What happened to Facebook? I logged in after almost a year and it looks like an airport trashcan.

I know. It is competing with the Times of India now.

Why? Just a year back, it was full of interesting articles, intelligent view-points and emoticon riddled discussions. We had good jokes, incisive articles, useful personal updates and lots of cat videos. It used to feel like a nice relaxing dinner party with intelligent conversations. Now it is mostly litter spat over by people redeeming gift coupons, store sale reward points, massage parlour offers, phone recharge discounts, travel tickets, vacation packages, and movie ticket stubs… Is there an end to this sociopathic trend of celebrating consumption?

You sound pissed.

I thought you at least had to be a Facebook tourist to be proud of your shopping based achievements but this guy just posted a picture of his wireless modem with the caption “My new wireless modem :D :D :D :D”!

Yeah, I know that guy. He did a whole photo shoot titled “My first External Hard drive :)) :)) :P :P” sometime last month. It was self-shot and he also applied an Instagram filter to make it look like 1967.

And these social readers… God, I hate them. I clicked on a webpage to get a better look at the cleavage in the thumbnail and er… it… it might’ve been posted all over your wall.

That was you? How many times have I TOLD you NOT to use my Facebo…

Oh, puh-leeze! You’re worried about privacy now?

Everyone probably thinks of me as a non-biodegradable plastic bottle of sleaze!

I am sorry, okay? How was I supposed to know that the default privacy setting would be set to public? Besides, thousands of people fell for the “social reading” thing.

What the hell is “social reading” anyway? Since when is “reading” a social activity? Reading is something you do when you sit in peace, introspect and expand your understanding of this vast and wonderful universe in the privacy of your toilet.

Exactly. 300 curious humans clicking on a link titled, “Is Aishwarya Rai’s daughter actually a son?” on Washington Post Reader within the same two hour window is not reading, it is just mouse-clicking!

Mouse clicking – now that’s an activity that doesn’t get much credit.

Then there are apps that share your “activity”. Borderline porn clips on Dailymotion, shitty music on Spotify, free chewing gum coupons on Groupon, checking into a second hand pani-puri store on Foursquare… since when are all these things important enough to be shared with 600 other people?

Facebook realized that people willingly share only one or two articles out of every ten they read. Natural filters like “personality” and “thought” were filtering all the bullshit. But “thought” and “personality” are not good for the advertising business. So they essentially said, “Look it’s not who you are or what you like. It is about what you do.” And what we do is order pizza, watch item songs and read celebrity gossip.

A Facebook profile was like having an alter-ego where everyone did their own thing. People shared their interests and hobbies. Some folks were into sports, some got all worked up about politics. A few vehemently defended their favourite tech company while others worried about endangered reptiles. Stock market scams, science news, suicidal cotton farmers, art movies, and pretentious personal blogs… there was even this guy who both loved celeb gossip and quantum loop-gravity and how one affected the other!

Yeah, I got to know a lot about mere acquaintances and distant relatives just based on what they enthusiastically shared and friendships formed quickly on that basis.

It wasn’t perfect. There were too many DSLRs and HIMs but it still was an eclectic collection of information, entertainment, knowledge, silliness, and emotion until the marketing cockroaches came along and started taking over.

The root of the problem is that Facebook became “Facebook Inc. – the publicly traded hundred billion dollar company.” Going public means that their loyalty now lies only with the stock holders, not the users. The stock market doesn’t care about the quality. The only thing it cares about is more profits every quarter. When there is a virtual monopoly in a saturated market, the only way you can show increasing profits quarter after quarter is either by reducing costs like Walmart does, thanks to easily available slave labour all around the world, or by monetizing your users like product placements in sports, increasingly intrusive ads on Youtube, “Trending articles” on Facebook etc.

But let us not entirely blame a corporation’s quest for quarterly profits for the mess. You humans suck big time. You are the ones sharing fake inspirational stories, Satya Sai Baba blessings, photos of kidnapped children, pity posts for impoverished African kids, prayers for people with weird genetic diseases, and “share if you love your ” statuses.

Can’t argue against that. I once saw a status that said “Share this post within 3 seconds if you really love your Mom.” Three seconds? There is a time limit for this shit now?

At least the marketing people are making some money off the shit they produce. What do they get out of sharing these things?

Twenty three likes?

Yeah. We cats may do a lot of disgusting things when you’re not looking but we never annoy fellow felines for fake attention. Only humans do it. You’re the ones who don’t think twice about annoying 80 other species if it gives you 8% off on AA batteries. You people are more than happy to trade your online identities for some extra mayonnaise on our garlic bread.

That is quite condescending coming from a species that can be tricked into chasing its own tail.

Maybe you’re just a cheap species and Facebook just made easier be “yourself”. Think about it. The creators of Facebook knew your weakness all along. You think they were giving you an account and all that space for freedom of expression for free? Bullshit, no one does that. If you’re not paying, you’re the product being sold.

I guess. It’s same case with newspapers. It takes about 8 rupees to publish, print and deliver a copy of Times of India. We pay only a fraction and bulk of it is paid for by advertising. Not just the Times of India, any newspaper for that matter.

The sales pitch of the newspapers is, “Look, we have a large number of uninformed readers who have an affinity for cleavage, do you want to sell them some Axe deodorant?” The newspaper is not selling you ads. It is selling you to the advertisers!

