Choosing my Galactic guidance

The Fermi paradox caught my eye a few days back. A little Calvin and Hobbes quote seemed created with Fermi's feelings precisely - "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." A little more digging into the Drake equation and, a load of conspiracy theories and a couple of alien movies (district 9 and Avatar in 3D) later I was still like a puppy in London with a road-map of New York. The patterns are similar but something felt totally out of place. Ok the movies were just for fun.

I dusted off my hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and although it provided lots of entertainment and another entry on my impossible list of things that I must have, it did not provide much insight into what I was actually looking for. Just to clarify what I wanted was a feasible and probable solution to the paradox which seemed a little less far fetched as compared to the others. Wiki does give a lot of options in that regard, from the ones that make you go "They're heeeerrrreeee!!!!" in a freaky little girl's voice to a gruff "Welcome to Earth" as in Will Smith (Independence day).

Drake's equation provides a lot of possibilities but the variation in the assumption of the parameters is just too huge to even attempt a valid assumption of the answer. The one definite result from it all is the criticism of it looks very valid. A random stumble to the Schrödinger's cat problem messed my mind up a little but then I decided using that in these equations was certainly way off target.

Anyhow, my final thoughts on these are pretty much summarized by my limited knowledge of the universe. It is infinite is my supposition and my fanatic belief. Hence as per simple probability theorems, if there is a finite (even infinitesimal) probability of an occurrence then it certainly occurs due to the infinite repetition. Restated as since the universe is infinite, if it is possible, it is probable and so it is happening. Either somewhere in time or somewhere in space or both. In my opinion in both as I consider time meaningless and space as infinite (fanatic belief, no questions permitted on this statement). Which probably means we haven't seen any action as this part of the universe has no visible action for us.

Digging deeper into the above conclusion, I came to see some extremely disturbing causality patterns. A set of dominoes set up were falling into a pattern which is a little discernible but does not take into consideration present choice. Or as the Oracle in the matrix would say "Because you didn't come here to make the choice, you've already made it". Life itself does seem like that at best or way worse. Where certain choices that may seem unique to every individual maybe the rational consequence of a series of environmental, biological(genetic and natural) and other miscellaneous background experiences brought upon the biological entity (who has the so called "choice") through random probability. So then this writing was the result of a continuous falling of dominoes. Hope the aliens are reading. But then again maybe the Flying Spaghetti Monster is going to erase it all with its mysterious invisible tentacles.

Bewafai-- My first and hopefully last movie summary/review

Every once in a while there comes along a movie that is so bad that you are gonna die laughing. Never thought aap ka suroor could be beaten but after watching Bewafai I can safely say there never could be a worse one. I have a nasty stomach ache after that but here's the story in a nutshell. Trust me if you can watch it you would wanna. There are few movies that can make you laugh as bad as this one.

I started watching it somewhere in the middle where Padmini Kolhapuri has just come back to sanity. Rajesh Khanna and Tina Munim are in the middle of a love story. Tina's dad Pran who is also Rajesh Khanna's boss obviously doesn't like this so he does the obvious: send 3 lackeys to kill him. But then 3 lackeys with a machine gun are of course no match for the superstar with 2 heroines. So what does our good old villain do: hire the biggest badass killer there is bigger than even Sunny Deol, the one and only "Rajnikant"(sound effect: taddaaan!!!).

Rajni's of course got the super killer style. He won't use the conventional guns, knives, tigers or poison, so what does he use: a remote controlled automatic gun which is fired using a time bomb. He certainly cannot miss but the hero too cannot die, so Rajesh Khanna ends up with a bullet in the head and occasional headaches and blindness and impending death as marked in the calender after exactly 12 months(after effects of "Anand"). His clues to the murderer, Rajni's calling card, a toy gramophone which sings some "eyes" song. Padmini Kolhapuri runs back to Rajesh's parents so that they can come to a different city and sign a few documents for the hospital but by then our awesome killer has decapitated the dad and given a gentle push off the top floor to the mom. The same mom who predicts the future way better than any economist predicts the stock market(even better than my barber predicting the weather) but well guess she wasn't paid enough to put up more of a fight.

