racist, but even within races it applied...this is very much lik the techinque adopted to make pedigreed dogs,where the ancestry is of great importance.....



This concept was first proposed by plato and this is what he said "The best men must have intercourse with the best women as frequently as possible, and the opposite is true of the very inferior".. even though this sounds very crude, this was pretty much the same methodology that the later proponents of this theory tried to take in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Modern eugenics as we know it was started by Sir Francis Galton in 1865. A surprisingly large number of famous thinkers , scientists, politicians of that time were ardent believers of this theory. The list ranged from George Bernard Shaw, Alexander Graham Bell to men like Winston Churchill and President Coolidge. The result of eugenics was devastating. In the liberal world of america it hit the worst.Its not surprising that KLU KLUX KLAN, the most infamous american group that preached white-supremacy and anti-Semitism was founded in 1866, the year after Galton proposed his eugenic theory. A broad-based social, political, and scientific movement, American eugenics reflected the fears of many whites that their once-great nation was threatened by demographic and economic change. Their understanding of the principles of genetic inheritance led eugenicists to conclude that genetically defective members of society -- including the "feeble-minded," criminals, the sexually wanton, epileptics, the insane, and non-white races -- were rapidly out-reproducing the "normal" members of society at an alarming rate, passing on their "inferior" genes at the expense of the "normal." The social cost of such a situation, they feared, would be devastating.



Galton defined eugenics as "the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage", but its doubtful that he could have foreseen the power the movement would accrue in America during the first half of the 20th century.The various eugenics soceities that came up lobbied hard and finally
in 1924, the Immigration Act was passed by majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. It set up strict quotas limiting immigrants from countries believed by eugenicists to have "inferior" stock, particularly Southern Europe and Asia. President Coolidge, who signed the bill into law, had stated when he was vice president, "America should be kept American. . . . Biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races".This reduced the number of immigrants from abroad to fifteen percent from previous years, to control the number of "unfit" individuals entering the country. The new Act strengthened existing laws prohibiting race mixing in an attempt to maintain the gene pool.Eugenic considerations also lay behind the adoption of incest laws in much of the USA.

The result went further down the lane when proprnts arugues that the schools for the deaf and blind should be closed as boarding schools for the deaf could possibly be considered as breeding places of a deaf human race. Many blacks were made to undergo forced sterilization and in 1927 the US SUPREME COURT gave a ruling allowing the state of virginia to sterilize those it deemed "unfit". The most significant era of eugenic sterilization was between 1907 and 1963 when over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States.

The whole bubble got the prick in its ass during world war 2 when the nazis tortured and killed almost 6 million jews in the name of eugenics(even hitler's nazi germany followed only the policy of eugenics whereby they believed that the jews were the inferior race) . The only differnce between the nazi germany and americans was that since the americans used methods which were less cruel , public attention was not much diverted to them. But another thing we must understand is that both villains and heroes are created by man during the course of history. What i am saying is not that the nazis were the angels of earth but that the general notion of the axis powers being the bad guys and the allied powers being the good was just the result of who won the war. Probably if hitler had won the war, many of atrocities that was committed would have never come out and hitler would have been designated as a great emperor and compared to the likes of alexander and others.

hmm.. the topic has diverted quite a lt from what i wanted it to be. Actually i wil stop with eugenics as a subject and will go on to the real topic, ie eugenics in lotr. Now this is something that never occured to me while i was reading the book or watching the movies but suddenly struck like a lightning when i was reading about eugenics. The references are vague, but fundamental. We should keep in mind here the fact that LOTR was written by Tolkien in the late 1950's. This was the time when racism in America, in the aftermath of 2nd world war, was witnessing an unprecendented rise, with the KK Klan activities gettin more violent and anti black. The most blatant reference to racism is contained in the statement where all the good guys( men) are called the "THE MEN OF THE WESTERNEESE". Also hints about eugenic belief is given when Elrond and Gandalf talk about how "THE RACE OF MEN IS WANING, AND HOW LESSER MEN HAVE DESCENDED FROM GREATER SIRES"...