They’re not newspapers anymore. They are advertising companies. They are all advertising companies. Facebook, Google, all the news channels, music channels, movies, sports… they’re all in the business of showing us ads. That is their primary duty. That is what drives them. Everything else they do is a by-product.

Comic books icon William Gaines and Editor Harvey Kurtzman created the MAD comic magazine which went on to become a highly-acclaimed masterpiece in American culture. Those guys had just one rule: NO GODDAMN ADS. For decades, that policy helped them become pioneers in satirizing everything about the shallow materialist culture free from any conflict of interests with their funding sources.

I think it is time for Facebook to retire as yet another impressive subculture that got sold out because of our soul-selling, opportunistic behaviour.

Of course, after 5 decades of taking no shit from nobody, the old owners along with their values retired. MAD magazine started allowing the ads. The ad guys always win in real life.

Only crowd-sourced or subscription based outlets like EPW, and NewsClick etc. have managed to inculcate and maintain standards. Everyone else is sold out. Maybe that is the way ahead.

You don’t even have an independent sub-culture that shows the finger to the ‘Advertising, Bollywood and Corporate power’ establishment dictating the mainstream narrative of your country and you’re dreaming of a future where Indians pay for high quality stuff?

I am just saying that the media and the arts need to be decentralized and democratized if we are to move forward as a society.

I am honestly surprised you still have hope on humanity. Remember, you are the same species that inherited this beautiful planet and now you’re burning down the homes of polar-bears for insurance money! Forget about it. Now, scratch me on my head like a good boy… also below my neck too. And make it quick, I have to step out.

arbit

[Enter Post Title Here]

R.I.P: The Sunshine days on Facebook.

C2: What happened to Facebook? I logged in after almost a year and it looks like an airport trashcan. 

G2: I know. It is competing with the Times of India now.

C2: Why? Just a year back, it was full of interesting articles, intelligent view-points and emoticon riddled discussions. We had good jokes, incisive articles, useful personal updates and lots of cat videos. It used to feel like a nice relaxing dinner party with intelligent conversations.

Now it is mostly litter spat over by people redeeming gift coupons, store sale reward points, massage parlour offers, phone recharge discounts, travel tickets, vacation packages, and movie ticket stubs…  Is there an end to this sociopathic trend of celebrating consumption?

G2: You sound pissed.

C2: I thought you at least had to be a Facebook tourist to be proud of your shopping based achievements but this guy just posted a picture of his wireless modem with the caption “My new wireless modem :D :D :D :D”!

G2: Yeah, I know that guy. He did a whole photo shoot titled “My first External Hard drive :)) :)) :P :P” sometime last month. It was self-shot and he also applied an Instagram filter to make it look like 1967.

C2: And these social readers… God, I hate them. I clicked on a webpage to get a better look at the cleavage in the thumbnail and er… it… it might’ve been posted all over your wall.

G2: That was you? How many times have I TOLD you NOT to use my Facebo…

C2: Oh, puh-leeze! You’re worried about privacy now?

G2: Everyone probably thinks of me as a non-biodegradable plastic bottle of sleaze!

C2: I am sorry, okay? How was I supposed to know that the default privacy setting would be set to public? Besides, thousands of people fell for the “social reading” thing.

G2: What the hell is “social reading” anyway? Since when is “reading” a social activity? Reading is something you do when you sit in peace, introspect and expand your understanding of this vast and wonderful universe in the privacy of your toilet.

C2: Exactly. 300 curious humans clicking on a link titled, “Is Aishwarya Rai’s daughter actually a son?” on Washington Post Reader within the same two hour window is not reading, it is just mouse-clicking!

G2: Mouse clicking – now that’s an activity that doesn’t get much credit.

C2: Then there are apps that share your “activity”. Borderline porn clips on Dailymotion, shitty music on Spotify, free chewing gum coupons on Groupon, checking into a second hand pani-puri store on Foursquare… since when are all these things important enough to be shared with 600 other people?

G2: Facebook realized that people willingly share only one or two articles out of every ten they read. Natural filters like “personality” and “thought” were filtering all the bullshit. But “thought” and “personality” are not good for the advertising business. So they essentially said, “Look it’s not who you are or what you like. It is about what you do.” And what we do is order pizza, watch item songs and read celebrity gossip.

C2: A Facebook profile was like having an alter-ego where everyone did their own thing. People shared their interests and hobbies. Some folks were into sports, some got all worked up about politics. A few vehemently defended their favourite tech company while others worried about endangered reptiles. Stock market scams, science news, suicidal cotton farmers, art movies, and pretentious personal blogs… there was even this guy who both loved celeb gossip and quantum loop-gravity and how one affected the other!

G2: Yeah, I got to know a lot about mere acquaintances and distant relatives just based on what they enthusiastically shared and friendships formed quickly on that basis.

C2: It wasn’t perfect. There were too many DSLRs and HIMs but it still was an eclectic collection of information, entertainment, knowledge, silliness, and emotion until the marketing cockroaches came along and started taking over.

G2: The root of the problem is that Facebook became “Facebook Inc. – the publicly traded hundred billion dollar company.” Going public means that their loyalty now lies only with the stock holders, not the users. The stock market doesn’t care about the quality. The only thing it cares about is more profits every quarter.

