Changing tack

I reckon, after I have seen a load of creationist videos on YouTube, to act. I wouldn't have done so if the YouTubers involved had acted in a manner that befits a modern society, where debate about a controversy eventually leads to one argument being dashed, if the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. But what I managed to observe on YouTube was the systematic slaughter of videos by repeated poor-ratinga and DMCAs. There are also claims to the Earth being 6000 years and that all the animals were created in six days and that many animals were destroyed in the great flood. On top of this creationists distort facts and evidence provided by many scientists to prove that transitional forms existed and they even go to the point of questioning a physical law in the second law of thermodynamics without a full appraisal of the facts.

So from now on, I will be regularly updating the blog with videos from the non-rational side of the arguement (there shouldn't have been one in the first place) and I will try and dismantle their evidence using logical reasoning and evidence. I do this because I fear for the future of science- especially in America, where science may be seen as the instrument of the devil and lead to all sorts of horrible nonsense that man is capable of. I have already written about this in SPOTALKS

So, what are you good at?

Some things come naturally to people, doesn't it? One guy may be good at baking cakes or painting. Some may be good at singing and strumming the guitar. Some may be good at sports. It is my belief that every single person can do something without actually being taught formally- He may be able to understand the "dynamics of the process", if you will- and actually do it properly the first time 'round.

I dunno about the others, but rowing comes naturally to me. I seriously don't know how I managed to actually row the first time. It happened in Austria- I can't actually recall where this happened (the location in Austria, that is- I am not contradicting myself here). My dad, my brother and I decided to try out rowing (Dad did actually- we were his compulsory passengers). After a few tries, my dad was not able to figure out the rowing boat, much to the amusement of the onlookers (a crowd had actually built up seeing the tamasha). I told dad," You know what 'pa... I'll give it a try!". So he left me to it, and wonder upon wonders, it worked and I could row. For people who cannot row, rowing is counter-intuitive because we cannot actually look in the direction of motion. I saw the shape of the paddles (oars, actually), was seated the right way 'round, and it worked. It may have been beginner's luck, if there is such a thing, but the fact that I could row was confirmed when I went to Koddaikanal. It was absolutely brilliant. And more over rowing is fun! I want to try out kayaking next, as there are lots of places in South East Asia where I can actually learn to kayak!! :D :D :D

Now that would be fun!! And hopefully, it comes naturally to me!!

Old Fatties with Hotties...

I think it is so symptomatic of Tamil cinema that you have actors like Vijaykanth, Kamal Hasan and Rajnikanth, all of whom started acting a reaaaaaaalllllly loooooooooong time ago( I hope that those extra letters made my point), and they still get their hands on some pretty lass. It projects the wrong image that boys need to follow. It is unfortunate that once you become a star in Indian cinema, you are a star, a hero for life. It happens in every industry, but I still think that the southern industries are more prone to "handing" out "hero" roles to these geriatrics.

Unfortunately, I happened to watch some Vijaykanth(Captain Vijaykanth- expected moniker that- he played a cop most of the time, in his earlier movies) movie on a Singapore tamil channel called "Vasantham". Captain( as I shall call him from now on) was a police officer and he wishes to rid the police force of corruption and bring law and order to the land- that most noble of causes! Somehow in between, a reporter and a female cop get mixed up in the story (the female reporter is the totally hot Ramyakrishnan) and fall in love with our short and portly Captain (How, even I don't know). To cut a long story short, the Captain manages to rally the police officers, using loooooong, cliched sentences and expressions, brings about a change of heart in all the "cop mamas" and then he ends up catching the evil guy, produces him in court like a good old coppie, and marries one of the girls (the totally hot Ramyakrishnan, of course- heart break for the police officer chick).

So yeah- what really got me going was our Captain dancing around with all these heroines. He can't even bend and touch his knees for goodness sakes. Get over it, Captain! You are an old fatty who can't even turn his hips five degrees in either direction- you don't deserve hot ladies now! This projects a very wrong image to the young guys watching out there- because they will think that being awesomely fat makes them look attractive and cool, Captain style- and they will start munching on loads of Happy Meals and get clogged arteries and die before they have a chance of attracting a woman. More over, everyone who has seen the Captain's election rallies knows that he has an almighty pot in place of his stomach- he uses a humungous black belt to tuck his tummy in, as you can see the outline of the belt under the shirt sometimes- but that sort of projects his upper chest outwards and the effect is not very "nice". And they expect a man, who closely resembles a pregnant rhinoceros to jump ten foot in the air and kick the living daylights out of all the baddies!!?? You can also see his shirt making a triangular point in all the fight scenes- that's where the wires holding him up are! If you are really careful, you can sometimes also see the wires! Okay, I know that some of the paying public is foolish, but isn't this going a bit too far? Stick to politics, Captain- I like you better as a politician!