Now you would think watching a loved one shot in the head and his parents dead would send an ex-nutcase back over the brink but no... She goes insane only when Rajesh Khanna shouts at her. Tina is conveniently away with Pran somewhere. Meanwhile another lady enters in(Meenakshi somefink) to romance the lead guy so he can dump his lady love(he's not got much time left between the long monologues) who also wants revenge on the main villain and also hires our big killer. He promptly demonstrates how to send her pet dog into complete paralysis except the eyes with a needle. Padmini gets back from a boating trip after watching Rajni and Tina romancing. Which doc takes a mad patient for a boat-ride is beyond me. So she runs back to report.

So finally everyone there is meets up at a party, Padmini realizes Pran raped her (I am still to find a movie of hers where she did not get raped). Rajesh and pran fight, Rajni secretly does his Kung-fu panda style needle nerve technique(should be called Rajni's techniqe(TM) but then it is super secret and people know only the more mortal panda) and Pran's mostly toast. Rajesh proves Rajni's the killer(how?? fingerprints on the gramophone of course) and a chase sequence where Rajesh due to his occasional blindness or terrible driving killing half the public on the road, destroying all the property there is follows Rajni on a bike.

They take the free for all fencing match back to Rajni's uber cool, world famous, secret hideout which has attack birds and state of the art laboratories among other things. Just as Rajesh gets distracted by Padmini and stabbed, she reveals she is Rajni's sister. Guess the shocks in between cured her. So now these 3 sit down and talk about their lives until then for half an hour when the superstar realizes Rajesh is dying. So after some more casual informal verbal exchanges, he reveals he is also a surgeon with a special offer: A bullet removal free with every sword cut treated. The cops come along at their leisurely pace and shoot Padmini(one for each of her corny one-liners) and Rajni who is done with the surgery, one stitch per bullet that hits him. Rajesh is just glad he doesn't have to pay the bill.

Finally the movie ends with Tina and Rajesh getting together singing songs on a helicopter and a boat and life's good again as the 3rd heroine is pretty bored of Rajesh after the few dates or multiple night stands that she had with him. Finally about the music; The songs in this movie are positively priceless, I wouldn't listen to the album no matter how much you paid me.

Evergreen pastures

Excerpts from the chats of Winston and Bernard:

Bernard: u gotta check out the latest touch screen i got.. Its got web anywhere.. useful to keep checks on the stocks on my way to the office..
Winston: I got that one last year.
Bernard: ya?? thought it hadn't released there..
Winston: oh no. Been having it since the first day it came out, works wonders on my election campaign.
Bernard:don't really care 'bout those here..
Winston:well we need to make sure no dumbbell accidentally screws up. Don't have your luxury of peace.
Bernard:'course.. but then u guys do have other luxuries.. equality does deflate your ego all round.. and u guys do have way cheaper manpower..
Winston:Don't tell me you cant afford it. I hear people higher up have to use all the loopholes every year or they get demoted.
Bernard:We ain't that obvious.. besides we snatch power for the same reason as u guys.. marginally better life than the others.. tho yours is way better..
Winston: Way better than the bulk I agree. But we do have a level for the more "gifted".
Bernard:I still don't get your idea.. inequality among people will piss them off..
Winston:All humans are equal. But you know some are more equal. You must reward talent. That keeps the better ones subdued. The not so talented are like the water that flows in rivers.
Bernard:clean??
Winston:Of no consequence without direction and force.
Bernard:i still say telling people equality rocks.. gives u full right to use philanthropy to cut down any misfit..
Winston:I would still call them revolutionaries not misfits. I was one too.
Bernard:besides i get to always make the rules for everyone..
Winston:We choose when to break them.
Bernard:that's true.. :(
Winston:But you of course have a lesser chance of a "misfit".
Bernard:neither do u.. u always have a few perpetual villains.. known evil is better than the guerrillas.
Winston:But that is at the risk of being one every once in a while.
Bernard:even better.. u have a shape-shifting enemy.. we are still at risk.. invisibility is not invulnerability..
Winston:The media certainly helps us out on the "support the leader front".
Bernard:How ironic. We actually lay out all our cards in the media while you keep the ace in the hidden pocket.
Winston:Not everything should be let out. As for the media, we dust their back, they dust ours.
Bernard:Yes the right information in the right manner would be devastating for both of us. We drown it in a sea of irrelevance, you keep it hidden.
Winston:We also keep the proles busy. When you have to battle each day, you are not going to be searching for holes which are not supposed to be there.
Bernard:We keep everyone busy with enough distractions. There is always something cool to buy, and something cool to watch or do.
Winston:None of them realize there are things way better off than what we show them.
Bernard:Maybe they are not. Everyone's ideal world is not the same.We do have people coming from your land and living here for "the better life"
Winston:We have people coming back and others who settle down here as well.
Bernard:My point exactly. Things may actually be at their best now. We do offer 2 versions of the promised heaven. It may not be perfect but it is the best compromise.
Winston:Or maybe we market hell as heaven and we are just really much better salesmen than statesmen.
Bernard:Oh you want to talk about hell, we at least provide some sort of quality in life. There is Galt's land which oppresses, harvests and and shows us all there is a heaven there.
Winston:I think they are better statesmen than salesmen.
Bernard:Because the rest of us all know that living conditions suck there while they project the opposite?
Winston:Because they keep their people from breaking the shackles despite them being able to see our lives, despite us being able to influence them, despite the people knowing they may not be happy.
Bernard:So they are on earth while we've created the heavens on earth.
Winston:You could say that. now I feel good about what I am doing.
Bernard:OK signing off here. I got a few things to do.
Winston:Ya reminds me, I still have my election to work for. See you later.

Hypocrisy as a way of life

People do have a different set of rules, for the near ones and the other ones. Principles also change with time and space. It is quite obvious and overlooked in most cases but a few unlucky ones get rebuked for it and branded as hypocrite. How nasty is it to change the rules for a game to suit yourself? Cheaters never win do they? But if cheating was the only way then would ethics still permit the use of an uneven playing field to prove superiority? Or would the ethical loser attain the moral high ground from where he could look down on the hypocrite who won. But wait if the loser actually comes out the winner, didn't he just change the game? So who is the bigger hypocrite?

I was reading about Richard Dawkins and I noticed how he spoke about religion actually being dangerous in the aftermath of Sept 11. The funny thing is religion has been around for about 5000 years or more. The only reason that it is considered dangerous is because of the power that it has now. How did it become so powerful? Religion always existed as a way of life just as atheism has been around for a while, though only now has it been seen as something different than a crutch of hope. It gets it's powers not from the fanatical beliefs, but from the advances in technology.

Don't get me wrong, I am an athiest. Just because I do not believe in it does not mean I am against those who do. Religion promoted ritual sacrifices and killing in earlier times but even then it was never branded as evil. It is only now that the power of knowledge in psychology, technology and the advances of humans in all fields is being channeled into it to manipulate and further the needs of a few puppeteers. One definition of power that I heard of says "Power is ability to inflict torture and get away with it". It is all a power game at the end.

Right there lies another great fallacy. Humans are social creatures, every rule created to keep peace, stop violence. Anyone who has heard of the stanford prison experiment, the Milgram experiment knows that this would be a lie. People need a reason to exhibit power, to be able to torture. Everyone knows that highest tv ratings are for the more gruesome scenes. Religion is but a way of life, a part of culture. Humans being the closet sadists will reflect it somewhere. All of this though happens unknowingly. For we are all hypocrites without knowing it. Applying our own rules to each of our own little games. So why is a hypocrite a bad guy? Since he doesn't treat all people equally and everyone is equal. But of course some are more equal.