When there is a virtual monopoly in a saturated market, the only way you can show increasing profits quarter after quarter is either by reducing costs like Walmart does, thanks to easily available slave labour all around the world, or by monetizing your users like product placements in sports, increasingly intrusive ads on Youtube, “Trending articles” on Facebook etc.

C2: But let us not entirely blame a corporation’s quest for quarterly profits for the mess. You humans suck big time. You are the ones sharing fake inspirational stories, Satya Sai Baba blessings, photos of kidnapped children, pity posts for impoverished African kids, prayers for people with weird genetic diseases, and “share if you love your ” statuses.

G2: Can’t argue against that. I once saw a status that said “Share this post within 3 seconds if you really love your Mom.” Three seconds? There is a time limit for this shit now?

C2: At least the marketing people are making some money off the shit they produce. What do they get out of sharing these things?

G2: Twenty three likes?

C2: Yeah. We cats may do a lot of disgusting things when you’re not looking but we never annoy fellow felines for fake attention. Only humans do it. You’re the ones who don’t think twice about annoying 80 other species if it gives you 8% off on AA batteries. You people are more than happy to trade your online identities for some extra mayonnaise on our garlic bread.

G2: That is quite condescending coming from a species that can be tricked into chasing its own tail.

C2: Maybe you’re just a cheap species and Facebook just made easier be “yourself”. Think about it. The creators of Facebook knew your weakness all along. You think they were giving you an account and all that space for freedom of expression for free? Bullshit, no one does that. If you’re not paying, you’re the product being sold.

G2: I guess. It’s same case with newspapers. It takes about 8 rupees to publish, print and deliver a copy of Times of India. We pay only a fraction and bulk of it is paid for by advertising. Not just the Times of India, any newspaper for that matter.

C2: The sales pitch of the newspapers is, “Look, we have a large number of uninformed readers who have an affinity for cleavage, do you want to sell them some Axe deodorant?” The newspaper is not selling you ads. It is selling you to the advertisers!

G2: They’re not newspapers anymore. They are advertising companies. They are all advertising companies. Facebook, Google, all the news channels, music channels, movies, sports… they’re all in the business of showing us ads. That is their primary duty. That is what drives them. Everything else they do is a by-product.

C2: Comic books icon William Gaines and Editor Harvey Kurtzman created the MAD comic magazine which went on to become a highly-acclaimed masterpiece in American culture. Those guys had just one rule: NO GODDAMN ADS. For decades, that policy helped them become pioneers in satirizing everything about the shallow materialist culture free from any conflict of interests with their funding sources.

G2: I think it is time for Facebook to retire as yet another impressive subculture that got sold out because of our soul-selling, opportunistic behaviour.

C2: Of course, after 5 decades of taking no shit from nobody, the old owners along with their values retired. MAD magazine started allowing the ads. The ad guys always win in real life.

G2: Only crowd-sourced or subscription based outlets like EPW, and NewsClick etc. have managed to inculcate and maintain standards. Everyone else is sold out. Maybe that is the way ahead.

C2: You don’t even have an independent sub-culture that shows the finger to the ‘Advertising, Bollywood and Corporate power’ establishment dictating the mainstream narrative of your country and you’re dreaming of a future where Indians pay for high quality stuff?

G2: I am just saying that the media and the arts need to be decentralized and democratized if we are to move forward as a society.

C2: I am honestly surprised you still have hope on humanity. Remember, you are the same species that inherited this beautiful planet and now you’re burning down the homes of polar-bears for insurance money! Forget about it. Now, scratch me on my head like a good boy… also below my neck too. And make it quick, I have to step out.

comedy is the opposite of poetry

poetry is a destructive force

A lot of people write poetry in their blogs. I don’t read any of them. I don’t read poems at all. It is because I find most of the poems to be incomprehensible, kind of inexplicable, sort of unclear, very unintelligible, sometimes dark and pretty obscure, often puzzling, lost or may be missed.

The problem with poetry lies not in the art but with the artist. It is the poet who wants to be perceived as enigmatic, unfathomable, complicated or lost (often in deep melancholy :p). Poetry is such a self-centered and narcissistic exercise.

The luxury poets have is that you (as the reader) do not understand the poem. You think you do, but you don’t for it is not meant to mean anything. The bigger luxury the poets have is that you are afraid to admit that you do not understand anything. And they exploit it and use it almost like a power that forces you into finding a meaning in something that was intentionally made to be meaningless. In a lot of ways it is no different than the symmetric inkblots psychologists use to experiment on you.

In this respect, comedy is in many ways the opposite of poetry. Comedy has to be approachable, comedy has to be clear and simple, comedy has to be succinct and more importantly, it has to be funny. Comedy has to be all of these in 30 seconds. Thirty seconds is all you have to make a joke.

The primary difference between comedy and poetry is that in poetry, the responsibility of entertainment is transferred back to the reader. Entertainment is a big responsibility, and the comedian has to carry it on his shoulders every thirty seconds.

And so poetry sucks.

