Equals, equal to, equal to what?

To the challenges we face.

Equality, Commonality, Uniformity and Conformity. What do these words bring to your mind?

Bland, featureless, tasteless and mindless come to mine.

Difference, Rebellion, Freedom and Choice bring to life every individuals voice.

Long has mankind battled and suffered, demons within and demons without. Demons of their own creation sometimes in the name of war, sometimes in the name of recreation, sometimes by an insatiable lust for power and other times for wealth, men or women. How can this list exclude battles for honour? Indeed it cannot. It does not. Demons unleashed by forces beyond our comprehenshion, storms that rip apart a mans life and storms that decimate the collective life of mankind.

I have spoken of war now in a generic sense,  for I wish to deal with the specific, in the context of the generic. Long are the hours that I have spent decrying that mankinds fundamental nature is evil and chaotic and yet my heart tells me to keep faith that mankind is true and good. Reality often lies between the extremes of our rosiest dreams and our worst nightmares. And so again, has human nature continued to remain fickle and dynamic, eluding all attempts to classify it as good or bad. Indeed, now an attempt for such a classification seems naive.

But I digress. I return to the topic at hand, equality. Since time immemorial, man has been afraid of differences, of change, of deviations from the norm. He does not respect nature and considers animals inferior, for they are different from him. Little does he understand, that in his arrogance, he has failed to see what those differences have to offer. This discrimination has been more violent, if anything, when it came to fellow man.If a man were not to conform to an acceptable, usually socially decreed form of behaviour, woe betide, he would be an outcast, just because he dared to listen to his conscience and reason.

When the world was explored, many exotic creatures and cultures were found. Many of them more tolerant and adaptable than those of the first explorers. The men and women of these cultures were different in  customs, behaviour, speech and appearance, and hence became candidates for brutal discrimination. Man against man perpetrated the most inhuman of all crimes.

Then arose a cry for equality, from men and women courageous enough to stand up to their oppressors. And then began a battle without. This battle was of little consequence until men and women of all types could set aside their differences and accept their humanity as their first identity, their equality as a matter of course. Slowly, the tides turned. People became more tolerant. And yet the battle was not won. It is not won.

Often, equality has been confused with bland conformity, which resulted in socialist and marxist movements. Noble were their ideals and yet, as history has shown, they were doomed to fall. In hindsight, this is obvious, because every man and woman seeks to be different, to stand out from the crowd, to achieve a higher station in society, to be appreciated. At the same time, man strives for acceptance among his peers and in comes the necessity for conforming to social norms. In my opinion, neither extreme is likely to succeed.

We humans need to learn to be less tolerant of evil and more tolerant of differences. Yet, as history has shown time and time again, this may just be a pipe dream. Still, while I live, I cannot give up hope in the greater good, the better nature of humankind.

Our hope lies in coming to gether as one, as humans, as living beings. Our hope lies in knowing, no in feeling that bond of commonality that runs through us and in remembering that just because we share something in common does not mean that we have to share everything in common. Our hope! It lies in respecting and recognizing differences, not in demeaning each other because of them, not in giving them secondary importance. Differences are to be treasured, they make us who we are and so they make others who they are and there is everything positive in that, for in sharing a bond of commonality, we can harvest the best of our different capabilities.

Equals

A pipe dream?

A reality?

A sign or word on paper?

No it is a state of mind. It is a belief. It is a way of life.  It is a battle fought by us, within ourselves. It is that which grows as more people practice it. A few freak racistss notwithstanding, let us attain our goal, let us continue to be equals.

A/N:  This post is in response to mithblogsin’s post.

Damn! Is my title a bit much? Well, since there is no compulsive couch potato, I might have just overstepped my creative license. Ok! Now I’m being bombastic. Ok, I’ll stop stalling and tell you my story. Then, you can judge for yourselves.

I live in my Grandfathers house with my brother, mom and grandmom. While this is a temporary arrangement, it is a precursor to this post. My grandmother, while by no means a couch potato, I assure you, has a habit of watching a number of soaps and other telivision shows in Tamil from 6:00Pm to 9:00Pm everyday.  The habit itself is not that uncommon, not even among younger citizens of Chennai. However, for a person with any semblance of intelligence or taste, the shows are absolute abomination. No, I’m not going to slam my Grandmother, she really is cool, as a number of my friwends will attest.  As to what I am going to slam, you will have to read ahead to find out.