Beyond the daily bread

Remember those 90s bollywood movies, where someone would be mocked at how shabby India was compared to US of A, he would come out all guns blazing with how great India's culture was. That still manages to catch attention these days. Especially after the recent attacks in the name of culture it becomes almost impossible to talk of Indian culture without explicit comments on that. I will avoid it, since the issue is mostly political. It is not about culture. It never was and getting into it would really steer away from the topic.

Stereotypes serve better than the prodigies to dissect behavior and appreciation of a statistical mass. Painting, sculpture, architectural marvels seem to be just relics of the past. The definition of art is a snake that you can never really pin it down and say you have got it. Even pinned down it just sheds its skin and grows away. With each age the set seems to vary, for example prehistoric wall paintings are now long out of favor while movies seem to be the latest entry. Though somehow literature, paintings and architecture seem to have the endurance of an immortal.

The average citizen certainly does not seem to know or does not seem to care about any of these. This exposes an ignorance or the lack of media portrayals. Either ways it looks very different from the time when learning was not just about education, and encouraged people to better themselves rather than mug others ideas. Even the literature seems to be all moving to English. Ironically I would probably be able to spill my ideas out much better in Hindi. Is it the time to ask ourselves the question is our art shedding its skin, sprouting wings or actually writhing in pain? I know the standard answer: music, movies, the great authors. Frankly I look at the state of regional literature and to me it seems unconscious if not comatose. Artists are discouraged these days. Man does not live by bread alone but certainly needs the bread to live. Immortality in memory has too high a price in life and nobody wants to help another gain it, the risk certainly does not justify the reward.

Of course a few years that I have seen are far too little to draw a conclusion. All I try to do is extend the graph with a few points. Then again there is the way of life which makes up culture quite a bit. Where are we on that point? I remember a story, 10 wired monkeys in a lab with a bunch of bananas hung up and a ladder propped. Every time a monkey stepped on the ladder, a shock was given to all of them. Then they replaced a monkey with an unwired new one. He sees the bananas and the ladder and wonders why no one takes it. Tries to go at it, all the others jump at him and beat him up. Another monkey is replaced the same way and monkeys think alike. He tries the same and gets beaten up as well. The first new one joins in the beating. He doesn't know why but beats the latest monkey just 'coz everyone does that. Gradually all monkeys are replaced with unwired new monkeys and each one faces the same treatment. At the end none of the monkeys were or could be given an electric shock, but no one goes for the bananas.

Frankly I don't think culture could die out. I guess it was never really about art or style of living. More about thoughts and expression. Even if you can stamp out or destroy expression, thoughts cannot be killed. Even a tyrant believes in his principles and thinks about them. The thoughts may not really be compatible with all but they are still thoughts. Just because a culture is unacceptable to someone does not mean it is bad. Classic case of one man's food and another man's poison. However expression gives everyone the kaleidoscope needed to see the colors. It adds choices to the single line of thought and makes people think. Art and style of living are but a result of a process somewhere else, changing that will never change culture. To really mess with culture, you will need to change thoughts.

The truly divine comedy...

Everyday the world is a little better off. 20 thousand years ago, we were monkey swinging from branch to branch. 2000 years ago, we knew all about the philosophy any god could throw at us. A 100 years ago, science was almost mapped out. Yet I bet the monkeys had no Monday blues, (or Sunday blues depending on where you work).

I am not being sarcastic here. We have all the art, the culture, the whole humans together thing. We are social people, far above the other lowlifes that we permit co-existence. We know to appreciate the good life, the beauty of creativity, the challenge of a quandary. A human's life has so much more meaning to it. It is not just about food and survival, it is a lot more than that. At least for some of us. I agree some certainly do not have that privilege, scrounging for the next meal as a street mongrel is the order of the day for the unfortunate few. But even they may chance upon the occasional snack for the inner higher being.