It's not only him- we have the balding Rajni dancing around with Shreya, in "Shivaji"( was she even alive, when he started his acting? I doubt it seriously!) and with Nayanthara(Her real name is Diana-a mallu- it seems) in "Chandhramukhi". But the make up artists in "Shivaji" were really good and they made him look like a forty year old with a bad hair loss problem, so that wasn't too bad. Kamal is a really good actor, but he is not quite the prince charming he once was- he's got bags under his eyes and he is looking really old at the moment. I really hope that these guys act their age; though I seriously doubt Rajni can, even if he wants to- his image as the "ultimate" superstar will really do him no favours and he probably may need even better make up artists for later movies.

Till then I reckon I will get another dose of the old fatty movies (old ones too, like MGR and Shivaji Ganeshan) on the tele [:D] ..

Dopamine....

I first heard of dopamine while watching a documentary on the brain (Human brain, not animal ones). It was a really good documentary and I got to know for the first time, how, many areas of the brain process information and how, if each process is inhibited, the body is affected by it. Now dopamine is a hormone that is produced by the brain for many purposes like neurotransmission and stuff that are way too complex for my primitive mind to actually grasp. So yeah, dopamine also plays a major role in how humans experience pleasure. If something brings you pleasure, then the brain produces a whole load of dopamine and you feel happy and "pleasured", whatever that may mean. Then the documentary showed how the addition of drugs to one's system actually affects the dopamine production of the brain.

So what happens is that these drugs like LSD, Ecstasy, coke, heroine and stuff cause a tremendous surge in the amount of dopamine produced by the brain and thus give the person who has ingested these drugs, the unreal feeling of being "high" (though I have never known this kind of a high tbf..Never will do drugs, ever, ever). This impairs the dopamine production in our brain when we experience normal pleasurable things, like a chat to a loved one or eating chocolates and what not. This causes the person to become miserable and seek more drugs, 'coz he feels awful.

But sod all that, check out the name- "Dopamine"- It's like dopamine and dope have been made for each other, innit?

Harold Rex Interfectum Est...

This is probably the most important line in all of history- because this represents the last time the British Isles was conquered. It is as good a tale you can get, and it represents the struggles between two countries- The Normans from Normandy and the Britons in England( England actually got its name from the Angles who conquered the land at the fall of the Roman Empire). Normandy is now a province of "Le France" and they are now famous for making cheeses. :D From then on of course, England did most of the conquering, and they were almost defeated, ONLY twice since- first by the Spanish Armada, where Queen Elizabeth I had a weird way of cheering up her troops(read about it yourselves! :D, I am not posting a link about these rumours!) and when One Bo****k Hitler tried to invade them.. Gosh! Imagine being defeated by a man who has only half of his "things"...

So let's cut to the chase- England had a king, whose name was Edward the Confessor( Unfortunately this was during a time when people actually thought that these "descriptions" or "suffixes", like "The Red", "The Bearded", "The Unready" and so on was actually cool). Now this chap ended up having no heir- many reasons have been put forth for this, ranging from him actually considering marriage as a spiritual connection rather than a, you know, "normal" marriage or the way it is ought to be and all that, to the usual theory of his charlies being unable to do their business. So now, Edward had a group of Elders, like a council of ministers, the Witanegamot, or something( now you know how Rowling came by the word Wizengamot, :D), and they actually were composed of Earls who had their own "fiefdoms". As many people would know, the kings around this area were all related. So one day, Ed's cousin's son, William from Normandy, came to England, and out of some affection for William or something, Edward promised the crown of England to him( this was of course what the Normans said). Years passed and Edward died, leaving the throne of England without any heir. William, now Duke of Normandy, said that he alone claimed the right to the English throne because Edward said so. Now Edward also had an earl called Godwin and this guy revolted against Edward and was sent into exile. His son was Harold Godwinson (no brainer that) and a year later he helped his father regain his position once again. Soon after all this Harold became Earl of Wessex and became a very powerful person. Upon Edward's death, the Witan made him King of England.

Of course, William didn't like this!

This is William... Yes, he is the chap with the sword and no, he isn't thrusting it through the other guy's neck and no again, that chap isn't holding his neck in agony... Glad I could clear that up...