P.S: Fans of poetry and amateur poets, you might want to defend your views.

the cartoon

 

Muslim is the new Jew

    A lot of recent events suggest the increasing xenophobia everywhere in Europe. It has by and large become acceptable to make ignorant and degrading statements about Islam in the media. The statements made by some of the high profile politicians, news anchors and instant opinion makers routinely have words like “strange”, “spooky”, “weird”, “offensive”, “creepy”, “wrong”, “evil-looking”, “sinister” which in my opinion are not words a civilized society should use about other human beings. For the sake of experiment, if we replace the word Muslim by Jew or Black, I am sure they will face criminal charges in their respective countries.

    An Italian minister has reasoned that Burkhas should be banned because they can be disturbing to small children. Now, let’s be honest with ourselves. Haven’t we all, at some point of time saw someone right in the face and wished they wore a Burkha? On a sunny day at the beach, would you prefer a 55 year old in a Burkini^[meaning] or a two piece bikini?

    If anything we should encourage Burkhas selectively. I made my own little list of people who might scare the hell out of those very kids (they occasionally scared me). The toppers in the list are shaven-headed-heavily-tattooed weirdoes. Next in the list are people who have piercings on their body anywhere other than ears and nose. And a close third come gangs of drunken youth wearing hooded sweatshirts. 

    I am “friends-in-law”^[meaning] with a couple of girls in Hyderabad who wear Burkhas to college. They wear Burkhas only when they use some sort of public transport and as soon as they are inside their college campus, they are in their comfortable jeans and sleeveless tees. Their parents know about it too. When I asked her, “why wear it at all ? She said that it is the best way to protect her skin from the sun and also saves her money on sunscreen!

*****

Dictionary help (for people like me):
Friend-in-law: A good friend of a good friend who at best qualifies as a "treasured acquaintance".
Burkini: A portmanteau of burqa (body) and bikini.
Portmanteau:  A word used broadly to mean a blend of two (or more) morphemes and their meanings into one new word.
Morpheme: The smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning.
Semantic: In computer science, semantics reflects the meaning of programs or functions.
Function: Function may refer to:

• Diatonic function describes a music term
• Function (biology), explaining why a feature survived selection
• Function (computer science), or subroutine, a portion of code within a larger program, performs a specific task
• Function (engineering), related to the utility/goal of a property
• Function (language), in linguistics, a way of achieving an aim using language
• Function (mathematics), an abstract entity that associates an input to a corresponding output according to some rule
• Function model is a structured representation of the functions, activities or processes.
• Function object, or functor or functionoid, a concept of object-oriented programming
• A formal event such as a party or meeting

Wikipedia: Never user it as a dictionary.

Gandhi's ink pen was made in Rajahmundry

Exposition:
I am not comfortable writing with anything that is transparent or even remotely translucent. Ever since I have been allowed to write with a pen (class 4), I have been writing with a fountain pen and hence I consider myself an expert in judging fountain pens, the only qualification for expertise being the inability to write comfortably with a ball point pen. I gladly attribute my good handwriting^{[citation needed]} to the smooth flowing fountain pens.

Rising Action:
Very recently, while I was doing my usual research, (clicking random links and reading whatever I click) I ran into a news article (dated 1st October, 2009) in which the luxury pen maker Mont Blanc has announced a “limited-series” gold and rhodium Mahatma Gandhi special edition pen to commemorate the 1930 Dandi March. The pen costs about fourteen lakh rupees (Rs 14,00,000) and they are selling 241 pens to mark the 241 mile march.

Isn’t it ironic that the man who stood for the poorest of poor is exploited as a brand to sell pens to the richest of rich? If anyone really wants to commemorate Mahatma Gandhi, they should buy Ratnam Pens.

Flashback:
Mr. K. V. Ratnam was from a family of goldsmiths who were also involved in making lithographic blocks. He met Gandhiji during the swadeshi movement in 1921. Gandhiji advised him to make something that could be useful to the common man and that was inexpensive. That was when they started making pens. In 1932, the first pen was ordered by Nyapati Subba Rao Pantulu, one of the founders of The Hindu. It was made of silver.

Ratnam then made a pen from ebonite material and sent it as a gift to Mahatma Gandhi who wrote back to him commending it (scanned copy of the original letter that is displayed in the store, click for a bigger version). The pens retained their status and popularity even after independence and boasts of clients like Indira Gandhi, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Shankar Dayal Sharma, S Kasturiranga Iyengar (founder of The Hindu) and Ramnath Goenka (founder of the Indian Express Group) and Jayanth Tadinada (pro blogger, gtoosphere) among thousands of others.

In the late 1950s, K. V. Narasimhacharyulu, the son of Ratnam went to Germany and on his return started a ballpoint pen manufacturing unit for the first time in India in Rajahmundry. Ratnam’s two sons continue to run the pen business to this day from Rajahmundry.

Epilogue:
* Ratnam Sons have an extensive catalogue with ebonite fountain pens starting from Rs. 55 and the custom made Gold and Silver pens can go up to Rs. 30,000.

* They make really awesome customized gifts which can be ordered by phone and are shipped within a week.

* I recently bought yet another Ratnam pen and absolutely love it. (It is way better than the Chinese ‘Hero’ pens)

* My handwriting used to be very good but has declined after coming to IIT because I don’t take notes and use the computer for everything (may some of my school friends or family members can give a citation)

* This post is getting way too long to maintain the reader’s attention.

