Life – Page 83 – Nourish-n-Cherish

The Frog Said: PJ LOL

Humankind has to stop every now and then and take a breath to see what are the things that need to be passed down from one generation to the next. So far, story-telling seems to be the best way to make sure that essential details are passed down. Things that may be important years afterward like spiritual knowledge, or the virtues that are important. The only problem is we seem to be passing on a lot of stories, and not all of them are poised to stick for a million years. I mean marshal the facts: we have Mahabharata, Ramayana, Greek legends, Norse and Roman mythology that have been around for thousands of years. As if all this were not enough, we keep adding to the repertoire all the time: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter etc. To this ever evolving and rich lot, we must add tales of real men and women like the unfortunate noblemen who have found his fame as the greatest gobblers of all time: The Earl of Sandwich

Yet, will all this be enough to prepare us for success a million years from now? Time for me to stop, take a breath and tell you where I am going with all of this right? Well, here is a startup that is operating on the premise that people will pay to send text messages to a potentially habitable solar system that is at least 17 light years away.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/17/technology/enterprise/lone-signal/?google_editors_picks=true

I quote from the article:

The messages are being beamed to Gliese 526, a potentially habitable solar system that is relatively close to Earth.
In addition to the text messages, which can be written in any language, Lone Signal will simultaneously send a message written in binary code — the language computers use to communicate — that contains basic principles of physics. The idea is that these principles apply throughout the universe and thus are more likely to be understood by an alien than, say, a text message written in English.

Every system’s design has a few assumptions. I am glad these are called out in the news article clearly. Binary code and basic principles of Physics can apply throughout the universe.

What will we do when we receive answers from these beings? Maybe a thousand years from now. Will our children know the lore of the anonymous text message that was sent to them hundreds of years ago?

The aliens received the message, decoded them and got “PJ LOL” from the message. After years of research trying to understand its meaning and craft a reasonable response, we receive “DGKG DF@#JRJF”

Now what?

Once upon a time, a frog lived in a well…

PS: The UK government has now closed the UFO desk as well. (http://www.space.com/21671-ufo-files-alien-spacecraft-mod.html?cmpid=514630)

Chocoleg Law Enforcement

It was one of those days when I was beginning to ask myself why we have made life more complicated in an effort to make it simpler. I was just tutting and clicking my tongue when I saw this news article. This child wrote a letter to the Vice President with a possible solution to the gun control problem. He suggested making bullets of chocolate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/joe-biden-letter_n_3271533.html

How marvelous! It need not be chocolate, but it could be bullets of a different nature: a stinger rather than a killer. The bullets of the killing kind can only be obtained in limited quantity after intense background checks and so on.

If chocolate bullets work, why not Lego blocks in police chases?

Imagine this scary criminal heading out. He is prepared: his car is ready and he grabs his gun. He decides on wearing his vibrams since it ought to help him if it comes to a chase on foot. Of course, he hopes there will be no chase at all, but hopes and dreams turn out quite different from real life. This criminal is about to learn this hard truth very soon.

After the deed is done, he sees that his worst fear is coming true. The police cars are clobbering him. A hot chase later, a patrol helicopter appears on the scene and it starts raining down Lego blocks.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57572674-1/lego-spill-tangles-up-west-virginia-highway/

There is no way for the car to maneuver. What does he do? What does he do? He glances at his feet in desperation. The vibrams. That is what he must do, he has to go for a run.

The Scary criminal laughs and grabs his gun to take off on foot and what happens?

OUCH! Running on lego blocks hurt man! Ask any parent who has trod on the things at the middle of the night, and they’ll tell you. Left with nothing to do, he whips out his gun and starts shooting. For a second he is triumphant and then realizes that the gun has done nothing but spurt a fountain of chocolate.

“FATE!” he exclaims and throws down his gun as he stubs his toe on a Lego block of hideous proportions.

The criminal is caught and the watching populace cheer at the ingenuity of the operation.

Give a few minutes for a heli-based giant vacuum cleaner to suck up the lego blocks and spray water on the chocolate rivers to wash off the cars and life is beautiful once again.

Do you see any problems with using chocolates and legos for preliminary law enforcement? I quite like the idea.

The Queen Mother

The Mother’s Day gifts from the daughter are always a bit overwhelming. For days ahead, I am not allowed to step into her room or throw out any scraps of paper because they may belong to a piece of the gift she is making for me. I sigh and turn my eye at all the ensuing mess secretly enjoying all the effort that goes into the presents she showers me with.

