The Year That Was

When you get the same mail a billion times from a billion different sources, it usually means, some stupid forward that has a “if you don’t forward” clause or its new year and people don’t want to be creative and send off the mail that comes to them. So after my outlook express started cribbing about being cramped for space, I decided to clear my inbox, since most of the time not giving the space estranges relationships (I sure don’t want to strain ties with outlook ;) ). Here I’m, resigned to the fact that I won’t be working anymore this year (As if I did before this) and wondering what is all the fuss about a regular calendar event that serves our people an excuse to getting drunk.

It has been not so bad a year. Under Valium I might even say it has been good, though Pluto might disagree being stripped off its planetary status (but ya, as if it gives a damn about some bundle of amino acids on a piece of rock). India won the T20, Bollywood Movies weren’t that bad, a lot of good books published, Cost of living has increased a bit, share market was good, rupee doing great, Indians ruled the global market, global warming was discussed a little less this year and Priyanka Chopra is still single and available :). So for an average Indian citizen it has been a satisfying year.

Of course global issues like Pakistan’s continuing misery and US troops stationed in Iraq, do seem to do what they are meant for, giving people perspective and make India look a lot better.

On a personal front, I’ve got my degree and blended into the corporate sector. Survived one year in Bangalore, the first half trying to save money to survive and the 2nd half trying best not to get robbed by the Government. Did 80% of the stuff on my list of things I won’t even dream of doing (walked ramp, enacted playing drums in a rock band, got down on my knees with flowers!!!). Learnt a few valuable lessons that life taught me in its course. Made a whole load of new friends to bug. On the whole a pretty even road with just the right amount of pit falls to call it part of life.

So I guess I’m looking forward to the new year after all without all the hype and excitement, just trying to outguess what it holds for me. Promises deadlines and more goals to achieve probably. One year from now, I hope I can say the same about 2008 as I did about 2007. Thank you life.

Made some ad hoc plans and have already gotten 2 msgs with anatomical and sociological terminolgies asking me what i'm doing in office still!

Guess new year eve is not so bad after all :)

Happy New Year!!

Sush, Shhhhhh!

Yet another star was made to wish, “eat your words” is more than just an idiom. This time it is none other than Sushmita Sen who is in the eye of the storm with PILs and angry Indian women who are deeply hurt by her remarks on chastity and virginity.

When I read that it was because of an excerpt in Tamil newspaper I couldn’t stop laughing. Being a tamilian, I know for a fact how sensationalistic those magazines and newspapers are. I mean imagine an entire edition that advertises, it describes in graphic detail a gang rape of a small kid over 20 pages, claiming people have the right to know!! Absolutely preposterous! I fear going into conniptions at the very thought.

But that apart, it made me wonder how the judicial system decides to play its role. On it trying to do its duty by punishing people who might have violated their right of speech by monitoring hundreds of dailies and journals everyday!! What with so many pending cases and litigations that plead attention.

When someone as high up in the judiciary, as a judge of a high court, reacts so fervently, it makes you wonder whether there might be some amount of truth to the entire allegations. Lets me try to assess why or how the entire moral fabric will start tearing apart at the seams when an icon expresses her opinion in response to a journalist’s query between questions of her recent AIDS awareness campaign.

How fickle minded do we Indians rate ourselves? How easy is it to influence us? I mean how many of the junta decided to adopt a kid as a single parent after the same celebrity did so? When Sushmita Sen decided to support the HIV +ve widow of her staff (who was HIV +ve) and her two sons, how many of us decided to support atleast the cause? When she pledged to donate her organs, how many of the public did so? How many of us decided to support special children education just because this celebrity did so?

If the answer to the majority of the questions above is any figure in double digits or more, I agree that by her statement she has set a bad example and scores of people will decide to throw away their virginity just because she doesn’t think that concept exist in the current scenario. Because we people have no brains of our own and our moral fiber has to be held in place only by these celebrities and celluloid. And on their failing to reach the public, we need 15 news channels and 100 newspapers to highlight what they said just in case people didn’t pay attention.

When the same situation plagued other celebrities it was equally stupid and all the aforementioned sarcasm and cynicism would apply in their defense too. I mean Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty kissing was made such a big issue that the fact that it was an event organized to garner support for kids affected by AIDS was totally lost.