Counterproductive Technology

Not very long ago, I was at Kanjur Marg station in the queue to buy a local train ticket. I was not in a hurry but, I was feeling a little impatient standing in the same line with lot of people who are in a great hurry. And some 15 minutes later, it was my turn and as most people must have experienced, there is a 50 year old clerk (who is never in a hurry!), reacting as if he has seen the keyboard for the first time in his life and he has been reacting the same way since 1992!

It is the closest you can get to study how cavemen would have reacted had they found a yellow (formerly white) keyboard in a deserted cave. He types carefully searching for each alphabet on the keyboard and then presses the print command and then the loud dot matrix printer takes over. Sometime between the clerk pressing the print button and the printer printing my ticket, I decided to make a compilation of instances where installing/upgrading technology has made the process slower and inefficient. So here is the list.

1. Railway tickets: According to my rough estimate, manually giving out tickets in a local station clears the queue about two and a half times faster than the "computerized" ticket vending. In fact, many local stations open their manual ticket counter during rush hours. But I am sure that the computerized ticket vending helps in accounting and other back office processes.

2. The automatic semi-touch free dustbin I have seen in France: This is absolute oxymoron. First of all, how can anything be semi-touch? You either touch it or you don’t! Second of all who wants to semi-touch a dustbin? It has an automatic lid that opens automatically when you keep your hand over it. Good enough, but the moron part of it is that the lid does not close automatically! We have to stoop to press the “close” button on the dustbin once we are done. I wanted to see if there was some sort of a timeout mechanism after which the lid automatically closes, I waited for 2 minutes but it did not close.

3. Ultra slim TVs: What difference does it make whether the TV is one inch thick or one fourth of an inch thick when the TV hangs on a wall and we sit least five or six feet away from it?


4. Wireless keyboard and mouse for a desktop: The writing is pretty much on the wall that it is a waste. Not only do they run out of battery once in two weeks to piss the user off, there is a good chance that they will be misplaced or lost. I think the cluttering wires are easier to manage.

5. Texting with a touch phone: Texting just got crappier with the advent of iphones and other alleged “iPhone killers”


Things that need special mention
1. Widows Vista: old favorite
2. Any iPhone apps that give GPS directions: not a big thing in India yet
3. Google wave: email reinvented so that you cannot check it in a cyber café near you.
4. Laptop steering wheel desk: You can now tweet your way to hell.



This list is in no way comprehensive, please add stuff if you can think of something.

New Year Post

P.S: Happy New Year

IIT education goes to the dogs!

I have always feared that with the way the congress govt. is systematically screwing up with the IITs, the IIT education is going to the dogs. But I never thought the day would come this soon.


A file photo of a professor teaching a dog in IIT Delhi

Thanks to Kashyap for the image :)

P.S: found more on youtube :)

PCL: The Politically Correct Dinner

INRIA (Rennes, France) had quite a vibrant culture. To celebrate the ethnic and cultural diversity within the institute, they have this annual International Food Festival during the summer. The idea is simple; everyone brings a considerable amount of homemade food, whatever is unique to their culture and they have a grand buffet.

The buffet looked gorgeous and smelled great. French, Italian, Spanish, Mexican, Chinese, Thai and Indian cuisines neatly arranged with little foot notes about the dish itself and who made it. The unfortunate thing(for me) was that there were only two vegetarian dishes in the whole of the buffet! One was a vegetarian Galette and the other was Sambar and Papad!

I tried the Galette which is basically mashed potato and cheese rolled inside a (non-crispy) dosa kind of a thing. It was completely tasteless by Indian standards. So, I was eating it with ketchup when a colleague pointed out that it is considered rude to eat any homemade dish with ketchup. (It turned out that the French gentleman happened to be the one who brought the dish!) I apologized and settled with Sambar and Papad (so much for the “International” Food Fest!).

The next day, the same colleague got me a dabba of vegetarian food cooked by his wife especially for me because he felt sorry for me. I thanked him and his wife for the wonderful gesture and we sat for lunch. The vegetarian “dish” which his wife “cooked” happened to be boiled rice with freshly cut fruits in it. Yes you read it right, yucky sticky globular Vietnamese rice with strawberries, grapes, slices of apple, pineapple and banana thrown in it. (I couldn’t even get any yogurt or ketchup this time because of what happened the previous day!) I would rate it as the second most uncomfortable meal I ever had so far! I couldn't find the right image so I "cooked" it up in photoshop ;) Also please suggest a more universal name than the telugu-standard Bangala Bow-bow for this dish.

P.S: I had a roll with the desserts in the International Food Festival :)

The Implications of the Pigeon-Fool Principle

For those who have not read the pigeon-fool principle, please click here before reading further.

The pigeon-fool principle though intended to look funny on the outside, is much more than a mere extrapolation of a funny incident. It is, like a lot of funny things, reality at a higher level. The results of the poll are compiled and as of now, there were over 100 hundred people who read the blog entry but only 36 have decided to vote with almost 90% (31/36) of them preferring pigeon poop over the fool’s mucus on their shirts. The result though hardly surprising made me ask myself, Why the difference?

