tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74326856795199831502024-03-14T21:42:44.658+05:30Inside The BlueThere is a light that never goes outUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-33090451036374475382021-03-03T21:48:00.000+05:302021-03-03T21:48:51.109+05:30On Dr. Mavis Agbandje-McKenna<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmYMVt5_mNUIKHL88wHeo_GBA8Vkt9HJlqoD3LHFq7IILTf9ek8EpdDSfjnQhdjvWxs3pMZueKOok5YUztnkK3BPkUg-PMT5bPYIGA4QQWBZF7uqVsPU9sjBRAQkRYp6E2hJnUjk4cyqo/s3648/DSCN1527.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="3648" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmYMVt5_mNUIKHL88wHeo_GBA8Vkt9HJlqoD3LHFq7IILTf9ek8EpdDSfjnQhdjvWxs3pMZueKOok5YUztnkK3BPkUg-PMT5bPYIGA4QQWBZF7uqVsPU9sjBRAQkRYp6E2hJnUjk4cyqo/s320/DSCN1527.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I am not really looking for a graduate student. I guess I will take one”, said Mavis in a thick British accent at the Biochemistry faculty talks to recruit fresh graduate students to their labs as the fresh meat looked back at her blankly. So, naturally, Dr. Mavis Agbandje-McKenna followed through in her usual style and took THREE sincere and hardworking graduate students who expressed the desire to work with her after an 8-week rotation stint in her lab. And then she took in a fourth one. A raw, playful Indian kid with infinite enthusiasm but limited skills, focus and tact (yours truly). He had done a rotation with her husband Dr. Robert McKenna and the latter offered him a chance to work as a shared student with Mavis, “We like your personality”.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Over the next 5 years, I managed to exhaust Rob and Mavis’ patience as they chipped away at me with hammer and chisel (only occasionally literal) to somehow extract meaningful research effort. They were successful, however, and I went from being a bouncy platypus to a salable research duck (Rob loves collecting them) that almost looked like a swan. I expressed the desire to join one of their best friends’ labs as a post-doctoral fellow and they risked their reputations to recommended me to Dr. Adam Zlotnick, who hired me quickly. I wonder if it may have been my personality again, but it had to be because I had the “Mavis’ graduate student” stamp. Because this is not my story.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dr. Mavis Agbandje-McKenna was born in her grandmother’s hut in Nigeria. She moved to live with her parents in England at the age of 11 and needed to be tutored to speak in English. Just 10 years later Mavis started a PhD in Dr. Stephen Neidle’s lab at the University of London where she met a tall, long-distance running, introverted mathematics nerd with flaming red hair - Robert McKenna. They managed to get their PhDs, fell in love and got married, all in 3 years and before the age of 25, they were post-doctoral fellows in Dr. Michael Rossmann’s lab at Purdue University. They were younger than most of the graduate students around them, one of them, the aforementioned Adam Zlotnick. But they were talented and hardworking and had very productive post-doctoral stints. Soon enough, they were able to start their own lab at the University of Warwick. Shortly after, the McKenna lab moved to its permanent home at the University of Florida.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mavis’ lab fit her personality. She was very tough on the outside and very warm inside. She built a strong, diverse, thorough-minded crew that worked crazy hard and played just as hard. Everything that she did had an extra challenge to it - it was whole virus capsid structure determination, not just one protein; it was Adeno-Associated Virus - the gene therapy vector - and not another easy-to-work-on virus (“That virus is a piece of rock” - Adam Zlotnick); it was cryo-electron microscopy with 10Å resolution and messy film data collection, at a time when the resolution revolution had not yet happened. But Mavis was tenacious and never gave up. She charged at the problem again and again with a new approach or a new collaboration each time until the science simply had to yield. This had to be Mavis’ most defining trait and her team loved her for it. It was never a small team; it was heterogenous and diverse in ethnicity and ideas; even running a team had to be a larger-than-normal challenge to fit Mavis’ plate.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And boy did she run it well. Her undergrads were talented and they were rewarded with publications that helped them to successful medical school admissions and research careers. Her graduate students and post-doctoral fellows had to be extremely hardworking to catch up with her expectations. If you were caught napping, you were done. I struggled to somehow keep my naps just under the bar, so my tendency to slack passed off as more of an annoyance. But Mavis did not give up on me. She would never hold back on expressing high expectations or critical feedback. It would be quick, tough and final.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Her expectations, however, were no more than what her own performance matched. She would work on grants like a machine, locked in her office for days. We would drive the 25-hour stretch each way to Ithaca, NY to collect synchrotron data at Cornell (a continuous 48-96 hour shift) regularly. These were the days before we shipped protein crystals in those fancy pucks for remote data collection. Mavis would do a bulk of the driving and data collection herself as we would try to get the most data collected in the allotted time. Between us, we would average a few hours of sleep through those days (I would sleep the most while Mavis’ would barely yawn).</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These trips were also the best time to get to know Mavis’ other side and how her thoughts worked. She shocked me when her pronunciation of ‘<i>Jalfreizi</i>’ was more accurate than my own. I only got to know on one of these trips that she overcame great personal tragedy when her father was murdered in Nigeria and she could not travel there to see him. She had profound, yet practical thoughts on feminism, culture and third-world sensibilities. This was significant especially for those of us that came from diverse backgrounds seeking acceptance. Mavis’ thoughts have significantly influenced my own views and values. Despite the pressures of running her lab, a wonderful family and a constant scientific drive, Mavis would find time like this to sustain her inclusive environment.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mavis’ personality and work ethic have won her many fans outside the lab. She was a stand-out member of the structural virology community and her collaborators always became close friends soon enough. We would have about two conference trips each year (another larger-than-normal Mavis special). We would nervously smile at the professors that we recognized at the conferences even though they would coldly stare straight through us and not reciprocate our unspoken request to connect. Mavis was never one of them. She would always be surrounded by friends but still take time to engage with students that were not her own. She would always join the dance floor, be a voice in the birthday song and share wisdom without restrain. She had big accomplishments and a big team but operated with regular sized sensibilities, a tough act to pull off.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A few months after I left the McKenna lab, I got the call. Mavis had been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). It struck me like a free-electron laser. I had lost a very dear uncle to that dreaded disease a decade before and I knew what it meant; what it would do to her. But ALS was not going to have it easy with this one. She fought it for almost a decade, while her scientific empire flourished. She continued to churn out students, structures, publications and even gene-therapy companies. She would still travel to all the meetings, do interviews and stay in touch with her science-children.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mavis’ larger-than-normal life stands as a stellar example of almost every kind of struggle that one overcomes. Barriers of gender, race, nationality, language, bureaucracy, health or fate could not hold back this mountain of a woman. Her science-children (as she refers to us) take pride in knowing her and calling her our own. As someone who now has a meaningful scientific career with a short mentorship journey of my own, I hope to live up to her standards in my professional and personal life. Late last year, she sent me a text, “Rob and I are SO proud of you” - something I will hold in memory (and in screenshot form) for as long as I live. It is my privilege to have had Mavis guide my journey thus far as her story and principles will take over from here on.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Rest in peace my dear mentor.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguBvYftF8mVZHrHvSEbZ3CoxtMqm-DyF0mutQrnkZ5BEetV7cER05YgUDzErlsvRXHEPg82M70fkDWMTe4p3qgU03-EdV-QWywKI_4_hB5sJ06CvRW3jHfXnoMKu1rFHu4x_iAQHfkX90/s1800/DSCN1081.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1609" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguBvYftF8mVZHrHvSEbZ3CoxtMqm-DyF0mutQrnkZ5BEetV7cER05YgUDzErlsvRXHEPg82M70fkDWMTe4p3qgU03-EdV-QWywKI_4_hB5sJ06CvRW3jHfXnoMKu1rFHu4x_iAQHfkX90/s320/DSCN1081.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p class="p1" style="font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Note: In eulogizing Mavis, I hope not to have minimized Rob’s partnership in Mavis’ achievements and central role in molding me as a graduate student or Adam’s mentorship that I have modeled my own mentorship on. I am grateful to have them all.</i></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-40772089492056534122017-04-22T02:16:00.000+05:302017-04-22T16:25:29.215+05:30The march of ides<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The spouse and I will participate in the march for science on April 22nd, joining thousands of others who will. The march hopes to represent diversity in the scientific community and in that, diversity of ideas is most important. So, as we do march with a large group, our reasons and expectations from the march may differ from our fellows, and the ones listed in websites and community pages. This post elaborates on our personal agenda.</div>
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WE HAVE NO POLITICAL PURPOSE: I am an alien to America and I have not been around for an election in my home country; making me a non-partisan observer irrespective of stated beliefs, because I have no actions to back them up. Ethically, that should tell you that my political ideas are not to be respected beyond a basic measure. Even if my political ideas are obliged, and even if I may have stances that require protest and attention, our march is not for them this time. Our rights in this country are provided by treaties and ties between America and our home country, we do not march for them either. This march, despite its claims of non-partisanship, will be laughably partisan; that's just how the setting is. That is why it is very important that we do not draw lines in the sand and make 'us versus them' points in this process; liberals and conservatives do that every day on social media to heavily divisive effect. We do not wish to add to that. Partisan ideology is, at least partly, based on belief and science isn't.</div>
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WE DO NOT WANT TO BEAT OUR OWN SCIENCEY DRUMS: A substantial set of people of science tend to believe strongly in their intellectual exceptionalism and superiority. This has impacted their dialogue and their social responsibility, triggering a reaction where intelligence is treated as an elitist sin. They air their opinions, either in a hit-and-run fashion or in spaces that only serve to confirm their biases. They patronize more and empathize less. They may choose this platform to validate their feelings of intellectual superiority. We do not wish to be part of that set; it is not helpful. We also do not intend to impress other members of the scientific community with our genius signs (pun may be taken as intended) and nimble brains; the world and this march will have enough narcissism without our indulgence. We believe that holding a post-graduate degree or working in science does not make one smarter, better or more noble, it just assigns your roles and responsibilities. Speaking of which...</div>