Also eugenic belief is blatantly shown through the character of Aragorn, who is the only one left of the Numeroean blood. His race is referred to as the "race of kings"... and in the story the line of kings falls apart through the ages as a result of which the rule of Gondor falls into the hands of "lesser mortals", ie the stewards of gondor. Also the numoreans are shown to have longer life with Aragorn's age said to be 87!... These maybe subtle things , but it does point towards tolkiens belief in a superior race, one thats born to rule, one thats better than others and one thats waning with time.

Actually there are a couple more references in LOTR , but i will leave it at this.. Go through LOTR carefully and u will find the rest, but coming back to how eugenics got suppressed and was wildly discarded after the 2nd world war, no doubt the full credit goes to the nazis.Many pre-war eugenicists engaged in what they later labeled "crypto-eugenics," purposefully taking their eugenic beliefs "underground" and becoming respected anthropologists, biologists and geneticists in the post-war world.Many scientific societies released their own similar "race statements" over the years and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, developed in response to abuses during the second World War, was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 and affirmed "Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family." SO>>>>>>to end with...........



HEIL HITLER!!!

Totally Roded

hhhhhhhhmmm.... now i guess tht the heading is rather self explanatory...


all those of you who has any doubts as to what it might mean... yes, what you are thinking is right!.. it does mean FUCKED...now i agree tht its a rather mean term to use, but unfortunately oxford doesn have better words to describe conditions similar to the one tht the 2nd yr mech is in right now... with five 4-credit courses, a math elective and an elec course, this sem was supposed to be rape... but now it has turned out to be a total gang bang!!!...after writing four continous days of exams you are left with a weekend and suddenly you realize tht the math, PMT and the vito course is left....

last sem during my internet write ups here and elsewhere i had always maintained the view tht RAJA RAO was the worst of nature's creations... but i was proved hopelessly wrong with nature proving just how imaginative she can get in a work of art like VITO... now this guy is just unbelievable... he started of the first lecture by saying he will grant you a cup if you cant hold onto your balls during an exam of his(translation: he will fail you if you have a nature's call during the exam).. while the entire class was invloved in an animate discussion about the various methods of prevention and some methods of cure( the simplest being a portable water bottle), he came out with the next commandment... he wants 5 theory classes per week instead of the 1 which he was originally assigned and tht he wants to take 3 continous hrs once the lab gets over in first month... now thts 8 hrs per week( for the uninitaited 8 hrs is the no of hrs tht a frnd of mine attneds in the whole sem)...

now before i go on i need to clarify a point... i started writing this blog on friday, then got bored and thought i will complete it on saturday and left it at the end of last paragraph... right now its the NEXT thursday.. a lot of things as happened in between, like the entire first quiz has gotten over and my rather insensitive description of vito took a beating after the rather easy paper(i am NOT bein sarcastic here) he gave us...

ok.. i agree .. so he did set us an easy paper and i am extremely thankful to him for tht(trust me ..a bit more harder and i wud hav probably cupped)... but why in the hell does he try to psyche people out...??..its not as though we are jail criminals or something!!( hmm.. actually we are a lot worse),, but all tht withstanding, wouldn everything be a lot better if he just started behaving normally to students.. a couple of my friends who do have the enthu to attend his class have told me that the classes are really good.. so he is a good teacher and he sets easy papers, then why cant he stop acting as a psycho as well.. its really weird when people who are so good at something waste their talent by being so bad at something else..actually this topic too is too old and boring.. so let me start a new post.. tata

Encounter with the celebrated kind

so this post is supposed to continue with the great trip tht the mallu fellowship of IITM took couple of weeks back....

but it aint gonna... i simply don have the mood to write bout tht write now.. perhaps later.... yes perhaps..

the true reason why i decided to blog now is tht something great happened yesterday... You know Siddharth(the guy who acted in Boys and then acted as the next to lead role with Aamir Khan in Rang De Basanti..)... yup tht very Siddharth.. yesaterday i got to meet him and actually give him a handshake!!!!....