Every man and woman needs some form of entertainment. Since the requirement for set top boxes was imposed in Tamil Nadu, many cable T.V. channels are unavailable. What is available is a bevy of Tamil channels like Sun (set of channels!)., Jaya T.V., Podhigai etc. and a few ‘free’ channels like NDTV Profit, Disney channel etc. As a result of this, many people, especially North Indians living down south have opted to pay the price of installing a set top box or subscribing to dish T.V. services. Now, left with this meagre selection of T.V. channels, which have some of the poorest quality of viewing content, I cannot bring myself to blame my Grandmother for watching them. Indeed, there are other avenues she could have sought, but I do not want to intrude on something that is a personal preference.

As you may have deduced already, I abhor all the soaps and other content on Tamil television. I mean no offense to the people of Tamil Nadu, but all their shows are either crass and unpolished, propogate misinformation or are otherwise insulting to the intelligence or dignity of any human being. Let me make it clear, that what I write now is a purely personal standpoint!

 

When I so abhor these shows, one might ask me how I know enough to rant about them. It is a valid question indeed. As a result of my grandmothers T.V. watching habit, I come to see or hear snippets of these shows, whenever I pass through the T.V. room. At other times, the T.V. is kept at a loud enough volume for me to hear in other rooms in the house. Again, this is no fault of the said T.V. watcher, but is a result of hesitance on my part to do anything about it, for fear of offending my Grandmother. Even while absorbed in work, sometimes my passive hyearing and grasping are sufficient to hear enough to know that they are abominable. It has been no better an experience when I watched several of these programs at some well meaning persons request to give them a chance.

No, I have not a phobia or a grudge against Tamil T.V. shows or the most excellent people of Tamil Nadu. This post is my humble attempt to present an argument that telivision soap operahs are bad. There are those who need little, if any convincing of this fact, there are those that would oppose me vehemently. It is this second audience that I hope to convince, by presenting a reasonable argument. Although, it may be argued that such people are not amenable to reason, I can always hope, can I not?

On the subject of soaps, it would be unfair to criticize Hindi soaps or Tamil soaps or any other soaps for that matter, while excluding one or the other. Right from the Bold & the Beautiful, they are all just mindless twisted, never ending sagas of trickery, deciet, evasdropping and unnecessary drama. They are so abhorrent, that I avoid entering any room where a soap is running on the telly! The worst of it is that they propogate misinformation on court procedures, filing F.I.R’s etc.  As if this is not insult enough, they represent the worst of human nature to such an extent that they are unrealistic. They are melodramatic. No, they are traumatic to anyone with dignity and self respect. There is a twisted storyline, entirely too many charachters, multiple threads running parallelly, effectively ruining any last vestiges of quality entertainment. I don’t even want to get started on how bad the content is.

 

Now that I have expressed my view on soaps, albeit in an entirely insufficient manner, my rant isn’t done yet. No sir, not by a long shot. This same lack of polish also extends to most tamil cinema, reality shows and talent hunts. The dance talent competitions, that have so swept away the audience are an insult to taste and grace. Why, they are an insult to dance itself. All, if I may say so, in my humble opinion! I had the misfortune of seing the panel of judges for one such show dance at the finale. I never knew that such graceless movements could be passed off in the name of dance. The competitors are no better and neither is the grading or song selection.

 

This kind of thing gives a whole new meaning to idiot box doesn’t it?

 

A/N: To those reading this post as of now, I would like to say that it is not particularly well organized or properly argued. Do leave me conmmets on how to improve it. I will be taking this post through a couple of revisions. Do come back and see the changes. Thank you.

-Bharathan

Here I am, fresh out of engineering, haven’t got a job in sight and I am happy with it. Why? I chose to pursue my longtime dream of doing a PhD in Graphics and visualization. I’m applying for fall 2010 and its going to be one heck of a ride getting in.