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WE WISH TO EMBRACE OUR PUBLIC ROLE AS SCIENTISTS: One of the main purposes of this march is to draw attention of the role of science in policymaking - we share that. We feel that the lack of empathetic communication between the scientific community and everyone else is responsible for the confusion over what constitutes science and what its role ought to be; the scientific community should take a majority of the blame in that. We wish to engage positively and learn as much as we teach. We wish to humanize scientists so they are looked upon as experienced in a specific subject rather than unfriendly wizards and witches in ivory towers. Scientists forget sometimes that the humanities are also an essential method of inquiry. Only a joint application of the two is useful to society; we should be aware of that as we make our point. </div>
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WE WISH TO BE FRIENDS </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-52549168707693968182017-01-11T20:43:00.001+05:302017-04-22T02:17:24.950+05:30Basketball student sections<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In the spirit of college football being is officially over for the season, I present my collated (incomplete) list of college basketball student section names. It took me a couple of weekends to put this together; some of these are tough to find and others are quite fluid with their names. Additions and corrections are warmly welcomed. Help me complete this list!<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-86170942686401169602016-07-11T01:59:00.002+05:302016-07-11T01:59:58.770+05:30Election selection<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Conservative elements in America have recently protested that Facebook may have a liberal bias. The social media company has defended itself and said that Facebook's functioning is not influenced by the political choices of its management or employees. While this is probably true, with Facebook being equally accessible to all people irrespective of their political leanings, I argue that social media, by virtue of it being on a (currently) free internet, is a liberal tool; irrespective of what its management may say and do to keep looking independent. </div>
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Social media has revolutionized social interaction in two general ways:</div>
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1. Interaction is between crafted representative avatars rather than real people. Our airbrushed, free-thinking, like-awarding, social commentator avatar interacts with other cartoons of the same make in a sandbox world of finite means. Our perceptions based on these interactions, however, are in the real world. This gives us a heavily cognitively biased set of conclusions to react to and our real world reactions sometimes are the opposite of what we choose to evoke in the sandbox. </div>
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2. Your interaction is your presence. Social media is not a place for introverts. You cannot smile warmly and hope that it counts as a social action on the internet. You share anything between a supportive +1, to a high-definition live video of your life to mark your presence. That has not been the human way for a good chunk of us; how I dress up is not a social interaction (though some rapists differ) but uploading a photo of myself on Facebook is. Social media, therefore, does a poor job in mimicking and substituting for real social interaction leaving a lot of us dissatisfied or depressed. </div>
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This is not to say that social media is bad. It acts as a good compliment to true social interaction rather than a replacement, and that is what we ought to take it as. The human condition cannot evolve to keep up with the freedom and framework of social media, making this a social experiment that nobody really understands well enough to predict an outcome. For a lot of us, it is jarring for sure. </div>
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Back to politics, conservative thinking places its faith on a traditional lifestyle of choice (or conditioning) and strives to not move away from it. At times, this is a logical choice - you have faith and comfort in a tried and tested method that has worked for generations before you and has stood strong against the test of time. What it is not good against though, is changed evolutionary pressure, and different circumstances may demand a more case-defined approach than a formulaic one. </div>
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The conservative approach relies on the recirculation of traditionalist ideas rather than the free sharing of ideas in an unweighted manner. The liberal school of thought however chooses to engage such ideas aligning it perfectly with the rules of social media on a free internet. So Facebook is not liberal because of the views of its makers. It is not liberal because it is populated by more liberals than conservatives (hypothetically). It is liberal because it attempts to be unweighted on a free-access internet. And that cannot be fixed; unless you violate net neutrality...</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-83560254715744827342016-07-05T00:11:00.000+05:302016-07-06T00:58:29.071+05:30The thathuva padam<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In a time when opinions are rained through free and porous internet mouth pieces, some still choose to collate their opinions and present them as fictional, but exemplary motion pictures. This remains a smart strategy because of how powerful motion pictures still are and how they have a longer lasting impact than the average mouthpiece. I personally enjoy deconstructing a good issue/message driven movie, even if I may disagree wholly with its content; just good food for semi-productive parts of the brain. However, for consideration at the present time, are some basic rules to be a quality moral-instilling motion picture that deserves at least grudging respect. If they do not fit these rules, they haven't met the bar.<br />
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1. They must satisfy the <a href="http://movies.mxdwn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/BechdelRule.png">Bechdel-Wallace test</a>.<br />
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Not because these rules are inspired by the Bechdel-Wallace test (which they are) but because if you are not going to trouble yourself with content that appeals to roughly one half of your target audience, potentially alienating them, then your message needs more work.<br />
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2. There is no prize for being good.<br />
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So the person that chose to be kind to the beggar on the street does not get rewarded with a sexy girlfriend halfway through the movie. That is not the world we live in.<br />
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3. Target stereotype may not have unrelated flaws.<br />
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Your movie probably involves some straw characters that you will tear apart and burn to fuel the smoke of your fiery message. Do not make him boring and whiny (and ugly) just because he also decided to extol the virtues of some form of badness. Bonus positive points for your movie though, if target stereotype has other potentially redeeming (but unrelated) virtues. That makes things fun.<br />
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An optional (essential) fourth - Your concept must have some validity outside your straw universe.<br />
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Otherwise your discussion is a mountain of an expense for a molehill of an issue. We have social media for that.<br />
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Note to Alison Bechdel: Alien may have passed this test but the underlying message has been elusive.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-60050443321118587172016-04-08T22:38:00.001+05:302016-04-08T22:59:11.236+05:30On Sci-Hub<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If you are not a first world researcher you definitely know what it is. For the rest of us, Sci-Hub is a free (as in beer) repository of scientific articles; articles that would normally cost you upwards of approximately $30 (USD) each, or a slightly less-cost (but still expensive) annual membership with the publisher. Sci-Hub achieves this by accessing these articles with voluntarily (though discreetly) provided proxy accounts that subscribe to these journals and publishers. Once accessed, these articles are available to download from Sci-Hub for all visitors. So naturally it is illegal, because piracy. Thievery is bad. Shame.<br />
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More details add wrinkles and grey shades to the picture. The publishers opposing Sci-Hub's activities are registered non-profit organizations but do not function so selflessly. They do not pay for the research in their publications. They do not pay the scientists who critically review and edit these articles for their time and effort. They separately charge submitting authors for printing costs. The also have revenue from ads. So in being a record for scientific data, publishers do not add any real value to the product. However, the system of science has anointed them the gatekeepers and power-brokers of achievement and progress. We have come to unofficially define science as something that is peer-reviewed and published in an established scientific journal. 'X papers in journals with an impact factor of at least Y' is a requisite for most any research position and this dogma gives a lot of power to the middleman publisher (who, I repeat, adds little or no scientific value). Over time, it has created an artificial brand of which the publisher is an under-deserving owner. It is not to say that there is not a sound logic in the concept of scientific publishing and valuation, merely that this brand-based system is extremely vulnerable to greed and outdated in in the internet age. </div>
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The central issue with the publisher's monopoly on science is the cost. The publisher owns the window and so, both the producers of scientific information and the consumers have to pay him to access the window. The system has also created an unspoken rule that if you create your own window, it is not as good as the publisher's branded window. The tax-payer who funds the whole machine is unable to access this information that he paid for, unless he pays for it again, which he should not have to. $30 is not a nominal cost, even in the first world, especially considering that the seller pockets all of it and does not pay the producer or even the quality-control crew. If I need to access a conservative average of 60 articles for a report that I am writing, the cost becomes big. Any reasonable research requires access to hundreds of articles and if I belong to a country or system where funds are at a premium, this barrier becomes unbreakable. Local scientific progress is therefore held back because of the cost of brand value. And that is not good. It is this environment that creates and nurtures Robin-hood elements like Sci-Hub. The poor are definitely very happy about it. Sci-Hub has, in short time, revolutionized scientific access in places like India and is of major value to Indian academia. </div>
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It could be argued that the poor are just lazy folk that want handouts. The thing is, most of the people accessing scientific data do not intend to sit on it, they will use for science. They are not begging for things they do not deserve, they pay for the research, as tax payers and sometimes as the people that created the data. The publishing company profits big from the whole system. This is not wrong if these profits were directed back to science in some way, by paying for new research. It is, when publishers behave like unbridled, greed fueled, selfish corporations (like you Elsevier). As long as the system of excessively rewarding a publisher who gives back little exists, rebel endeavors like Sci-Hub will keep getting created and celebrated underground. </div>