This time, she said, I must be prepared to have the wind knocked out of me, for the gift would make me wish I was a Queen that no one would bother ever again. I really am not sure where she thinks that the most appealing thing for a Queen is not to be bothered again. I mean wouldn’t the Queen wonder why everyone is leaving her out of things? Imagine yourself to be the Queen. There is a dinner banquet downstairs and everybody arrives dressed immaculately, having wonderful conversations amongst themselves, and pile into the food without the Queen. What would the effect be on the Q’s psyche?

Anyway, I must say she got her wish. You see she made me a crown of a magenta color. Then, she went ahead and glued on large ‘precious stones’ on them. She gushed that the color would suit me splendidly and I thanked her for it. She was right – the color suited me perfectly. I blushed a matching magenta wearing that crown. Of one thing she was assured. With me in that crown, there isn’t a single soul who would think of bothering me!

I wanted to wear the crown and go down to the Supermarket to see the effect it would have on people, but I chickened out. I just couldn’t. Like all windows of opportunity, the crown window was an extremely slim one. Risk it on Mother’s Day and tug the daughter along, there was a chance people would think me as a mom in need of an intervention, but could have escaped without being marched off to the loony bin. But, I let Mother’s Day slip through my fingers. I regret it a little now. If ever there was classic blogging material, that would have been it. I must make a note of that for myself for next year.

I am waiting to see if the husband would get himself a crown to call himself a King. If he does, I will need a little bit of help getting him to wear the thing in public, but I suppose it is worth a shot for a blog entry. What do you say?

Walking with Spirit to Dakota and Pluto

I’ve written about the pony before. The daughter loved riding that pony, Spirit, so much, that this was her entry for the Google Doodle.

I was pleasantly surprised at this entry of hers. She practiced it on her little drawing board multiple times over. It started off with a barn and then morphed into the all-to-do-with-horses theme.

Maybe an occasional day with horses could be her indulgence we thought to ourselves and arranged for another pony ride for her. But this time, they gave her a horse, and told her she could ride it herself. Tell the husband something like this and his inner hero rises automatically. “Don’t worry!” he tells her. “I will ride with you on another horse to make sure you are fine. Don’t worry!”

“But I am not worried!” laughs the daughter rolling her eyes perfectly at this (an art form that seemed to be have been honed over decades of practice, but it can’t have been seeing that she is less than a decade old)

Stung, the husband said, she did not know anything about galloping horses and he would be her savior if the need arose. So, the pair of them set off to get saddled and bridled or whatever else horse-riders and their mounts do. The first thing they were required to do was to fill a form asking if they’ve ridden horses before. The daughter proudly answered ‘Yes’.

The husband flashed his mind back to the time his parents had arranged for him to mount a well-nourished donkey that called itself a horse on the beaches of the dirty Marina Beach in Chennai at the age of 9 and decided to answer ‘No’. “That horse”,he said later, “used to stray off to eat peanuts and trash paper on the beach completely forgetting that a rider was upon it!”

keena riding

The daughter was assigned Pluto and the husband Dakota. Dakota was supposed to follow Pluto. The husband was to chase after the galloping Pluto remember? They waved their good-byes and set off. From here on, I enter the terrain of pure hearsay. The accounts of the husband and the daughter diverge a good deal, and I have taken the liberty of constructing my own sequence.

The husband says that Dakota seemed to think Pluto was his playmate and took great pleasure in tickling Pluto on his hind. The daughter says that Pluto was doing fine till Dakota annoyed him. Pluto and Dakota reached an impasse and one of the instructors had to intervene and send Dakota ahead of Pluto.

There was another problem: Dakota differed from the horse on Marina Beach in one respect only. It went for grass and not paper and trash, but that may be because the trail upon which they rode did not have paper and trash. It kept going off to eat grass and straying from the path.

The daughter had to take on the role of savior and had to shout out instructions to the husband on how to reign Dakota in and keep him on the path. The husband hotly contests this and says he knew all along how to go about horse riding, but did not want to yank at the reins for it might hurt the horse.

What can I say?! Potato – Potaato.

3D Arguments

I often see people at meetings, lunches, trains and restaurants looking down and screwing their otherwise normal eyes into weird angles while concentrating on their phone screens.

Looking down and looking intent achieves two purposes in public:

1) Look important : I am sorry, did I just miss something? That should be okay because I was catching up on something else and if the something trumps the s.else that I just missed, I am sure I will know when I am looking at the phone in the next meeting what?