now this may not seem all tht great to an outsider... even i used to be a great critic of all hero worshippers who used to crowd around stars and throw up glitters in the theatres whenever their name is displayed or any arbit stunt like tht, but the fact of the matter is these guys are really larger than life.. you just gotta admit tht... when u see a great film then the guy who acted in tht willl remain in your memory not tht as the actor himself but as the character he represented....
and believe me after Rang De Basanti i am a huge fan of Siddharth myself and when i got to meet him it was as though the character had jumped out of the big screen and was standing as a mortal in front of me....it really helped me emphathize with all those guys who go mad when they see Mohan Lal's name on the theatre screen... i am not justifying them, but i can emphathize with them, at least for the time being....

Sojourn TADA

Ok... so much time has passed since my last update and this that it just and simply doesn’t make any sense to update it any more!!!.... That too with just 30 more minutes for the LAN to be switched off...

but still I am going to blog... Whatever the DUCK the reasons against it are!!!( now this is an expression that I learned from a friend of mine who stayed with me for saarang.. he uses the D word instead of the F word, an excellent idea I must say)..

Now to give a brief intro into all the things that happened... I wrote my end sems, went to Muscat to see my parents (truly had gr8 time eating FOOD after almost 4 months.. the stuff we get here is HUGGA), came back to this Ducking place,, went for an awesome (SIMPLY AWESOME) trip to TADA falls and finally lived through a SAARANG...

now I will go on bout the TADA trip in this blog... the other things shall also be converted into black and white but later..

to start with, this crazy idea of going to some really uninhabited area and spending a night there, or doing something really adventurous like that came up while the entire mallu gang of iitm was at SHAKES and CREAMS being treated to some delicious ice creams by B'Day boy jikku...
though the initial enthu was shown primarily by only three people (I wont go into names here, but yours truly was one of them.. I just hate being modest), there was a general consensus among junta and so it was decided that we will make an adventure trip... the initial place suggested by hari annan was a place called aerkkad... after some amount of research we found that actually there were much better places much closer to Chennai, thus we further arrowed our options to KAMBAKKAM and TADA...

Hair’s brother was an ex- iitian and was a member of the (now extinct)adventure club of iit... he had gone to this TADA falls before and thus it was decided that the place of our sojourn was TADA.... a group of 3rd yrs from my hostel had gone there some months back.. But they went for a one day trip hiring a cab... this very idea was on the spot vetoed by all... we wanted a raw trip... a pure adventurous trekking trip that one day we could blog about the way I am doing right now... so we made our own plans... on the 2nd day before the scheduled departure date we found luck in the form a 5th yr who gave us valuable information about the place.. He had made a similar trip to TADA (a RAW trip) while in his second yr... they had set a camp and had spent one night there in the forest... now this was exactly our plan and the very fact that someone who did the same was there helped us a lot (at least mentally)... he told us not to worry too much about water and that the river water in the upper streams is drinkable... this single piece of info reduced our luggage by at least 4 kgs per person...
on the last day before D-day (departure day).. We started our food collecting.... it was real fun... ashith and I went for food collection... our policy was simple... go to a store and then literally buy that store... We did actually buy the entire glucose, Maggi noodles and tiger biscuits that was in a mini supermarket... It was good! A first hand experience of sorts into how whole sale dealers feel when making transactions...

Thus on the next day morning we were all ready. To make the extremely tiring process of making each guy get up on time easier most of us had decided to stay in Godav for the night... ..... Quite incidentally enough there were NINE of us ...the magic number reminding us of the immortal FELLOWSHIP in LORD OF THE RINGS.... (and obviously since I am writing this blog I get to be Aragorn).... and so finally with backpacks containing food, water(in some cases a bit impure water also), torches, knives and what not!!!, we set foot on a journey to our very own MOUNT DOOM....

... to be continued

P.S... Anyone who thinks that over dramatization of common mundane matters has taken place, is thinking right and can go get his donkey Ducked!!!!!