If you look at the situation objectively, both pigeon poop and fool's mucus have very similar outcomes when they fall on our shirt. Both are equally unfortunate and equally disgusting things to happen to anyone, they take the same amount of effort to wipe and wash the stain etc. But still people are biased towards one of the options! This proves my notion that, given a choice between two equally bad options, people choose the familiar one.

The beauty of the whole argument lies in the parallel we can draw with the elections in India. In most of the constituencies, people are forced to choose between pigeon poop (congress) and fool’s mucus (BJP and allies) and people choose the familiar pigeon poop. And not surprisingly, a lot of people choose not to vote at all (Voter turnout was 43% in Mumbai and 35% for my poll, which is good enough considering that TATA Tea did not sponsor a “Jaago Re” campaign for my blog). Hence even after 5 years of dismal governance, the congress party is back to power in Maharashtra.

Unless we figure out a way where deserving people can rise up to the leadership level, India will always remain a flawed democracy that is more of a “Deeply-Hippocratic-Cheaply-Oligarchic-Republic” as opposed to the “Sovereign-Socialist-Secular-Democratic-Republic” we are supposed to be going by my 7th class civics text book.

P.S: the content of this blog turned out to be much more serious than intended by the author (me) but what the hell!



P.P.S: The artist (me again) intended the bird to look like a pigeon and the guy like he has a cold and he is not sure how successful he is.

The Pigeon Fool Principle

Chapter 1: Somewhere in IIT

A little while back, I was walking around close to some building with a friend and something fell on her shoulder. She reacted with the saddest “Eww”, worrying about her (then white) shirt whereas I looked up to find the culprit. I found a couple of pigeons flying around and one guy on the third floor corridor holding a hand kerchief. We assumed it was the pigeons (as it happens quite often). The whole incident killed the pleasant conversation we were having so I thought it would be a good idea to put forward my theory to raise the spirits.

Chapter 2: The Hypothesis

My theory was that it could well have been the guy who is blowing his nose who did it. The pigeons just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. I was arguing, rather animatedly, that my hypothesis could be correct. The more I thought it through, the more I was convinced that it had to be the fool blowing his nose and not the shitting pigeons.
She desperately wanted it to be the pigeons that she was giving arguments that make just as much sense as religious fanatics when they talk about their religion. All I can say is that she did not take it in the right way and it definitely did not raise the spirits. Soon things “blew” out of proportion and I was in deep “shit”.

Chapter 3: The Pigeon-Fool principle

Life is all about making difficult choices and you are about to take one now. There is no way you can escape from this situation. You have two and only two options available. Both of them happen to be awful (but that is life) and you have to make a decision.

P.S: the poll is completely anonymous and you can vote more than once if you have strong feelings towards one of the options :p





A day in the Life of a Shrink

TOI doesn't want us to read the news

Yes, The Times of India, the largest selling English newspaper in India doesn't want us to read the news. If you think I am exaggerating, fair enough. I am giving TOI, the benefit of doubt. May be they do want us to read the news, but clearly, they don't want us to go past the first two headlines. How else would you explain this?



The layout of the website is perfect. On the left, we have the "Top Stories" and on the right, we have things to distract us from reading the "Top Stories". Even if you are really curious about what is happening in the world, the crap on the right keeps popping into your head while reading the stuff on the left. So there is a good chance you might mix the two and end up reading the news like this.
* 'Grounded' US plane cleared for taking off Best Cleavage in B-Town...
* Pakistan's military said on Sunday that 60 Taliban militants and five soldiers were Babes dare to bare!

I think TOI is the only newspaper that has got its priorities right:
Topless pics first, OTHER TOP STORIES later.

P.S: Hindustan Times and DNA have their homepages full of real news. No wonder neither of them is "India's Largest Selling English Newspaper"

STATUTORY WARNING: This is what too much of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart does to you.

the G vs Y graph

glossary of terms:
G = number of girls you can "technically" hit on
Y = number of years in IIT
UG = undergraduate (B. Tech/DD)
H11 = PG girls hostel



P.S: Inspired from an intriguing conversation with Deva
P.P.S: If text is not that clear, please click on the image for a bigger version... but don't forget to comeback and comment ;)

Leadership by Ineptitude

Chapter 1: Birth of a new idea
Circa 1998 AD

Mom tells little g2 that he is not a little boy anymore, so he has to take responsibility for his stuff and that also includes ironing his school uniform. Now little g2 as we know, hates ironing (he hates any form of work). So this is what he did- he started the ironing and did it so bad that mom was worried that he might burn his uniforms. Soon she realized that doing the work herself is much easier (both emotionally and economically) than making him work.

Chapter 2: The idea reaches puberty
Circa 2002 AD

g2 and his bunch of friends have just screwed up things real bad. They cooked and pillow-fought at his friend’s place and the whole house is a mess. They have less than 40 minutes to get the house back into shape lest all hell breaks loose. The girl at (whose place they made a mess) was paranoid. Everyone hurried; everyone was scared, everyone except g2. He took initiative and coolly started rearranging the furniture (intentionally) at places they didn’t belong. The others saw what was happening and quickly asked him to step aside and they cleaned up the mess in record time.

Chapter 3: The idea is bald
Present day

g2 is sure that his idea, with all its counter intuitiveness has the potential to be the next big management fad. He calls it Leadership by Ineptitude. It basically comprises of three simple, reciprocatable (g2 is not quite sure if this is a word) and highly scalable processes. They are as follows.