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Am I promoting piracy? No, merely the need for reform in scientific publishing. The onus is on the scientific community to take science back from extreme capitalism. The cost of scientific access should equate to the running cost of publication and no more. There should be less focus on brand value on more on scientific value. The scientific community must actively boycott profit-oriented publishers and use and promote open-access methods. The law must weigh on the wrongs of monopolistic practices by publishers as much as it weighs on Sci-Hub's methods. When a community that prides itself on its intellect and ethical quality is exploited, that, is a shame. </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-35659018814312405862015-01-09T00:11:00.001+05:302015-01-09T01:51:33.354+05:30Moderate and extremely clueless<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Apparently extremism has no religion. So I guess religion gets to wash its hands clean every time someone bad invokes it. In a different way, that thought makes religion even more scary. Extremism could hijack any religion! Like computer viruses that work on Windows, OSX and Linux (Yes they exist). All one needs is a good hole and both operating systems and religions have plenty. </div>
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Holes in computer operating systems can be fixed however; and people are expected to work on that everyday. The big problem with organized religion is their holes don't get fixed easily, if ever. People try to not talk about them, jump over them, walk around them, ignore that they exist, and sometimes they fall into them because they are told that it is not a hole. A common tie across all levels of religious fandom is the belief that their texts and the so-called "word of god" are perfect and infallible. It is not amendable to fit new sizes and you do not question it. This tying tenet is THE oath of religious membership. None of them invite open questioning; they are challenged by it. So you are expected to get married drinking sweetened milk on a swing because that is how they performed child marriages in the dark ages, and by the gods, that is how you will be wed. No questions. </div>
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While most religion followers faithfully refuse to ask or answer questions that carry logic, the occasional apologist will present semi-logical ideas. He will deny the official membership of extremists and state that moderate followers - the teeming millions of them - are the majority and their membership is truly for inner peace and salvation, as is said in the texts. The extremists, the zealots and the evildoers are a handful and are not exemplary of the religion, which is pure and beautiful.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh13J6melu3WSMu5NXlZunOvQ1Ibi_ALfedWmj0vNxpp7nIUOrzMCVf8Dm2vCykUIeRQvW5b-83k_8CXa3CwNcBxr1XpD1tWkRSVQ8IOn6fVDS28w4qo-OKeV2lwZBDjKLG-p5Oyatm1o/s1600/fixedbyvonnie-windows-8-blue-screen-of-death-irq.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh13J6melu3WSMu5NXlZunOvQ1Ibi_ALfedWmj0vNxpp7nIUOrzMCVf8Dm2vCykUIeRQvW5b-83k_8CXa3CwNcBxr1XpD1tWkRSVQ8IOn6fVDS28w4qo-OKeV2lwZBDjKLG-p5Oyatm1o/s1600/fixedbyvonnie-windows-8-blue-screen-of-death-irq.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Like Windows 8.1</i></div>
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Here is the problem with that line of thinking. Religious membership exists as a hierarchy defined by how far you are willing to take your fandom with your actions. <br />
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I call this a hierarchy of support. Each level supports the next tier, even though they may not support the levels beyond. The support may be open or a non-verbal nod to their ideas. At the base you have the apologist who suggests that religious membership is truly an innocent experience, exemplified by the pious and gentle moderate follower, who strives to make his life more beautiful with his religion. The moderate follower supports the political follower who will use his position of power to influence others to also enjoy this wonderful mission to peace and bliss. The political follower takes his religion and his job very seriously. He believes that he can enlist ideas from his religion to do his job. Through this, he hopes to provide good governance to the people who are of his religion and the people who aren't. He supports the chief religious body that fashions the guidelines of his religion. The chief religious body strives to preserve the identity of the religion and ensure that members adhere to the tenets of the religion properly and non-members maintain good respect. And for that, they accept the existence of the extremists. </div>
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Each of these levels have increasing amounts of power even if their numbers decrease. And just having that power makes them dangerous and disquieting. Should they choose to move away from ethical behavior, standing up against them could spell doom. The extremist could be willing to sacrifice thousands to ensure success for his holy mission of supremacy. The chief religious body holds the rulebook on the religion and their interpretation and direction could alter the fates of all followers. The religious body could threaten followers (and others) with damnation if they did not buy into its policies. The political follower holds all other rulebooks that could make or break the world around him. It could be argued that the meek and modest moderate follower poses no danger as he holds no such power. Certainly, all apologists make good mention of it. But if you consider how these higher tier bodies are empowered, we get the reverse hierarchy of hijacking to hide away evil intentions and deeds. </div>
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The extremist is empowered by the approval of the religious body; he does not question the ethics of his deeds anymore. The religious body is empowered by the approval of the political follower; now even its questionable actions under the guise of religious self-preservation can be cleaned away by use of political power. The political follower is voted in by the moderate, so abuse of the power is acceptable because the people enabled him to do it. The moderate follower never doubts his choices because there is an apologist over the shoulder validating him on the news and social media. It does not matter if the apologist is religious or non-religious. However, it does matter that you might be one of these.</div>
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This hierarchical model suggests that religion is a general subscription. If you buy in, you have bought in all the way and the extremists become your people even if you don't like it. It may be too radical to suggest that all individuals quit religion in an instant. It challenges your identity and a way of life that defines you. It may take away what gives you inner peace. But think about what you follow and what it can lead to. Think about the relevance of archaic practices and how they stand in the way of humanism. Think about who truly deserves your respect and support. Think about who they support. Think about where your values come from. Offer a hand, not blind fandom. Is the preservation and resurrection of dark-age remains of your organization truly more important than humanity?</div>
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You are afraid of breaking out of this system of fear, hate and blind following. Don't be. </div>
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<i>Je Suis Charlie</i><br />
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P.S. <a href="http://theoatmeal.com/comics/religion">This</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-9547958329419460542014-10-04T07:35:00.000+05:302014-10-04T07:45:11.014+05:30Google Cardboard<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I tried out google's cardboard virtual reality (VR) system this week. It was awesome!<br />
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I have always been a big google fanboy, mostly because they make life cheaper and easier. And most of their applications are free. What is to really be admired though is their commitment to lateral thinking and cool science. For the uninformed, google cardboard is one such project. A couple of google employees took some time out to write an application that ports google maps, photos and youtube to a stereo display format on supported android devices. They then designed a simple cardboard mount to hold the phone to be viewed through lenses on the mount. They even put a cute little magnet contraption on the side of the mount to act as a switch detected by the phone. And then they released the<a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.samples.apps.cardboarddemo&hl=en"> app</a> and the <a href="https://cardboard.withgoogle.com/downloads/cardboard_design_v1.0.zip">mount schematics</a> for free. </div>
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I had heard of some upcoming sophisticated VR devices that are apparently poised to take humanity a lot closer to The Matrix. So when google announced this cheap cardboard app, I wanted to try it out. I was skeptical however. You see, most of my specialized viewing experiences have been less fun than expected. Stereo images make my eyes water and 3D movies give me a headache. I still grieve the day I spent $17 on a that awful remake of Clash of the Titans (in 3D!) that looked better without the glasses. I spent a weekend playing Super Mario 3D land on the 3DS console and it was OK because I turned off the 3D function. But a gadget-geek coworker encouraged me to try it out just as a craft project, so I bought in. The schematics were simple enough and in no time I had the pieces ready. Getting the lenses was a little tricky but I managed to find what I needed ($2.52) from the local hipster hardware store. I had a couple of spare magnets lying around for the switch contraption.</div>
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Assembly was a breeze and I had the mount ready in ten minutes. The phone app was quite big and I was concerned if my faithful old galaxy nexus would handle the beast but it loaded fine. </div>
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I turned on the app and a playstation-like menu popped up and I could navigate through it by looking around. The dual viewing paired with the lenses worked well enough and I could see just one image; the measurements from the schematics weren't too shabby. I magnet-contraption-clicked on the street view (street vue) option and within seconds my mind was blown. </div>
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It put me on a car driving through a European city in full speed where I was free to look around and it rocked! I am a big google maps user and I spend about half hour everyday taking virtual tours through the world on it. This was that experience on steroids. I spent a good ten minutes on the ride after which I tried the other options, that were mercifully slower paced. The earth option puts you on a stationary spot in a few selected locations and surrounds you with google's 3D building models to look at. You can even fly off to space and look at the earth from above. Tour guide does the same with some select spots in Versailles and adds voiced descriptions. Photosphere allows you to explore you own photosphere images. While all these options were more like trial versions than full fledged virtual worlds, the youtube app seemed more open. It put you in a theater-like surrounding with the video of choice running on the big screen and more videos on the side to look at and click on. Some of the videos seemed related to my viewing history on youtube, so I suspect that it may have a longer lifetime than the other app options. </div>
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It was a fun home project. Overall, the experience was brilliant cheap fun and has me lauding the google engineers that came up with it for their smart work. Thumbs up gentlemen, keep up the good work!</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-7370099628581469632014-07-21T00:55:00.000+05:302014-07-21T05:08:29.194+05:30Cedar Bluffs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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There are a good number of established trails and state parks around south-west Indiana. Cedar Bluffs remains one of the less discovered locations. I like trails that are less manufactured and more rugged and Cedar Bluffs gets a 8/10 for that. It is lush green, has water bodies, plenty of small creatures and hardly any noise.</div>