So he decided to take his place as the rightful owner of the English crown and decided to march upon Harold. At the same time we had some Danes( Vikings!) and due to some problems in taxation and all that, Harold's brother joined the Danish king, Harald Hardrada, and a conquest of England began from the north. After some initial success, Harald Hardrada was utterly routed by Harold( I know this is a bit confusing, but the Danes were defeated). At the same time, William wanted to set sail for England, with his fleet of ships and cavalry. Harold ( yes, the King of England) was waiting for him with a hastily arranged army. Due to unfavourable winds, the Norman conquest was delayed, which played into William's hands because the English were waiting and they decided to disband slowly as they were running out of food. Then the attack by the Normans caught the Angles by unawares and soon began the Battle Of Hastings, at... Hastings of course. So at the end of the battle, Harold is supposed to have either been hacked down by a knight or pierced in the eye by an arrow. Whatever happened to him, this much is certain- he died. Then came William "The Conqueror"( for obvious reasons) and began his rule of England, which included building Whitehall (the white colour castle near the Tower Bridge) and the Domesday book, which was the first record of the amount of land each person in the kingdom actually had.



William I kingdom and lands he held

The Bayeaux Tapestry is a comic like tapestry chronicling the events of the Battle Of Hastings and what took place just before it. Here is how Harold's death was depicted...

Harold is either the guy with the arrow in his eye or being struck down by a knight

Harold Rex Interfectum Est... King Harold is dead...

Where did these idiots come from?

In the wake of the dastardly acts that have ravaged South Mumbai (and thank God, my parents are safe. My first thought was to ring them up. That was a scary few moments, let me tell you..), I have actually given some thought as to who might be behind these attacks. Let me "analyse" from what I have actually heard on the news. This incident began around nine thirty, IST, and for the first time in Indian history, we have had an urban "guerrilla" style attack. These terrorists, who number around twenty to twenty five in number, managed to hijack a police vehicle and go berserk in front of the Metro cinema in South Mumbai. What seems to have happened is that this group of "well trained" terrorists used the sea and landed at two different rendezvous points- at Sasoon, Colaba and somewhere close to the Gateway of India. Now, they split up and a few went to the CST, some went over to the Leopold Cafe, which is frequented by tourists and also to two hotels, The Oberoi/Trident ( The Trident is a separate hotel) and the Taj Mahal Palace. A few of these gunmen were shot dead- these were the ones who hijacked the police vehicle.

Now that's all background info- what I am interested in is how this attack differs from the ones we had previously, and clearly, while Mumbai has braved several attack on its soil before, like the train bombings in 2006 and the 1993 blasts/riots, this one was different in many ways from these previous attacks. I must say that these are my own inferences and not taken from any website or so. We have here a terrorist attack. I classify these attacks into two types : Conventional and Non conventional. Conventional terrorism is which I define to be terrorism that is carried out by a suicide bomber. This is something that crops up in the news very often, the bomb blasts that periodically rock Baghdad, the bomb blasts that we have had in India, the USS Cole incident, the London and Madrid bomb blasts, the Bali blasts to name a few. Here the terrorist walks into a crowded area and triggers the device, in the process killing himself and many others around him. Non conventional terrorism is something that is unexpected, the use of a new kind of weapon- such as the hijacked planes during 9/11 and now these shootings and blasts in Mumbai. Now I am assuming that apart from insurgencies into Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir, terror elsewhere has been solely restricted to bombings. It seems that somehow or the other, people who had been actively engaged in war, such as Afghanistan, Iraq and the tribal areas of Pakistan are the ones with the "know-how" of actually using automatic weapons and rocket launchers and grenades and all that. This is an important point that I will allude to later.

Logistically too this operation was streets ahead with respect to the usual bomb blasts you may find about. Because the way this was carried out showed an almost "military" precision. While the shootings were random and directed to kill anyone in sight, the method of these guys moving about wasn't. They were planned to the tiniest detail. Right from food to the amount of ammo they need, their landing points... It was as meticulous. Over the past year, attacks in India have become very sophisticated. The blasts in Ahmedabad and Bangalore were actually planned in Sanpada, Navi Mumbai and the terrorists used remote triggers to actually detonate these bombs. The perpetrators were Indians who were well off( I mean many Singaporeans would be happy to have their salary, mind.. Rs 100,000 a month!!). The Bangalore blasts were a rehearsal for the Ahmedabad blasts. Many of the bombs though, didn't go off thankfully. It was once again aimed at hitting the diamond centre in India, an attempt to sabotage the economy. Now coming back to our subject, these terrorists used the marine route- they came from the sea into Mumbai. This is not something new to Mumbai. Unfortunately the underworld used the same method to actually begin the 92 blasts. Moreover, these waters are, I reckon, trade off points in drug smuggling and trafficking of all sorts of contraband. It seems to me that the underworld has no doubt helped the terrorists enter Mumbai using their smuggling routes. In the usual case, explosives are made somewhere in a remote location and then put in car and driven into the target area. This doesn't seem to be the case here. But why did they do it?