1. Take initiative with an air of arrogance giving out the message that no one else can do a “better job” than you.
2. Do it so bad that others should feel like they can do a better job and are motivated to do a “better job” just to prove a point.
3. Let them do the “better job” and you take credit for taking initiative and motivating them.

This is beneficial for the company in two ways. Firstly, the most useless people are moved up into the senior management- a place where they can do least damage to the company. And two: they make place for more efficient people. Think about it. (Edit: May be this is how governments function)

A collage of some psychedelic photography using only LEDs for lighting (thanks to Prady and Apoorv):

Sense of Humor

Part I: Monkey in the lab part II

I was there getting into an international flight for the first time. My luggage was like 5 or 6 kilos over the limit and my dad waiting outside, kind of worried if they would allow it or not. After checking in my baggage, I wasted time loitering around in the airport without going to the immigration (to be honest I did not even know I was supposed to go to immigration, I thought it was for losers coming into the country ;)...) And soon I realized it is for losers leaving :( So I slipped my phone into the pocket of my new cargo pants and zipped the pocket(no idea why I zipped it... may be because its there).

Traveling by air is not at all fun. Even the little excitement about the trip is killed in the airports. At least for me it did. Standing in a stupid security checkup for an hour was boring to say the least. And just when my turn was about to come, my phone started to ring. It was my dad, I knew it from the ring tone. I wanted to answer it but the zip got stuck. The phone was ringing and vibrating, the security guy asks me to hurry up, I had two pieces of hand baggage in my hands, the flight leaves in 20 minutes, the passengers behind me in the queue were getting impatient and the zipper was stuck! Something's gotta give!

I let the person behind me go and tried to open it, it was stuck in the awfullest of ways in the cruelest of times. I tried to break it open but LEE happens to make some really strong pockets! I asked someone else for help. He was holding the zip and pulling out as hard as possible while I was struggling with my balance! No luck either. Then I asked another woman with a baby in the next line if she had some kind of a sharp object that could cut through jeans and she looked at me like I was some kind of an idiot. (Of course she would... who carries sharp objects that can cut through jeans to the security check in an airport!)

So I went ahead with the security check with the phone still inside the pocket (ringing)...

Security guy: What is this?
Me: It's a phone
Security guy: You are supposed to keep it in the tub there.
Me: I know... but the zip of the pocket got stuck and I am not able to take the phone out...
Security guy: Look please, there is a lot of queue, don't waste time.
Me: stepped aside and gave place to someone else. Tried to tear open the zip but no luck
Security guy: Now... make it fast.
Me: I'm trying but am not able to.
Security guy: ignores
Me <in the nicest voice possible>: Do you have a knife or something. I want to cut this open.
Security guy <Serious stare>: No knife, only gun!

D for Dogmata

The other day I was in the bus stop waiting, whistling and generally feeling good and then I saw this really cute dog being walked by this really hot girl(I just had to mention it). Then the dog pooped and the girl picked it up! This never happens in India and just the thought of it made the "generally feeling good" feeling vanish almost instantaneously! It reminded me of this Seinfeld monologue.

"On my block, a lot of people walk their dogs, and I always see them walking along with their little poop bags, which to me is the lowest function of human life. If aliens are watching this through telescope, they're gonna think the dogs are the leaders. If you see two life forms, one of them is making a poop , the other one's carrying it for him who would you assume was in charge?"

But I didn't just stop there. I started imagining how the world would look like if this were true. For 2 days, I saw everything in that frame of mind and it was quite funny. Try to think of a design for a car that a dog would like... Like really big wheels on which you can pee and stuff like that!

So eventually my mind went on to the entertainment industry... and guess what...

gToosPhere is proud to present a few snapshots of the alternate universe.

1942: Casablanca

The legendary line from the movie,

"Here's looking at you, kid"

would have to be slightly modified for the audience...



1974: The Godfather would of course be


2001: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone would be

Doggy Potter and the Philosopher's Bone

... The story would be pretty much the same, our little "Doggy Potter" is just another pup which is treated like a "dog" at his guardian's place and then a huge hairy guy comes and takes Doggy to the "The Dogwarts school of Bitchcraft and Dastardly" and then yada yada yada... the philosopher's bone... whatever!




2006: V for Vendetta becomes

"D for Dogmata"

I reconstructed the very famous introductory monologue by replacing all the V's with D's and surprisingly, it makes just as much sense as the original! A tough job but I did it anyways! It goes like this...

"But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace soubriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona. Doila! In diew dumble daudevillian deteran, cast dicariously as both dictim and dillain by the dicissitudes of fate. This disage, no mere deneer of danity, is a destige of the “dogs populi” now dacant, danished. However, this dalorous disitation of a bygone dexation stands divified, and has dowed to danquish these denal and dirulent dermin, dan guarding dice and douchsafing the diolently dicious and doracious diolation of dolition.
The only derdict is dengeance; a dogmata, held as a dotive not in dain, for the dalue and deracity of such shall one day dindicate the digilant and the dirtuous.
derily this dichyssoise of derbiage deers most derbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honour to meet you and you may call me D."

and here is the poster...




P.S: I probably violated a 1000 copyright laws for this post. Also I don't have any money, so I give permission to sue google for everything without which none of this would've happened.