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d3099.0427083554773!2d-86.56672972352601!3d39.03714565495267!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x886c69e88af7d5c7%3A0x15474001cbc0aa46!2s8415+S+Ketcham+Rd%2C+Bloomington%2C+IN+47403!5e0!3m2!1sen!2sus!4v1405880173521" style="border: 0;" width="400"></iframe></div>
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It was a nice warm day and we drove south along S Ketcham Rd until we saw a tiny black board marking the entrance to Cedar Bluffs. It is basically a protected nature preserve and you are cautioned to not go off trail and ruin its delicate fauna. </div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vEkeinv3puQ/U8r5T7tqwpI/AAAAAAAB9_c/BvAO-7CNYYM/s1600/DSCN3122.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vEkeinv3puQ/U8r5T7tqwpI/AAAAAAAB9_c/BvAO-7CNYYM/s1600/DSCN3122.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Ramya had been there before so she was to guide me through the trail. </i></div>
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The trail started out pretty and innocuous. I let Ramya lead our party and used my camera to cover the walk in google glass-like fashion.</div>
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We walked until we hit the stream that goes along the trail. A number of people seem to come here for fishing.</div>
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At one point the trail turned to the left but we decided that we knew better and ended up making our own trail. That is when the fun started.</div>
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The trail got a lot less trail-like and we had to now find a way to get to the cliffs from there. So we turned left and headed uphill. </div>
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The place was now a maze of spiderwebs and trees. Note: You will have to leave your arachnophobia at home to come here.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9os0ie4S96M/U8vbnt3mDAI/AAAAAAAB-AM/5MjZsTtJoa0/s1600/DSCN3136.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9os0ie4S96M/U8vbnt3mDAI/AAAAAAAB-AM/5MjZsTtJoa0/s1600/DSCN3136.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Lost. Yes.</i></div>
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<i>No we were totally off.</i></div>
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After unwillingly and unintentionally destroying a dozen spider homes, we compass-ed our way back to the true trail and we decided to stick to it from that point on. </div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xcWT6FerAQI/U8vbourKFmI/AAAAAAAB-AU/NU1Y3XecDco/s1600/DSCN3138.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xcWT6FerAQI/U8vbourKFmI/AAAAAAAB-AU/NU1Y3XecDco/s1600/DSCN3138.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Win. And we learnt something.</i></div>
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The trail is actually a smaller stream that joined the one we walked along.</div>
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<i>Trail</i> </div>
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<i>Not trail</i></div>
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A little farther on, Ramya found some parts of the trail that she actually remembered!</div>
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<i>Like Ariel's grotto but with snakes.</i></div>
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We stayed along the trail until we could get back on the hillock we had seen and walked down the other side of it back to our car. Overall a pretty fun place. I recommend it.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-43762436650273120972014-06-02T05:45:00.001+05:302014-06-02T06:33:38.984+05:30Riddles in the dark<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-50974358038248134182014-05-29T03:42:00.001+05:302014-05-29T03:42:21.649+05:30Aggressive passion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The new X-men movie came out last Friday and I am excited about it. Not so much for what it is but what it promises for a sequel - Apocalypse - one of my favorite comic villains this side of Darkseid. He is simple enough to sum up - immortal, all-powerful, violent and intellectual to a fault, with an obsession with the survival of the fittest. You know, evil god material. Like all evil gods he has scary henchmen on horsebacks too. Four of them, the four horsemen of Apocalypse - War, famine, pestilence and death. Inspired by that here are some recent thoughts on passive aggressives.</div>
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Actions do speak louder than words but inaction speaks volumes of its own. Especially pseudo-inaction where I do all but act. I pull the trigger and let you release it. Passive aggressiveness is a whole lot worse than actual encounters simply because it is hard to counter and contend with. The deal is simple, I bait you into action, you carry the weight of it and I simply watch it unravel and play my cards in slow retaliation. Except that is only good as a board game strategy; dealing with people in real life like that makes you a major dick.</div>
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There are several common examples of passive aggressives. I have four specific horsemen here.</div>
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War - There is not to much to understand about how a team works. Do your part and share the spoils. The essence is to always keep the focus on the team and not your personal share in the spoils. Unfortunately a team is viewed differently by one set of individuals - it is a bunch of people independently performing for a common leader. The cause isn't the team's cause, it is what your personal share is going to be. While it is not wrong to want your effort to be productive, it is a choice that needs to be made before you pick the team. A team, like in individual situations does not always guarantee spoils for every piece of effort, it only promises support, that is if everyone buys in. Unfortunately the horsemen of war cannot swallow that. They are not going to be the ones that take one for the team. They will draw the others to bite the bullet, take their share and eat it alone in their rotten holdings. </div>
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Pestilence - The next time you feel sympathy for the melancholy "nice guy" that just can't seem to catch a break for all the niceness he his doling out, slap yourself. Maybe twice. Good. Now slap Mr. Nice guy. And what is a nice guy anyway? Nice is what you call the weather outside and even that could change in a matter of minutes. Nice is most everyone when you are in a good mood. The ideal to work towards is kindness - where you do a good turn because good. These individuals instead will dole out a series of unrequited good turns and never let you forget about it. Of course they will do it passively, with easy heartbreaks, sad faces and guilt water splashed on your face. If you are doing a good turn expecting tangible returns in a very near future, you are doing it wrong; it breaks the concept of doing good. You are not kind, just entitled. And yes that makes you a bad person. I used to be one.</div>
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Famine - Some of these horsemen are summed up as <a href="http://strumlife.blogspot.com/2012/07/fauxminism.html">fauxminists</a>. There exists a related group of individuals that use odd terms to define themselves. The have faults but those apparently exist for a good cause. Like that serial killer who only kills the bad guys. Except that was fiction as is their defining term. Fiercely independent for example. I guess one could be independent. And fierce. But fiercely independent is where you are making the wrong mocktail. We are social animals that depend on each other by design. The closest someone could get to being completely independent is when they not only mange their living independently but also have extremely high emotional stability. Basically, you shouldn't be fierce about it if you want to be independent. Unless you are being assaulted in an alleyway. Where you should keep calm and pepper spray. </div>
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Death - Here is my quick test for decency. Do you see race? No? Indecent. </div>
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A lot of civilized society banks on the idea that they do not want to be part of the problem. And they ensure that by fitting the world design to easy boxes they could tick in quick time. It is easier to not see race at all. Or gender, or disability, or pain. Since empathy requires too much effort, they choose ignorance instead. But we are all defined by not just our choices but also our stories and backgrounds. It is all part of an identity and to ignore that is to take away our identity. It is invoking a convenient recess where false equivalences is established to keep their minds small while your defining factors are ignored. </div>
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<i>"What was your name again? OK, I'll just call you Bill"</i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-71371805943008993052014-02-12T03:02:00.003+05:302014-02-12T03:02:58.889+05:30Crapstallography<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I spend a good amount of time at work wading through microscopy images of concentrated proteins soaking in salt syrups that should hopefully tease them into forming innocent pretty crystals (that I can mercilessly shot with X-ray guns but that part is another story). It takes just a glance to figure an image out. So with a few thousand conditions and a few images per condition the whole process takes just a few thousand times a few glaces.<br />
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Rarely do you get to see something that has crystal written across the image with zoom-in zoom-out effects. The image on the right is a UV light image of the same drop.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxCexYWPxhZ2WSCauCU2y-3vrXepnRdT26btTymZMEw3CSdo2f67TV2OsfLe-0ZCMW75_6WuQZMUbaFnDPDJDkEidrq7YH_pQ5vQN1kfx99GRhArWBhJjSzx0Q9tDZ0sT4FzL2VA2kgjU/s1600/Untitled.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxCexYWPxhZ2WSCauCU2y-3vrXepnRdT26btTymZMEw3CSdo2f67TV2OsfLe-0ZCMW75_6WuQZMUbaFnDPDJDkEidrq7YH_pQ5vQN1kfx99GRhArWBhJjSzx0Q9tDZ0sT4FzL2VA2kgjU/s1600/Untitled.png" height="141" width="320" /></a></div>
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Less rarely, you get to see misshapen gunk that has meh written across the image with sound effects that say 'really'?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic5uzlVmIRObqrYx-ovqFqVP1Tqo9RFeBrS_8G4iM9D9naFCf8S-Ec6ZVDIeIkbFw2VhrjZrzXjkUsWkrpzyVb-d6cHYWXZ4bcbQupWvJx6H2tJUZtZTJaPBodt3lmcFjUorNX7o9GZEA/s1600/Untitled.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic5uzlVmIRObqrYx-ovqFqVP1Tqo9RFeBrS_8G4iM9D9naFCf8S-Ec6ZVDIeIkbFw2VhrjZrzXjkUsWkrpzyVb-d6cHYWXZ4bcbQupWvJx6H2tJUZtZTJaPBodt3lmcFjUorNX7o9GZEA/s1600/Untitled.png" height="142" width="320" /></a></div>
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Then you can spend some time perfecting the syrup recipe until you have something that is workable.<br />
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What you see most of the time is either clear boring drops or drops that contain what looks like shredded snakes or alien foetuses.<br />
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This one actually looks like the alien from alien.<br />
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An that is the scary part. You wade through enough of these crap-drop images that you start seeing mind-game things. Like smiley faces.<br />
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Or flirty botched plastic surgery-lips.<br />
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Or hand-bags.<br />
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Spend enough time and you really start seeing crazy things. Like stars.<br />
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Or the Batman.<br />
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Must...focus...<br />