I always fancied a job in game programming, but then who doesn’t? In any case, I have an interest in research. I love getting to the bottom of all things technical. I’ve just zeroed in on a good GRE coaching institution and will be joining soon.

Even deciding on the coaching center was quite a hassle. I ran around, went to their offices, talked it to death with friends, relatives, mom and others at various stages of doing a PhD in the US. See, being at Chennai and not being from any of the IIT’s, not having a dozen research papers to my name is going to be a big deterrent in this process, as is choosing an area of specialization. All I know is that I am not going to let anything deter me from making it in!! I will prove myself!!

Anyhow, I started looking at GRE sample questions from the POWERPREP software, which is freely downloadable from the ETS website. I had fun doing that, even so I have a long way to go.

I don’t want to let my technical skills, especially programming skills get rusty, so I am going to be working on that as well. I want to read up on the new C++ standard as well. I’ll be posting on that in a couple of days. The OpenGL post, is also, unfortunately, delayed. I am working on that full steam ahead.

Time management is going to be the key in the coming months and although it has never been my forte, I am mastering it, hell or high water. I want achieve what I want and do it on time.

So, my readers, you can expect a wide variety of posts on this blog!! Especially since what I post is going to help my GRE analytical writing score. In addition, I’m going to use this blog for analysis of my GRE performance (shhh… more on that later) and to manage time as well. 

 

Catch you next post :)

She really loved me heart and soul

She left me behind and went on and on

I don’t know how I survive day after day

Surely there’s some way 

To make the pain go away

 

I really loved her heart and soul

I really loved her faults and all

I really thought we’d grow old and gray

I thought we’d marry someday

But she left me all alone…

 

She left me all alone

My burdens alone now I bear

I cant stand this wear and tear

Tears come on and on

They won’t go away

 

They all say that boys don’t cry

I can’t keep my eyes dry

She left me alone

A hole in my heart the size of her

What can fill I do wonder?

She went all alone

 

She didn’t leave me for another guy

No sir no, then I would die

She left me because of me

Misery’s part, not whole of me

How do I survive?

 

No I didn’t push her away

I really begged her to stay

She wouldn’t listen, went on her way

How can I survive?

 

I have to live day after day

Dreaming about that yesterday

She was in my loving arms

Then we joined our palms

And promised we wouldn’t leave

No matter what, no qualms

 

But she left me and anyway

Here alone I do stay

Was that promise just a lie?

Sliced my heart like a pie

 

The pain just won’t go away

My teras drip drop by drop

They just don’t seem to stop

Why did she leave anyway?

 

I said she left ’cause of me

I caused her no misery

I treated her sometime so daintily

Like she was a bud lily

Other times she would have her way

 I wouldn’t let her push away

Sometimes she would want to be

And I would just leave her so …

Oh! Why did she leave?

Oh, oh! Why did she leave?

 

I treated her equally

Like she was a part of me

Sometimes I would protect her 

And other times she would protect me

She left anyway

She left anyway

 

I did love her heart and soul

She did love me all and all

Or I thought so anyway

Did she leave me out of love

Did she outgrow my love?

 

All these questions haunt me so

And yet heart of hearts I know 

It was my tainted mind that made me left behind

Although my soul is pure

And my affection full of allure

She couldn’t take the damaged goods

She left me and ran for the woods

 

I’m no monster I do say

Beauty’s beast is my way

Love and love alone fills my every bone

How the hell could she do this?

Every moment with her was bliss

And now theres pain and pain alone

Just me and my pain

 

As I nurse aching heart

My mind says we were meant to part

My heart can’t just seem to understand 

She was not the one to be

I was all alone to be

 

Heaviness in my heart I do sense

Thick as a fog and oh so dense

Of her act I could make no sense

And on and on I cursed my ignorance

 

Then I woke up and stood aloft

My mind I applied a reason to craft

And then I knew all at once why she went away

A long time ago, I was mad

I got better,  I’m now sane

Madness still remains my bane

All I have now is pain

She knew it all and she still left

I am now bereft

I am now bereft

 

Oh! I thought I could take it all

No matter how hard my fall

Turns out it wasn’t true

Though I do still remain sane

All I have left is my  pain

 

Of my love I cannot speak

For all my strength my heart is weak

I feel the pain every day

And live on day by day

To loved and to have lost is better they said

I say a broken heart is worse then dead

 

I must pull myself together and use my head

She wouldn’t stay no matter what I said

All this pain in my heart and head

I won’t wish myself dead

I will work on and on and on

Till my life burns on….