Se7en random things about me

I've been tagged by apnerve last week in a "meme" and now I am supposed to propagate this "meme". This is apparently called a "Seven-Random-Things-About-Me" meme.

Rules: As per the rules of the game, I am supposed to paste the rules of the game... so here goes

* Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
* Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
* Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
* Let them know they have been tagged.


History: Basically some self obsessed narcissist nutcase got bored and decided to write some stuff about himself and wanted to ensure at least 7 people read it and this was subsequently propagated by more self-obsessed nut cases and now is my turn. This theory also satisfactorily explains the technical term meme(ME-ME).

The common complaint is that people don't track back and I think I figured out why. As per a weird mathematically proved theory of social networking, every person in the world is connected to every other person by not more than 7 acquaintances. By this rule, Osama Bin Laden is going to be tagged and he will write the 7 things about him which will eventually lead to his capture and the person responsible for his capture gets a cool 5 million dollars. (Looks like our self-obsessed-bored-Narcissist blogger actually happens to be an OverAmbitious-OverOptimistic-SelfObsessed-Bored-Narcissistic blogger!

Now the 7 RANDOM things about me...

1. I day dream of myself as a person who will eventually make a couple of national award winning movies, retire by 40 and teach in the high school from where I studied in Rajahmundry.

2. Like all other great artists from time immemorial, I painted the last supper too.

I think Judas "nailed" it there

3. I HATE my gmail ID.

4. To not like a song composed by Rahman for me is blasphemy.

5. I am proud of my recently acquired photography skills even though most of the credit should to the gorgeous European landscape: http://picasaweb.google.com/mail2g2.rdl

6. I accidentally voted for the congress party in the state assembly elections recently.

7. I think se7en is a really big number.

Here are the people seven people I want to tag

1. pavan - because his blogs are very interesting and it is time he wrote something funny.

2. scott adams - because I have been every blog entry of his for the two and a half years.(btw he blogs almost everyday)

3. KD - because I want him to read my blog.

4. samhita - because it was after seeing her blog I felt like I should have one too.

5. Ashok - because his blogs makes me wish I had the ability to appreciate poetry.

6. prachur - because I am running out of people I know who blog

7. apnerve - because I want to see what happens if I tag him.

An interesting Picasa Album...

I've been looking at a LOT of Picasa albums lately thanks to all my friends scattered all around the globe but in most cases, I barely go through the albums because they were either too long or because I am not able to catch the mood because there are no captions or comments.

This is a feeble attempt to make a rather long album more interesting...



permanent link to the album can be found here
Please give feed back on what you think.

My future home address

Now that we are likely to have congress again forming a govt. we can expect the more public roads and buildings named after the Gandhi’s. I pray that someone has the sense to pass some kind of a law which prevents parties (read congress) from using the govt. money to build a brand name for the party and the family. It reminds me of one of Hitler’s quotes which when translated sounds something like, “tell the same lie for a hundred times and you can’t differentiate it from the truth any longer.”

It scares me to think about the future generations, they find almost every other building named after Rajiv Gandhi or Sanjay Gandhi, they’ll be fooled into think that the Gandhi’s were remarkable people who did remarkable things. May be if the congress rules India for 10 more years, directions to my home would sound something like this.

Get down at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, take the P. V. Narasimha Rao flyover. From Sanjay Gandhi Park, go straight and take the first left after Indira Gandhi statue. Take the road to Gandhi Nagar, cross the Indira Gandhi Bridge to reach Rajiv Gandhi Municipal School, next to the Rajiv Gandhi Municipal School is a transformer (yet to be named after a Gandhi!) The plush bungalow next to the transformer is my future home.

Euro Trip Part 1: Monkey in the lab

Getting into an international flight for the first time at the Mumbai international airport is not an easy task. At least I found it a little difficult and the late night flights have a huge queue for security check. I got a window seat (as requested) but it was probably the second worst window seat one can possibly get (the first being the one right above the wing). It was just before the wing, so I could look directly into the engine and also a good amount of the ground. I was trying to figure out how to use the various gadgets available there and that is the first time I felt like a monkey in the lab, a feeling I have experienced quite often over the next couple of days. It is like someone is playing a cruel experiment- try this button and then if you do it right, you get a small incentive like turning off the light, getting the table (or the plank whatever you call it).

Taps! Why are there so many kinds of taps? I have gone through 4 or 5 airports till now and none of the air ports have the same kind of taps for their wash basins! Not even the same mechanism. You have to pull some, you have to push some. Some you have to turn clockwise while the others, anticlockwise and the rest automatically spill water on your shirt! Why can’t there be international standards for taps too??? I think a fancy restroom is the best money-in-the-lab moment for me and I am assuming for a lot of other people too, unless you choose to wait till someone else comes and uses the tap.
The next, probably the biggest monkey-in-the-lab moment I had was in the kitchen. I did not know how to open the kitchen door. It was locked all the time and there was a notice (in French) which I misinterpreted. So it took me one full day to figure out that the same key that opens my room opens the kitchen also! Once I am in the kitchen it took me one more day to find out the on button of the electric stove and to figure out how to use it! I still do not know anything about housekeeping and laundry so more-monkey-in-the-lab moments in store for me.