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I am headed out for some soup, sports and grounded sanity. Peace.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-34700957476837341892014-01-07T19:15:00.001+05:302014-01-07T19:15:31.913+05:30Gen Y - mercifully just one thought<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Way too much is being scrutinized and said about the poor little rich kids that are generation Y. They have a bazillion problems but they all truly want the same thing that you want. Here is the one thing that can set a lot of those problems right and clear a path to wade through the messy choices and escape algorithms available to you yuppie. </div>
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Slow down. Realize that you DO NOT have to and CANNOT do it all in a day. Or a week or a month. You could just shave your pencils today and start writing tomorrow. But make sure you focus on just shaving them today and shave them to your best ability. And DO NOT expect to write the next big epic. Just expect to write a short one page story. Or a single line if that suits you. And then store it away. Do this for a few years. Then put it together and look at it. It will be a wonderful story that is your life.</div>
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What gen Y needs positively reinforced is patience. That you cannot get it all on your fingertips even though google promises you that about viral videos and movie synopses. You stagnate when you encounter situations where you do not have the instant completion tools and so, you end up only committing to and doing short-term tasks that can get done within the fingertip attention span. Which is why you hate cleaning but would rather clean than learn to code. The thing is you DO NOT have to think about the whole task all the time. The task DOES NOT owe it to you to be something that can fit your fingertip method of functioning. The only thing guaranteed is that with time, it will be worth it. The journey itself will be beautiful and rewarding in short and sweetly unexpected bits. </div>
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It is not the ADD, it is not the overload, it is just impatience. That will be all.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-78173755066801034842013-12-31T18:45:00.000+05:302013-12-31T18:52:07.778+05:30Rimming and no good<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Acme office has four employees and a manager. All four employees have similar jobs with identical pay and perks. They are all expected to contribute to the company adequately and the manager is tasked with incentivizing to get the most out of them. The complication is that the employees are different people with different needs. Employee A sees his job as a stepping stone to a bigger job with more scope to keep rising. Employee B is purely concerned with the money he makes and is driven to make more however he can. C is one of the creative types, he wants to do his job with interest and minimal compromise. D wants security, stability and a stress-free life. They are all equally good workers so long as they are happy and the company wants to keep them happy. So how does the manager view and work the situation? </div>
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The manager is also a real person. He has certain cognitive biases that affect his choices. He may want to make his job easy and just use money as an incentive to please his employees. He may be of the idea that the job has to be done with pure interest and urge his employees to change their views and buy in on his model. He may be genuinely interested in his employees' welfare and may give them whatever they need without focusing entirely on company profit. Or he may be a dark lord and twist the whole situation to one where the employees are his mindless fearful servants who have forgotten what perks, fairness and a life are. </div>
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How many of us have already made our interpretations, judgements and choices on the matter? How similar are our choices? Is there a single formula or a handful of set formulae? Will our choices change with time and situation? Is employee B a bad person? Is the company evil because it is the company? Obviously management graduates and professionals are the apparent experts and have rolled their eyes a while ago. The rest of us still have to struggle along without the training because we have specific versions of the above highly simplistic situation to handle today and every day; mostly just to manage ourselves (How much of a break do I take? What sort of break? Am I entitled to this?). How we do that defines us entirely. </div>
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Now everybody is defined in his/her own way but I figure that there are three things that are involved in the process:</div>
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1. Non-negotiables</div>
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2. The formula</div>
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3. and the feedback</div>
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<u>The non-negotiable</u> is the backbone and everything needs to start with that. It is the condition that will never be sold for a price. There probably are situations where such structuredness may not be useful but those unstructured events are very temporary and hopefully not life staking. The hope is that the non-negotiable is an ethically positive thing like no matter what happens, I will not pirate music. Too many non-negotiables create practical problems too, turning you into a angry hippie.</div>
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<u>The formula</u> is to be built around the non-negotiables. It branches off the non-negotiables and can be changed with time and situation, many times needs to be. Even in the simplistic situation above, it is evident that one formula does not fit all. They all need different incentives which the company should hopefully be able to provide without getting sucked dry.</div>
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<u>The feedback</u> is what effects changes in the formula. Some even change their non-negotiables based on the feedback they get (referred to in ancient texts as <i>kali kaalam</i>). </div>
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The disaster situation. Also known as our life as it is now.</div>
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<u>1. The non-negotiables belong to someone else</u></div>
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In other words, Parental pressure, peer pressure, job pressure, hot air pressure</div>
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<u>2. The formula was downloaded from the interwebs.</u></div>
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In other words, I am baffled that the next big thing is not the same as the last big thing.</div>
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<u>3. Poor feedback </u></div>
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In other words, am I truly happy?</div>
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**************</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-26565677422730526652013-12-29T20:33:00.001+05:302013-12-30T19:25:44.965+05:30Roadies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Apparently it is a TV show but sounds more like a disease. A lethal neural disease. </div>
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I enjoy drives but never the muscle car variety. I believe in driving smooth which most often than not requires driving slow and steady. Minimal acceleration and no swerving. The roller coaster experience is for amusement parks and not public roads. Not a tough thing to do but the existence of differing peers makes it a complicatedly judged situation. </div>
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Three things define a quality driving experience - for both the driver and others in the car and outside. </div>
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</div>
<ul>
<li>Focus</li>
<li>A proper understanding of the rules and obedience</li>
<li>Patience</li>
</ul>
Obviously texting, making tea and club grinding inside the car will make you a murderous psychopath sooner than later, so there is not much to say about focus. There is a clearly distinct line that would require a crazy amount of twisted logic to distort.<br />
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Despite the fact that rules exist in print and are completely factual, somehow we feel that there is a lot of play in this sector. We apply the same formula for them as we do for religious texts; they are guidelines. We feel that we can still have extended debates on how much deviation on the speed limit we can get away with. Even if I humor the logic that the speed limit is more of a flimsy guideline than a fixed barrier, the deviation about the limit would possibly be to account for errors in the speed reading. Or our judgment as we regularly wake our foot on the accelerator. That could give a play of < 5 mph. But in excess of that is either proper negligence or pure arrogance. It is a sense of entitlement, that the road was built for us and us alone. That the city and road planners took less than the fraction of a thought that it took us to deem ourselves bigger than the rules. </div>
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I always thought that by rule, experience would make us more mellow. That we have a responsibility to be cool because we were given patience until we developed that experience. On the road, we display our experience with increased measures of road rage instead. When I hear of people getting angry on the road, it scares the living daylights out of me. It feels like an angry serial killer is making my meals, guarding my house, handling my finances and being my coworker. He controls my life and could any day turn on me. On the road he has a killer machine that moves like a deadly raging tusker. And he is pissed off with everyone around. Here is his bloody checklist of elements that deserve his fury:</div>
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</div>
<ul>
<li>Women drivers</li>
<li>Senior citizens</li>
<li>Learners</li>
<li>Children</li>
<li>Heavy vehicles</li>
<li>Pedestrians</li>
<li>Animals (why don't they all just die)</li>
<li>Non-natives</li>
<li>Old cars</li>
<li>New cars</li>
<li>Fancy cars that aren't doing stunts</li>
<li>Stop lights and road signs</li>
<li>Just everything else in his field of vision</li>
</ul>
<div>
My point is simply this - if you are not able to hold on the the above three points, you are indisposed. Take a break and get behind the wheel when you are sober. This is not your kingdom and you are not its despot despite what the hot air inside you cooks up. You have the privilege of sharing this world and these roads with others and you are to honor that privilege by everything you do on it. </div>
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************</div>
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<i>My wife and several others have made observations on how my driving style does not fit a stereotypical Indian male 28-year old. It is unfortunate that such a stereotype exists.</i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-84156850538686522672013-11-23T03:12:00.000+05:302014-08-08T02:37:33.504+05:30Hope Bias<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The recent rape charge against FSU quarterback Jameis Winston has me thinking about how our interpretation of events is (unfortunately or fortunately) a choice and how it can affect other people. Jameis, from what I have seen so far, is a very likeable and smart young man. He is also an incredible quarterback who is leading FSU football through what could be its best season ever. He may finish his collegiate career as the most decorated player in FSU history and take that legacy with him to the NFL. And suddenly there are rape charges against him over an incident in December 2012. If he is found guilty, it could end his high-flying career in a moment. There is DNA evidence of his involvement, there are lawyers who are handling it with utmost seriousness and there are witnesses waiting to testify. And then there is us. </div>