It reminds me of Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense where the ghosts see only what they want to see. I guess the media sees only what they can sell. Ironically people haunted by the media seem to be more in number than ghosts.

Its time to take up more sensible issues that need attention. (when I typed that I realized the same could be said about my choice of blog content :) ).I guess all said and done its that point where I try to rationalize what prompted me to write this. Other than to keep my writing streak going or that I’m directing new people to my blog page, I respect Sushmita Sen. Amidst scores of celebrities who offer lip service to social causes (or just lip services on screen) here is someone who goes the whole yard in doing what she believes in.

My personal take: Morals are something every person has to uphold as part of a nation that takes pride in its culture. I completely disagree with Sushmita Sen on what she said being a representative of India on the global arena. But again, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, As long as they don’t try to impose it on others.

Merchandise of the Devil's workshop

Note: Ramblings basically. But the excerpt struck quite a chord and so decided to post it anyway.

“Basically, you can think of a multi-agent environment as something like a chessboard, and the agents like chess pieces. The agents interact on the board to attain a goal, just the way the chess pieces move to win a game. The difference is that nobody is moving the agents. They interact on their own to produce the outcome.

If you design the agents to have memory, they can know things about their environment. They remember where they've been on the board, and what happened there. They can go back to certain places, with certain expectations. Eventually, programmers say the agents have beliefs about their environment, and that they are acting on those beliefs. That's not literally true, of course, but it might as well be true. It looks that way.

But what's interesting is that over time, some agents develop mistaken beliefs. Whether from a motivation conflict, or some other reason, they start acting inappropriately. The environment has changed but they don't seem to know it. They repeat outmoded patterns. Their behaviour no longer reflects the reality of the chessboard. It's as if they're stuck in the past.

In other multi-agent programs, they just get bypassed, pushed to the periphery while the main thrust of agents moves on. Some programs have a "grim reaper" module that sifts them out from time to time, and pulls them off the board.

But the point is, they're stuck in their own past. Sometimes they pull themselves
together, and get back on track. Sometimes they don't!”

Prey - Michael Crichton

When Darwin proclaimed we walked down from the trees, the reactions varied from angry disbelief to stunned awe. He spoke of evolution in terms of vestigial cortex bones and skull structure that people cared so less about that they nothinged it. And then the environmentalists spoke of adaptation that occurs continuously and gave examples of moths that developed pigmentation to escape from the predators. This was greeted with equal indifference. Though these are contexts that span centuries or decades, not concerning us, the people, there are more subtle evolutions that happen in the life cycle of a normal human being imbibing in them the need to change. Some call it maturing, some say it’s the phase of life, I call it more of a desperate measure.

No one likes to change, in any manner unless its almost inevitable. A lot of factors play a part in bringing about even the most simple change in a person. And that is what makes the entire scenario unpredictable cos these factors include the people around you and a small change in them triggers chaos when multiple ‘environments’ are involved. My recent interest in game theory is what made me see the role of the other players in your decisions and actions. Here we are not concerned with just the presence of other agents but also the absence of agents that were present.

I’ve had this habit of trying to extrapolate the observations I make about people to their reaction to different scenarios. The worst part is I used to tell them what was going on in their mind just by the first word they tell me(if I knew they are ready for it). This is because immaterial of the change in environment the basic nature of a person remains the same at least over a frame of time. Now I’ve started holding back my ‘insights’ cos I realised how much I value my own personal space. A decison that comes from often putting yourself into other's shoes a lot (which am not gonna do more often for a) fear of dermatitis b) its just not worth it)

The problem with trying to extrapolate your own behaviour is that either way you lose. You are right, u can’t do anything about it. U are wrong, u don’t know yourself. Its more like a recursive loop without a exit criteria. Once u ask more questions than you need to, u just can’t get out of it, and the system gets hung. The series of events that got me started on this have now gone stale. But the lessons learnt will hopefully be preserved.

This is possibly the most incoherent I’ve been since my antenna paper in my 6th semester. But my new found ego decided to post it anyway. Will be back on track soon(Thank you Mr.Crichton).