 

-Bharathan

One of my friends recently posted about how just seven notes can produce all the songs that so touch us,  transport us, transform us albeit for a few minutes. My friend claims that music is science, because we can apply combinatorics to describe it. I’ve had the good fortune of learning how this works from the said friend. As a direct consequence of reading that post, I’ve decided to leave all of us a reminder of the true nature of science.

 In my humble opinion, music is art, not science. Even though you can describe parts of music through combinatorics, it isn’t the whole or even a part of music. The great composers wrote different combinations of notes, the fact that we can describe these combinations, at least, in part through combinatorics, doesn’t make it a science. I’d also like to add that its nice of my friend to remind us of another way in which science applies to music.

Before I go any further with my argument, I must first stop to describe my understanding of the word  science. Science is a way of gathering knowledge, as reliably as possible, as logically as possible. It is an attitude, a temperament and a way of life. Science attempts to explain that which has no explanation. What was once described by blind faith and religion is today specified by science. Science does not help us obtain the absolute truth, for there is no absolute truth. Science is descriptive and predictive, it is valid within a certain scope. The description of lightning as a bolt of electricity between clouds rather than the wrath of the gods allows us to describe and predict things more accurately. That is what science is all about. Just like religion, it has its axioms, its dogmatic beliefs. The difference is that these beliefs, except for those most fundamental to science (eg: It is possible to explain that which we see by reason), are open to challenge and change. The scientific method is to observe,  hypothesise, to experimentally verify the hypothesis, and to keep retesting the hypothesis in light of new observations. The moment we find evidence that cannot be explained using our original hypothesis, we must discard (or at least constrain the old one) and form a new hypothesis capable of explaining all phenomena, both old and new.

Once we have this fundamental understanding of what science is, how can we call music a science. Truly, it is not. There is no observation and no hypothesis, only experiment i.e. artistic experiment. The fact that science, more presicely mathematics can describe a small part of the awe and wonder that is music, does not in my opinion make it a science.  I do have to credit my friend with the fact that the intention was not to call music a science but rather to highlight the application of science. Any other inference comes down to a sloppy description. Most people, including myself are prone to this error aqnd I believe that we can minimize it, if we strive hard enough.

Again, there are friends of mine who will claim that astrology is science or that it is scientific. Sure, there is observation, analysis and interpretation. Although it is a stretch of imagination, I can even allow that there is experiment. However, there is no logical reasoning, no hypothesis and no verification. There may be the most precise of measurements and the most abstract mathematics, but without thought, hypothesis, verification and ultimately change of hypothesis, there is no science. Astrology is just ad hoc dogma, which is aided by precise measurements. There is no scientific method and hence no science. 

 

Given the description above, do you not agree, my readers?

For long my heart has sung a song

Longing and  yearning, all day long

Day after day,  it seeks a way

to share itself,

to share its  love

 

I have so much love to give 

If only someone will for me, me forgive

 

Many fair maidens I have met,

Not on one my heart is set

It weeps and longs

For going to the one it belongs

 

I’ve searched far and wide

Believe me I have tried

No damsel will accept me

They run screaming at the sight of me

Surely, I’m not such a fright?

 

No, It can’t be

I am not crippled or lame

Foolish or insane

Nor struck by plauge or blight

To the contrary

With reason my mind is alight

 

Till somone sees past my exterior and begins to know the real me

Till I meet the one who is meant for me, be it choice or destiny

My heart will grieve all day long 

Singing a yearning song

 

With my friends

I do share

Of being lovelorn I do not despair

I have befriended many people bright

Fair maidens and handsome knights

With them my love I share

I let them know I always care

 

Yet I wonder,

Yes I dare

How do others find somone dear

Somone for them, them alone

A rare gem, not of stone

A glowing heart full of love

 

Yes, I wonder

How my milkman found his girl

And how the lorry driver met Pearl

I wonder what I lack

 

When I see the stolen glances 

And the hesitant requests for first time dances

When love glimmers in a couples eyes

I wonder, why from me love so shies

 

Yesteraday, I saw a couple fall in love

While I blessed the stars above

At me a question ate,

Why not me? Oh! Fate.