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The charges are seen less as allegations of fundamental human rights violation and more as how it will impact football. Depending on which side of the ball you are on, hope and schadenfreude direct an opinion that betrays that filth that fills our minds, making us the worst offenders of them all. Here is a statistic: In what many would consider a very progressive nation with better rights for women than most other countries, 40% of all rapes in the USA get reported; 8% get convicted. While reporting the case is left to the victim's volition, I am more interested in the 32% cases that aren't convicted. With Winston's case, there is a very good chance that it may come down to his word against hers - a major issue with most rape cases. "What if it was consensual while it happened and the crazy malicious female decided to report it as rape later?", ask the skeptics. I am pretty sure that most of the 32% would have involved this question in some form. </div>
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Most "opinions" on rape come from one of three schools - the hate, the hope and the truth. The haters represent the union of misogynists that would love for a chance to label a victim as another scheming villain that would stop at nothing to destroy their brother's reputation. There are of course haters who would want every accused to suffer in the worst pit in hell too but they are at the other end of the spectrum and fewer than you would estimate. The hopers represent the tired lot that want to only see rainbows and rabbits and would love to wish the rape away. While they may seem like a gentle lot, they end up in the same corner as the haters. Both schools want the rape to be some hoax that the victim cooked up to gain something out of the event. </div>
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I have an issue with that. Let us examine the "gain" part. Maybe they want to make money out of the wealthy accused. Maybe they want some publicity and sympathy out of the event. While one may get these wonderful gifts if one makes a fake accusation, here are some additional prizes that come with the package. </div>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li>Your private life, your lifestyle choices and your naked appearance are re-imagined and recounted in public, spiced with judgmental flavors from burnt tongues</li>
<li> You are awarded a scarlet letter for life but it is not like a badge on your chest. It is more like a hot iron brand on your face. You could emerge out of it indifferent and strong but that is your own deal</li>
<li>You are open game to the hate and hope schools of rape apologists</li>
</ul>
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Obviously, all the gifting leaves very little time or patience for addressing the victim's emotional damage, trauma and isolation should the case be real. So the question is why would someone care to go to the law with a fake case? Sure, if I wanted to be malicious to someone, I could run a fake smear campaign where I could spread my lies to their friends and mine. That brings negligible public damage to me, gets the sympathy I need and I can still control the situation, so the extra gifts can be avoided. Going to the law and pressing charges makes it a much bigger deal though. Almost every aspect of it is now out of my control. It could swing both ways, irreversibly. A little bit of thinking would easily discourage the average mind. No wonder 60% of the cases go unreported. I would like to think that at least 90% of us (just a guess) are of sane mind and would not be so invested in the "positives" of being a victim as to not care about the negatives. That would make about 10% of the reporting victims crazy and malicious, about 4% of total events. Let us not forget, it isn't the greatest business plan either, there is only a 20% chance of success with only 8% events where the offenders get punished. So - of about 96% of total true cases - 89% do not get justice. Then how are you folks, the schools of hatred and hope so easily able to question the motives of every victim? </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I sincerely hope that we would move out, and into schools that are invested in the truth. It is important to be fair to the accused and the victim and being unemotional about the outcome would be necessary for that. But being unemotional does not mean being unemphatic. This event is far from an enjoyable ordeal and it is never something to be joked about. There is no room for personal agendas and opinions that help its confirmation bias. Our judgements are indeed a choice but they can really affect the parties involved, worse than we think. Be empathetic, judge responsibly.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-65700925307026174802013-10-15T03:43:00.000+05:302013-11-12T04:46:37.472+05:30Not guilty as charged<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"So when is the baby due?"</div>
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Sherry inquired with an expression that did not give away her mockery. I dropped my injera and nearly knocked my glass of water over. She smiled and I realized that it was a joke. We were having a delicious dinner at this Ethiopian place at Indy with my wife's cousin and his wife. "I'm sure you get that all the time", she added. "This would be the first time", I replied. We all reflected on how the Indian society around us has managed to get past its stereotypes with hints of pride. We continued eating as the conversation moved on to college sports and Indiana places for the rest of the evening. </div>
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My wife and I have often discussed the Indian culture around the concepts of love and marriage. She is a fan of unopposed love stories. Since a ban on pre-marital romance was what Indian culture advocated, any form of involvement of Indian social norms in a romance would be bad. I was not so sure. I have heard of my share of stories where all that was wrong about a couple was some parent's ego. But I have also known situations where some element of tradition has gotten people to take their commitments more seriously. It has structured relationships to decrease some of the impracticality and drama that an unbridled or aimless romance could generate. We just needed to upgrade ourselves on traditional ideas that are still relevant and ignore ancient stupid ones. I was pretty sure she wasn't entirely right.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Turns out, I was quite wrong myself. On the contrary, yielding to tradition is not like blueberry picking. It is more like picking pomegranate arils. In multiple ways it is the unnecessary gift that keeps giving. Or taking. Either:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
1. Selling itself as some higher science that most scientists don't understand but curiously the unscientific masses that heard it on some propaganda machine understand perfectly.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
2. Channeling your emotion to rise to some non-existing higher cause because yeah.</div>
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3. Deeming that your youthful immaturity or lack of answers is a condition that is curable by tradition.</div>
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OR </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
4. We are decent family and you are disappoint us.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqJfZnTqlC02uiYE5PlgzkCsfr_nIJU_4ni91JnHuuEoGcPicl1nl3JEFCN5Zbki6LZSOY06yHsv4Fs4EPir3WHCM1w3gI7XLn8gbCkLUivjUjNYRniBPna2fZ1gnyWkjU8WBBj-EMFxY/s1600/namo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqJfZnTqlC02uiYE5PlgzkCsfr_nIJU_4ni91JnHuuEoGcPicl1nl3JEFCN5Zbki6LZSOY06yHsv4Fs4EPir3WHCM1w3gI7XLn8gbCkLUivjUjNYRniBPna2fZ1gnyWkjU8WBBj-EMFxY/s1600/namo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Uncle sham wants you</i></div>
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My turn</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
1.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The first point has been countered in <a href="http://krishashok.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/some-cocktails-just-dont-cut-it/">better ways</a> by <a href="http://krishashok.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/swamijis-and-science/">smarter people.</a> We have the good fortune of not having to deal with it on a daily basis and have developed the skills to deal with it clinically should a threat arise. </div>
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2. </div>
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<i>A: Don't you care about how they have killed our people a long time ago in a galaxy far far away? And blah blah and more-corrupt pseudo-secular galactic party sucks up to them? </i></div>
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<i>Me: Aaron Hernandez is still a murderer. </i></div>
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<i>A: Then why don't you quit and move to some other planet, you unpatriotic turd?</i></div>
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<i>Me: No. Why don't </i><b>you</b><i> quit and move to some other planet.</i></div>
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As you can obviously note, my quick-witted responses can win me any argument. Next.</div>
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<i> </i></div>
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3.</div>
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While this overlaps with point one in a few ways, it is the execution that makes it different. This method creeps up on you and will pick on you when you have a low moment. Instead of letting you learn a life lesson, the culture cops will try to suck out your brains and make you their zombie foot soldier. And the cycle will continue. This is an individual's fight, choice and consequence.</div>
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4. </div>
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And this is the one we are currently dealing with. When you do not care about the boogie monsters and Hell apartments for the ungrateful dead, what you care about can be used to guilt you. Pretty effective trick It seeks to prod the child in you into pleasing your folks by yielding and joining the fold. </div>
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In an effective ploy to drive me further away from my hopes to embrace useful, milder traditions in some form, there are new requests (not kids. Yet). Of course, they are directly more at my wife than me and I am going to assume that it is because she is a nicer, more obedient person. It is not adequate that you get the job that strikes, marry what fits, and be good, there is more. You need to light the lamps, fast, pray, do rituals, and observe what needs to be observed "to be happy". Our married friends on facebook and twitter that are quick to display photos of their achievements on Indian festivals don't make it easy for us.<br />
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<i>Achievement unlocked</i></div>
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<i> </i> </div>
In addition to pleasing the folks, you also have to do it to keep up with the Joneses. It is saying, I put up with your ungodliness as long as you were single and prancing around but now that you are married, let us get serious. The disagreeing reader would say, 'Fine. Then don't do it. We don't care'. Unfortunately you do; you just want to be spared the grief. </div>
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The thing is you either become a complete heretic or join the cult as a all-observing life member; there is no true respect for the intermediates. The element of question and choice are just show pieces to draw the unguarded. If other forms of emotion or stupidity have not reeled you in, emotional blackmail still has potential and that is why it is used. A choice to check out of religion and bygone tradition is apparently also an indication of a plan to check out of the family and do bad things. The choice to have a life that is more rational-thought driven is a major threat to some old-wives' tale and nothing more. The whole emotional tie with tradition or some acquired culture is your own and no one else's and it does not have to belong to someone else, however close. Cheers.</div>