2) Look busy: Thanks to modern technology, one has time-wasters at one’s tips. There is Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus and then there are the myriad apps for news and games. All of these allow people to zone out from their current surroundings.

As if this were not enough Samsung is looking to introduce transparent flexible 3D screens. We can look straight at people, and give them the illusion of listening to them, while the TV screen flashes in front of you. I wonder how old couples’ quarrels would like when this becomes commonplace.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2070741/Samsungs-transparent-flexible-screen-3D-real-looks-like-touch-it.html

Of Whales, Monkeys and Bindis

I know what I am about to say can be taken the wrong way. But are we really better than whales or monkeys?

For a people that prides itself on its culture and spends hours touting its alleged superiority, Indians seem to have come in behind whales and monkeys when it comes to embracing more people into our culture. I can’t tell you the number of times the Indian cultural police have hit the headlines complaining about the influence of the Western culture on the modern youth. Yet, when the modern w. youth does adopt one of the Indian cultural practices, what did they do?

I am referring, of course, to a slightly dated story on Selena Gomez sporting a bindi. I spent a good portion of my life being pulled up by random aunts, uncles, not to mention my dear mother about not sporting a bindi.

This cartoon sums up the Bindi troubles of any South Indian Brahm lass (Got this from http://tambrahmrage.tumblr.com/ – I tried to find the link to this post, but couldn’t. Luckily I had sent it for laughs within my family a while ago)

So, I expected the news that Selena Gomez was wearing one to strengthen their position. I mean, all they had to say was: “It is even fashionable, you still don’t want a bindi?”

I expected the Indian c.police to namaste-her, make an example of her and what not. What they proceeded to do, instead, was ask her to learn of the deep cultural ramifications of the bindi and enlightened folks like me about how it is not a fashion accessory.

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-style/news/selena-gomez-wears-bindi-for-4th-time-despite-controversy-2013254

I can see your eyebrows shooting past the bindi mark now.

Well, the news item I read had nothing to do with bindis. It has to do with how these species learnt cultural behaviors from one another and adapted to changing conditions. Bringing more to the fold was critical to adaptation.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/25/on-copyca-whales-conformist-monkeys-and-animal-cultures/

Clearly, we are lacking there. Also, it was just cool to link the cultural adaptations of monkeys, whales and humans.

That also correlates with this study where Indians ranked near the very bottom of the pile of folks surveyed, they would much rather live near themselves than welcome racial ethnicity. Even when they wear bindis.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/?hpid=z2

And so it goes ….

Despicable Me?

One time, we were waiting to start our hike at an unearthly hour in the morning. Typically, parking at the hiking spot tends to be a bit tight and we spend a few cycles trying to find parking. We watched sullenly as cars circled around the space and then made their way down-hill to park elsewhere. Then, a noisy bunch of people came and parked in the handicapped parking spot and piled out. At first we thought the kindly driver was dropping folks off and then was going to find a parking spot as the rest of the rambunctious party stretched themselves. But no. A bunch of solid people piled out of the car and all the solid people stretched on their solid limbs. The driver clambered out as well flexing his strong muscles and cracking his knuckles.

A bunch of hikers watching the whole scene unfold, kindly drew their attention to the fact that they were parked in the disabled spot. The knuckle-cracking driver said, “Oh don’t worry! I borrowed a disabled parking spot sticker and am planning to use it!” He then proceeded to look extremely proud of himself, like the most novel idea for the parking problem was his and he hung the disabled card before proceeding to crunch a few times.

My friends and I were shocked! I would have thought somebody who pulled a low trick like that would have the sense to be ashamed about it.

It turns out that it takes all kinds to make a world. I had dismissed the lot to the back of my brain till this news item brought them back to the foreground again.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/disney_world_srich_kid_outrage_zTBA0xrvZRkIVc1zItXGDP
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/15/us/disney-skipping-lines/index.html

These rich people in NY hire disabled people for the day to take with them to Disneyland posing as family members, so they can cut lines and use the disabled access lines.

Now really! Come on! What is their favorite movie? Despicable Me?

Buggy Drivers

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have self driven cars as the norm. I would love to use the time towards things I enjoy more than driving. Reading, for instance, or writing. I spent the morning crawling across 5 miles that I could have run across in the same time. When this happens, the mind looks for options and what a beautiful option Science threw my way!