Now here's where I found my quandary. Adversity brings out the best or the worst in everyone. Even the pathetic fools from whom nothing could be expected. It is only the proverbial trial by fire which tempers the steel. Then why do we move towards the better life. Why does everyone want the garden of Eden if it will reduce us to the mediocre animals, who eat, sleep and make more of the same that we strive so hard to rise above? Are we not smart enough to see that we are bugs attracted by our nature to the bright light that will zap us if we manage to get there? Or are we so beyond that, that we know we are never getting there and trying to make the most of the journey?

Funny thing is we rose above to become worse. Only we slog everyday the way we could to make things a little bit better. Knowledge truly is the Satan's apple, the one thing that can make a paradise seem like hell. Then again, it is hell that puts heaven into a perspective. Without hell there is no heaven, and without heaven, hell would be just another hot place. I guess that is why it is human nature to create hell if it does not exist. For mediocrity is the sole right of those who cant whether they know it or not. Necessity being the sole reason for innovation, creating necessity also becomes a needed "evil".

Imagine a beautiful world with beautiful grasslands, deer hopping about,an all you can eat gourmet with the best wines, which would still keep you looking as fit as a Greek sculpture for all the time in the universe. A world where violence was an alien word, problems could never be created, and time would always stop for you to smell the flowers.
That's the stuff my nightmares are made of.

There is no business like show business

It has been quite a while since I saw a movie in the theatre. 'Rocky 6' I did not watch. I sat and made sure no one else around me went through the torture. 'Blood Diamond' was really good. Not going to figure in my top classic movies list but then still worth the office bunk that I did for it. Did not really touch me or anything but I loved the pace of it and the way it was handled.

Anybody who talks to me will figure out in 5 minutes that 'Shawshank Redemption' is one of my all time favourites. It is for quite a few people. The twist in the tale, for the better end is amazing, though it was my favourite even before I got to the end. Morgan Freeman does one hell of a job there and his dialogue about the free birds was more of a 'heart warmer' than the twist.

Those final little twists in the climax do a lot to the pull up the story line, but without the background, it would end up to be nothing more than an excuse for onlookers to do other things.
'Adaptation' is not that famous a movie, but it does figure in my favourite list. It brings a whole new meaning to the word irony. Really love the way the rules are laid out in the first half and every one of them broken to itty bitty pieces in the second. I did not believe that was possible. It is a crazy movie and frankly i have seen nothing like it. Don't think I will either.

Then of course there is 'fight club'. The Brad Pitt and Edward Norton one. Any hindi movie watcher will know why I said that. Interesting thought about that being the story of Calvin and Hobbes grown up. Never saw that coming, but it does make sense in a lot of places that way. For a change schizoprenia is used and not misused in movie. These few movies stand out when I think of movies. Especially since they are not there because of the eye candy or the emotional arm twisting. They are there because of smart ideas and an even better presentation.

Empathy or the 'wow' factor puts a lot of movies on the charts. Wonder what happened to honest story telling for just the sake of the story, where there never was a hero you wanted to be or no situation you could connect to, or no funnies that made your heart happy. Maybe it never existed. I have nothing against the flashy, sentimental, heroic or the funny ones. They are pure entertainers but then I prefer the ones which appeal to the mind not to the heart. Tough to find those. Movies are still art and somehow my view of art is not what stays in the heart but what actually kick starts your mind. Sounds wierd? Art is something which has a different definition for everyone (some may not agree but this is my blog), and this is my definition.

I do watch movies that make me laugh. I watch stuff that makes me go 'hey I wish I could beat up 50 people all alone' or 'wish I could be the hero and not the villain for a change'. I have seen things which bring wierd fantasies to life. Not talking about porn, you pervert. Still make fun of the sentimental ones, but then I could never like them. That is all plain entertainment. Paintings, sculpture and music is art. Not all of it, I am sure you will agree. Otherwise I could draw a picture, make a statue and play the trumpet to show you why all of it is not art. Similarly some of these things are an art. Maybe not to all of us, but to a few like me.

P.S. Sorry just had to mention 'The Truman Show'. Totally forgot about it.