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Yes I had to.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-72641892166584370782013-09-09T23:12:00.002+05:302013-09-09T23:12:27.951+05:30Tennis the menace <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I secretly love sports. Watching football and basketball is fun but playing just about any sport is awesome (except for when you play with competitive killjoys). I signed up for a new intramural league sport every semester in grad school and that turned out to be quite useful in a jack of all trades sort of way. I blew my knee out a couple of years back though, as a result of which there is a narrower range of sports that I can play now. No cutting-jumping motions - so no badminton, football, ultimate frisbee, soccer, basketball, and sprinting. Unfortunately those were my favorite sports and now I was forced to find new ones that fit better. I can still play racquetball, racquetball is fun.<br />
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I have been trying to get a grip on tennis for close to six years now and most of my best cricketing shots have happened on a tennis court. The muscle memory from playing other racquet sports makes you even more clumsy on the tennis court. Only recently I have managed to get enough of touch that I can actually return a hittable ball to the opponent. But my play is not of exhibition quality, so I mostly pick late evenings and hidden courts to do my dance.<br />
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This week, we started playing at the apartment complex court at about 8:30 pm. Twenty minutes in, I was starting to find a groove. A couple of rallies happened. 'I must be getting better at this', I reflected. Just that moment, a balding man with a white t-shirt and frayed shorts walked up to the enclosure. He said something inaudible, so I moved closer. And then the horrifying thing happened.<br />
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"Can my son play with you guys?", he requested. He moved aside to reveal a scrawny 8-year old kid clutching a racquet, his pockets bulging with tennis balls. Ignoring all niceties, I inquired seriously, "how good are you?". "Actually, I'm really good", the kid replied nervously. I spat inside my mouth and probably made a face too. "Why not?" my wife said and the kid propped open the gate and entered the enclosure. "Thanks", said the dad and stayed outside to watch.<br />
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Now I don't really hate kids and I definitely don't mind playing with them. I just have some scars from my past. I remember playing a reluctant chess game with my (then) 6-year old cousin when I was about 17. He beat me in less than ten moves. Thrice. It hurt bad. I am a pretty competitive person, it is just that I am also simply incompetent. The sensitive ego makes it worse. From then on, I restricted myself to handicap games that still look fair.<br />
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So I now had to manage this crisis. I signaled for my wife to join my side of the court. The kid held two balls in his hand. It was surprising that he could fit one in those tiny hands but he held one firmly and bounced the other one on the ground in preparation. He arched back in a perfect semi-circle and let loose his cannon serve at me as I skipped slightly in my spot so nobody would notice me shivering.<br />
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BANG! It rammed into the net. I smiled in relief. BANG! The second serve hit the net too. And a third. And a fourth. "Can I just serve like this instead?", the kid asked nervously and motioned to make an underarm serve. "Is that allowed?", I asked my wife with a grin. She ignored me and nodded at the kid.<br />
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It was not too bad a game as things turned out. I let the wife serve the entire time. This kid had a talent for apologizing for everything. He raced around the court to take my erratic returns, often with a sorry when he missed (and I chuckled). The dad got his workout around the court enclosure as he picked up and returned balls from my home runs back to the park. I noticed that my wife was a better player than I thought. With a proper opponent, she was able to hit the ball back with a lot of zip on it (though she did not get as many apologies as I did. Ha!). I mostly stared at them play, occasionally chipping in and making the kid run more. Half hour later, it was over and we walked home. I was still grinning.<br />
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Lets do this again sometime kid. <br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-7218877185856228242013-08-10T19:32:00.001+05:302013-08-22T21:49:49.443+05:30because, Scatterday<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-21772951343934526482013-08-05T23:34:00.002+05:302013-08-19T05:13:25.198+05:30Two company<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I married Ramya two months ago. Thank you. It has been a fun journey right from the development stage and the wedding has been a cool twist in the tale. While it has been a regular, clean and fun relationship all along, the fact that it was meant to become a marriage at some point infused some seriousness in the matter; what I would think is a positive and valuable addition. Not seriousness to make the relationship intense and energy sapping but enough to structure it. However, as gen Y beings, we needed some reasons and rational values to make us take it seriously beyond just new clothes and happy moms. Why marry now? Why marry at all?</div>
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Fantasizing about big weddings is probably the number one quality reason for a gen Y wedding - you are fulfilling your fantasy and that is great. Except we did not fantasize about getting married. We were still wondering why we should care; a little over a year ago, we had no idea that this would happen. Would a married status make it unbreakable, perfect and happy forever? There are a growing number of examples that say not really. On principle, people should honor a relationship with or without the marriage tag. There of course is a substantial lot that does not care about such principles, should they get in the way of their pursuit of pleasure. I had a friendly acquaintance once tell me in very learned fashion that only married individuals were off limits to her, every other form of a relationship did not warrant her respect. The onus was on them to stay in their pants if they wanted to. While I agreed that the ones in the relationship carried a greater responsibility, I wondered (rhetorically) if she would have been perfectly OK with someone else exercising the same rule with her significant other. In current society, that is at least mildly disrespectful and few enjoy that. It was also interesting that her territory extended beyond just the population that agreed with her; even the ones that would prefer something long term would get teased. But I digress. So maybe a wedding is to prove a point to such people that this one is mine and mine alone. Or to state that I will honor this relationship even if I did not honor other ones. Or maybe it is a license to have children and not be frowned upon. After all, a wedding is a social construct. Maybe it was to tell society and ourselves that this relationship needed to be respected, since just principle and honor do not work well enough. </div>
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That makes it sound so hollow though. Some of us that wish to embrace the "natural" human tendency to have partners as and when we please would easily dismiss marriage as unnatural and conservatively imprisoning. However, jealousy, possessiveness, positive companionship and the need to be part of a stable team are all natural and need to be accounted for. There are people that talk about how rewarding a long term marriage that played by the rules can be. No matter what you want your relationship to do for you, even a marriage may not guarantee it, because the world does not owe it to you. What you want can also change with time and marriage does not completely insure you against that. The bottom-line is we all want different things at different times and marriage may be just one umbrella that does not fit all. Our reasons just have to be our own. Preferably positive, sacred-sounding and not hollow. </div>
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I function better as a team. It may be an obviously losing team at most sports but just the fact that I have a loyal team is good enough for me. My marriage is an inauguration party. In some ways I am adding a team member, in other ways I am joining a new team. I am happy about it and I want to share it with people that are happy for me. Why now? Simply because the timing was right. Timing is a very undervalued element in relationships; I would say that timing factors in at about 50% in determining the longevity of a relationship. </div>
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As individuals, we were as ready as we could be. As a family, we had the resources now. We had the right level of freedom to make it happen. We had the maturity to appreciate and value a good relationship. We had the pliability to change and start living together. Most of all, we had each other. </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-51015294440697298062013-06-28T19:10:00.001+05:302013-06-28T19:15:39.399+05:30Ding Ding Ding<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-44811940481578287842013-05-21T11:08:00.001+05:302013-06-29T08:20:05.071+05:30Unstructuredness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I was recently discussing with a friend, the possibility of humans creating machines that are smarter than humans; something that fiction has warned us of in agonizingly repetitive detail. She was absolutely sure that it can and will be done in the future (quoting various technological singularity advocates), once there is enough understanding of neurobiology and the molecular basis of intellect and sentience. I differ. While I am sure that humans have already created many beautiful machines that are perfectly capable of ending all life on earth, or subjugating human life adequately, that is no indication that these machines are necessarily smarter. </div>
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The fact that humans would be able to create a smarter sentient machine would mean that that smarter machine would be able to create something even smarter (setting up a possibly infinite series of smarter entities). This has a few logical issues. If any of these entities are smart enough, they would simply not allow a series of this nature. A series of this nature would be both super-intelligent and mindless at the same time, introducing a paradox of sorts. And what really defines intellect? Is it the ability to make faster decisions? Does it fuel the drive to be more perfect with decisions to a level that the super-intelligent beings would live prefect lives? What defines perfection? Each of these questions create their own paradoxes and anomalies. A truly perfect decision-making intelligence should be able to predict the future. </div>
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My primitive perspective suggests that the factors that would influence quality decision making would depend on IQ, experience, sanity and emotional intellect. These factors are mostly independent of each other and therefore defining a "smarter" intelligence would really depend on which of these factors would be required (and at what level) to make the optimal decision. Sometimes ignorance would be better suited! And what really is an optimal decision? In what time frame? You get the idea.</div>
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We would like to think that we have a good-wrap on the ideas of IQ, experience and even sanity. It is emotional intelligence that seems most elusive; the ability to make quality decisions despite thinking from the heart (figuratively speaking). The very idea that you are thinking from the heart (riskier but more emotionally fulfilling) seems to stack the odd up against good decision making. It is highlighted by the fact that plenty of people that are conventionally accepted as intelligent are poor with making emotional decisions. Think of your friends that have made obviously bad personal choices, despite having the IQ, the experience and the sanity to do otherwise. However, making unemotional decisions at all times is a bad solution because it is devoid of empathy. This makes emotional intellect a very critical element in ensuring our well-being. It is this emotional intellect that determines how much of your knowledge translates to realization. Outside of that, there are no quality ways of measuring emotional intellect yet, it is not really a markovian thing. </div>