The motive of the attack is still unclear. Western media has labelled this as an attack on the western peoples. The Indian media has called this an attack on India- more so, its credibility as an investment centre. But this multi pronged attack cannot have solely just one motive. This is a culmination of all that the extremists hate; the extremists in this region, that is. The jewish element in the Nariman House, the Westerners at the Leopold Cafe and at the hotels, and attacking India and Indians at the same time. What more could a terrorist organisation want? This was a chance to show that the threats issued by the Indian Mujahideen were not hollow (No one ever said they were, but no one expected open warfare. If you ever hear the word terrorist attack, you would go, "Oh! What did they bomb??"- You wouldn't actually say, "They shot how many people???"). This is therefore another major thing- that these extremists were given professional help. They were trained well too as many good police officers found out to their cost, not to mention the NSG and the army and navy and the RAF (the entire lot of 'em!). This was a fidayeen attack of a different dimension- it was prolonged and not something that happened in an instant like a bomb blast. Fighting is still going on at the Oberoi as I write this- I have to check out about the Nariman House though. Oh- the fighting is still on at the Oberoi; The Trident is now clean according to NDTV. What I mean to say is that yes, you can have sleeper cells in India, but you will have neither the finances nor the know-how to create munitions of this calibre. It has to be done overseas- or there has to be some connection with the Underworld, Al Qaeda or the LeT and the Indian Mujahideen (which already has links with the LeT) and sleeper cells in India. By sleeper cells, I mean places where potential terrorists can be identified and taken over to training camps, either in Pakistan or Afghanistan. They are also centres of hate, places where negative propaganda can be spread. This sleeper cell is most probably Indian in nature- though some media reports are actually saying that these are British citizens of Pakistani origin.

So here comes my point- These terrorists were young- they should have been brainwashed and this usually occurs in the sleeper cells around the nation. I am pretty sure that there are centres of terror being preached in Mumbai. I actually was in Andheri, a long while ago, and it was during these blasts that a few kids were actually lauding the blasts, saying that this is what happens to those who do not worship Allah. I am not saying that all Muslims are bad- quite the contrary- I have some really good Muslim friends, and they are great blokes to hang around with. All I am saying is that there are places that spread the word of hate in places we least expect it. There is no doubt that there was outside help and there must have been an underworld link to this as well, simply because of the stealthy manner they were able to hijack a boat and come into Indian waters. Their training methods also suggests that they were trained abroad- they fought like commandos.

From this all I can say is that everything seems to be working against us- the terrorists want to hurt India for it is becoming a major player in the region, economically and culturally. They want to hurt the West and Israel as well. And they found all those factors in South Mumbai.

All I can say is that our security personnel have been fantastic. The NSG, the Army, the Navy, the RAF, the ATS and the police have bravely fought against mindless hate.

UPDATE: Looks like my assessment is partially correct. The terrorists were supposedly trained by the Pakistani army. The weapons and the boat were supplied by the Mumbai Underworld, not to mention that they used smuggling routes to get these terrorists into Mumbai. This bit of news (in bullet format, here on BBC) came on the NDTV live stream. This issue though did warrant a mammoth post...

Tribute to a good friend.. will miss you, man!! ;(

First and foremost, I have to say that I have lost a good friend of mine. Vijay a.k.a Gunda, was a cheery chap. With gunda as a friend, you always could say that you had a reliable chap with you. He was always eager to help others and always there to pep the guys up. He used to meditate a lot and he used to tell us all kinds of stories regarding the power of the mind. It was fun being around him- he was one of the few guys during my undergrad days who could really cheer me up. A good soul- a bubbly guy- you could go on and on... I don't like writing obituaries and stuff, 'coz you would have to eulogize and gloss over a whole load of faults that the individual had. But that is not the case with Gunda. He was a fantastic person and a great guy to hang around with... I don't think I can go on.. Gunda, I know that you have gone to a better place than what we have here... I reckon that you are watching down upon us all, ur mates from uni...

Mate, you will be sorely missed.. It shouldn't have been you...