 

I will tarry not

Lest in self-despair I do rot

I love my many friends

And I will search for the one to the worlds ends

 

Despair and depression go away

I am much stronger, than you say

I’ve lasted this long

 

I will find a heart that sings with me

It won’t be long

And then our hearts will sing together a song

Beautiful and merry

Powerful and sweet

 

Until then I have to wait

Till I find the one I love most dearly 

To my heart I dedicate this song

Singing for the one who has sung so long

Well, the OpenGL tutorial is going to take a while more to complete.  I’ll try and post it by tomorrow. In the mean time, here’s some doggerel to fill the space…

How should I feel?

I don’t quite know

What should I do?

I don’t really know

 

Where am I going?

I hate to predict

This is my life

Whats the verdict?

 

A logical mind and passionate heart

Too long have been kept apart

Into the crowd I go,

Its time to depart

 

Full of ideas, full of love

Aiming for the stars above

Things so fine

borderline divine

 

Tired of waiting

Its time to fly

To lifes question In reply

 

The verdict is this,

Not a chance I will miss

 

–Bharathan

This blog has been quiet for too long. Just like my previous blogs. Damn, I was hoping to break that streak! Oh! Well, no time like the present tyo start changing eh?

 

So what am I up to these days? Playing Diablo II, hanging out with friends, taking photographs and waiting for the results of the final semester examinations. If I do well on these, correction, pass these, I will be an engineer, finally!

 

At the moment, I am shooting for the stars, trying to get into a PhD. program in the area of graphics and visualisation. I need to write my GRE come this july, so I decided to use that as an excuse to start my blog back up. I can use it for practicing the new words I learn for the GRE vocabulary test!

 

I am also involved in sharpening my skills in Python, math, graphics, game design, C++ and XNA. It should be a good year all around, lots of material to post :) . One of the first things I am going to post is a guide to transformations in OpenGL. So keep looking for it…

 

By the way, I have decided that I hate the My Interests page, so I have removed it.

 

Read my post, same blog, sometime the day after tomorrow!!!!!

I’ve just begun blogging with Word-Press today. I’ve just realized that its going to take a while to get it all set up. My next few posts will most likely be on my experiences customizing and setting up my stuff.

Another important note. My Tech Radar page is up but needs correction. Contrary to what it says, as of now it contains some technologies I don’t like (ex: .NET, MFC etc).  It needs a lot of work to get it to the point where it provides useful information regarding what I am learning. It’ll probably take me two or three weeks of work!!

Two posts now!!

Just keep swimming

Sporadic Spiff

My previous attempts to write and maintain a blog have been sporadic at best.  I’ve ‘maintained’ a blog at blogger (here)  since 2007 and have a meager twelve posts on that blog! Come year 2009,  I’ve decided to take another whack at regularly posting to a blog and here you are looking at my latest attempt at blogging.

I have good reason to believe that I’ll succeed this time around because

  1. I ‘m no longer trying to discover what a blog is ;)
  2. I am learning a number of new things, all technology related which I’d like to share. While I can’t pretend to be knowledgeable about any of these things, what I can present should be of general interest. (Hopefully :-) )
  3. I’m likely to have a little more free time than before.

Now that I have provided the token three reasons,  on to how my blog found itself here.  I’ve been hearing about Word-Press and Drupal from a friend of mine over the past year.  Its the same guy who encouraged me to start a blog at this site.  In addition, I’ve been really impressed by some of the Word-Press blogs I’ve seen, the result opening a new blog right here.

I’ve been really inspired by what can be done with a blog and that is my number one reason for starting one up, closely followed by just telling ‘the world’ about the stuff I’m learning. I’m hoping to have some give and take on the subjects I write about and a blog is ideal for that.

For more information on what I’m learning and doing, see the “Tech Radar” page on this blog and of course the upcoming posts too.

In hopes of regular writing,

Sporadic Spiff !!