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This complicated mesh forms an unstructured network - your generalized decision tree. This unstructuredness is probably the most definitive aspect of sentience, a hallmark of which is the ability to make mistakes and accidents that turn out to be a good idea in an intangible future. It allows us to strike an effective balance between a gratifying aimlessness and a functional logical order. We require this unstructuredness for sustenance and are meant to treat this unstructuredness as a boon and embrace it if we wish to be content and happy. </div>
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The point is that our own programming involves functional ordered chaos; three contrasting and mostly conflicting ideas. Our predicted super-intellect would be programmed to strike that perfect balance between the three. To have the "right kind" of randomness and more importantly have it pop up at the right times. To be perfectly imperfect. Lolz.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-34578089976689523392013-03-31T04:39:00.000+05:302013-04-26T18:36:08.820+05:30Tech retrospection<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: black;">This day, a decade ago, I did not have a cell phone. Two decades ago, I did not know what the internet was. Just about six years ago, I did not know what a smartphone was. While, it would seem that my personality has not changed much over time, my lifestyle has been undergoing a massive transition over the last decade in quick jumps to become a lot more minimalistic. I have had a sweet affair with minimalism, at times with borderline OCD-level tendencies to organize and use one tool to its death. This is my love letter to all the technology that has made my life today.</span></div>
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<i>The extremis Iron man. Except it is me.</i></div>
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While I have always stayed regularly updated on tech news, my fanboy tendencies have not involved much purchasing. Somehow the purpose has always been to become an informed buyer, so when the need arises the geek-gadget bought is one that will last its true life with minimal upgrading (and my handling); a long-term release. So when cellphones became commonplace at the start of the millenium, I bought one four years later when multimedia cellphones were being perfected. The main priority has mostly been, to avoid a prototype and find a smooth and lasting experience. My favorite tech picks: </div>
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<u>PSP:</u> I bought a Star Wars: Battlefield limited edition PSP-2000 in winter 2007. I did not want to use my computer for gaming and I was looking for something versatile. I still use the PSP for most my gaming. The experience has not slowed down over the years and some of the titles (GTA: Chinatown wars, LittleBigPlanet, Ratchet and Clank: Size matters) have had tremendous replay value. The portable media capabilities alone would warrant the buy. Just a great piece of hardware that has lasted its value and more.</div>
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<u>Macbook pro:</u> Child please, I am not a mac person or something. I just want a device that works smooth and lasts long with minimal maintenance. The Mac experience has been a hard one to beat. I have used this one for five years and it still has not become crusty despite constant use and abuse. It tend to use shell-scripts and home-made scripts often and the unix base has cooperated well. Zero virus issues, mostly bug-free, fast-enough load times - it has allowed me to focus more on what I am doing rather than how.</div>
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<u>Nexus:</u> I was fooled into trying out the Motorola Bravo device (awful at best) before I found the Samsung galaxy nexus a year ago. Most cell phones have a very short half-life and the nexus is not one of them. I am a heavy google user; I had my contacts organized on google since 2006 with no idea that this device would someday import and synchronize them; a very pleasant surprise. This device is my mp3 player, gps, organizer, running planner, accelerometer and reading device. It makes a decent communication device too. A lot of my friends and family live far away from me and this device has allowed for smooth, bug-free distance bridging. If only I had more friends using google+.</div>
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<u>Google:</u> What can I say about google that has not already been said? I <a href="http://strumlife.blogspot.com/2009/06/google.html" target="_blank">wrote</a> a bit on it some years back. I do not think that google wants to take over the world. They have a bigger agenda than that. I love having synchrony across platforms and devices. </div>
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<u>Wii:</u> When is it OK for the minimalist to have a second gaming device? When you get the second one for free. Babysteak gave me his device, with some excellent titles - Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario galaxy, Kirby's epic yarn. I love the backwards compatibility and the innovative design, well, in games that use it properly anyway (The legend of Zelda: Skyward sword). Just watching my mom beat me and others at video games is a sweet experience. </div>
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I have a draft on the crazy awful side of technology that I will someday publish. Today the world is just beautiful. </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-80153124255492678942013-03-13T09:16:00.001+05:302013-03-13T09:17:12.909+05:30star vyar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Been in an origami mood over the last few weeks. Some creations from a galaxy far far away a long time ago.<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5B71d1OR_M" target="_blank">Master Yoda</a></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UqSITlXGzpY/USk9cqIceJI/AAAAAAABOE8/u5caciKj-ZQ/s1600/DSCN2781.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UqSITlXGzpY/USk9cqIceJI/AAAAAAABOE8/u5caciKj-ZQ/s1600/DSCN2781.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDTZxM8Lgxs" target="_blank">X-wing fighter</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQz73BORf1E" target="_blank">Tie interceptor</a></div>
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<a href="http://tie%20fighter%20origami/" target="_blank">Tie fighter</a></div>
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Grand finale - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqRGl4O-WzA" target="_blank">The millenium falcon</a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7432685679519983150.post-89873616968128571772013-03-05T02:26:00.000+05:302013-03-05T02:27:36.134+05:30Kudos<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The human obsession with success is a sickness that will have us become the flesh-devouring zombies that movies predict someday. Not one thing is allowed to be out of place, not one thing is allowed to go wrong; we will not compromise on anything short of first rate. And we sell it like that too - every one of us needs to be wielding the best phone in the market and holding the best position available. The Florida Gators have to win the national championship every year but so do the Ohio State Buckeyes. We dope our children up on want-success juice and expect every hop they make to be a productive one that will have them pole-vaulting in the Olympics someday; and win gold.</div>
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While we draw up the inspirational tales of the folk that have managed to win it all, what we are not accounting for is that these stories are told in retrospect. With our mania for success, the only stories that sell are the ones that are told by the winners and we assume a happily ever after there on. Until they fail, in which case the story becomes irrelevant. While it is fine to pick on which stories you like, it is important to pay attention to the stories where the work done may have been harder but resulted in grand failure. Not to depress oneself but to learn to accept failure with grace. <br />
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Indeed, the inability to handle failure is one of the biggest mental maladies of the human race. We do not teach our children to know how to deal with their egos when they are rejected. We do not promote the idea that it is alright to try hard and fail too. That success is not guaranteed just because you wanted it bad and worked hard for it. There are a billion extraneous factors that could influence the outcome of any event and therefore the victors of a race may have been determined well in advance, with nothing to do with the tangibles involved. </div>
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I want to hear talks from people who are happy with their moderate income desk jobs. I want to know how they get past daily hurdles. I want to hear from graduate students that are somewhat content with their thesis time despite not having any papers to show for it. Most of all, I want to hear from people that look at failure as a stepping stone and not an agenda of the universe against them. The people that accept moderate outcomes and still work hard because they want to. I would buy that any day over a boring success story.</div>
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*******</div>
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Along the same lines I find that there are two types of artists - the talent and the technician. I will define artists as people that do something. Like your Subway sandwich artist. </div>
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The talent is a pick of the lot. He has the natural factors that can make him work the art like a fish takes to water. He has the flamboyance that makes the highlight reel. He has the mutation that grants him super-strength. He has all the girls and he has their moms too. We hate him and we love him. In other words, the talent is always celebrated.</div>
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The technician does not have the talent but has the liking. He made a choice to put in the hard work it takes to try and function as an artist. He is every one of us if we are not the talent. </div>
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The problem? The talent is our success story; the one the got it right on the first try. The technician is our side-plot - you'd expect to be paid by the hour to hear this one. Why is it a problem? By need the talent is one of the few, the elite, the 1% and the rest of us are potential technicians. These definitions are made by social constructs and pressures to identify the fittest. The problem is that we are not in a race for survival all the time, sometimes it is just about making it through the day. </div>
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I want to hear stories about technicians that were not born fancy or went on to become fancy but are content with having the show running. I want to hear stories of people that not stopped singing because they were turned down badly by super singer. Every parent is a technician because there is no national award for best parent (there may be Razzie awards for worst though - many of them trying to "create" a talent). </div>
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I have an uncle who was a professor of Geology in a government college in India. He had a modest income that was able to support his wife and daughter. He worked until he turned 60, after which he retired. Over the years, he saved money to build a small but comfortable home and support himself and his wife through his retirement years. He has a economy class car that serves his needs. He was also able to support his daughter so she managed to get a PhD. of her own. He even saved some for those trips and things that were always on the list but never happened until later. <br />
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If the time is right, this may be the most amazing story one could hear. Kudos to all the people that make them. We think you are awesome!<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0