Some scientists in Tokyo got moths to drive a free moving polystyrene ball. I quote:
The moths would scramble, or dance, across the surface, moving the ball, which moved the vehicle.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/05/08/182312510/moths-that-drive-cars-really

“Awesome!” I thought to myself and read on. Already envisioning a larger moth at the wheel of my car while I lolled around in the back. I wouldn’t have to make conversation with the moth, I could even sleep! *Gasp* A smile was slowly coming across my face.

I had hardly gone past a few paragraphs with that smile when this put a stopper on my daydreams.

The problem is, they didn’t know they were driving. They are moths, after all. What they thought they were doing was zeroing in on a lady moth. Dr. Ando procured a supply of moth perfume, the pheromone scent of an aroused female, placed it at the end of a tube, turned on a tiny fan and blew the scent at the male.

I am not sure I would like to entrust my precious life to a moth who is more interested in showing off for the female species. I mean what if this moth smelt a tantalizing fe-moth in the ocean or flying t. moth above? Too risky if I intend to nap in the backseat, on the whole.

As a software engineer, I should have known to stay away from buggy drivers – sigh!

Google’s self driving cars seem to be a better bet for now.

The Real Estate Tent

I am not much of a financial-reports-reading sort of person. I can’t call myself as having my pulse in the economic hub of things, but I know the housing market is picking up in the US. “How?” you ask. You see, the market only has to increase slightly every other day and a glossy piece of paper arrives with a picture of a realtor on it.

I suppose somebody told the realtor community that posting their own pictures on pamphlets appeals to folks.

“Look friendly, look approachable and open and smile!” says the photographer before clicking away.

So, every single one of them wills themselves to put up pictures of themselves. The problem is that some people want to look sincere too. But when they have to also look approachable and open and warm, they are trying really hard to put a lot into that smile and the results are slightly bizarre. There was one realtor whose picture looked like she was pursued by a clown down a scary path that leads into a forest with a puppet party at the end of the path and the only thing to lead her to the puppet party was a nasty smell that she was sniffing out sincerely.

Every time a realtor leaves their precious picture on my doorstep, I smile (a genuine smile) and look at the pictures. I must note down what I think of each realtor without knowing a thing about them and make a collection of it. Of course, real estate is a tough business and people try all the options available to them. Mostly I bestow a benign eye at their attempts and wish them luck, but this one went a bit too far in my opinion.

This was his pamphlet:

I am all for enthusiasm, don’t get me wrong here. I am an enthusiastic person myself, but I know to draw the line. Really! This is MY house he are talking about. What does he mean by saying “I want to sell it immediately?”

I suppose realtors will soon be leaving complimentary tents along with their pamphlets so we can camp out in neighboring fields while they sell our house!

I like the gall. Just for that, I am not selling my house! I should take a print-out of that and give it back to him with a picture of myself on it. You know? Frighten the fellow a bit.

Sense of Humour? Wicked!

I sometimes wonder why people have such a wicked sense of humor (How do you pluralize sense of humor? Is it sense of humors or senses of humor or senses of humors)

I remember one time walking down the street in the evening and admiring the beauty of the large moon. The next day, I see a you-tube video pasted all over my Facebook page explaining the beauty of the moon and how to make sure that the phenomenon was really a matter of perception. When closer to the horizon, it seems bigger, that is all.

The problem is not the video. The problem is the place asking one to verify for yourself by bending and observing the moon through your legs like this:

Before you know it, the roads are full of chaps bending over and trying to verify the size of the moon through their legs. There is nothing more inviting for a practical joke than a person attempting that on the road. Do you think there is some kind of reality video app for everyone who clicked the video to see them bending over and making fools of themselves on the street? There was one man who was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. He had that prosperous-lawyer-or-accountant look about him. One minute, he was breezing along admiring the large moon and the next his stride faltered. It is hard to see whether a man is blushing from the back, but in his case, proved easy. He was blushing pretty indeed. He looked discreetly over his shoulder, discovered we were walking behind him, and might boot him on the back if he exposed himself to the risk and shelved the idea. But, had he been a man of stronger nerves, I should not have been surprised if I had seen him peering through his legs at the moon.

There are three or four methods by which people get you.

I don’t know whether you’ve seen these numerous posts that tell you life’s most wondrous things will unfold before if you cock your eyes and type ‘1’. I usually ignore these, but gave in to my curiosity just once. I cocked my eyes and sat at the edge of the chair waiting for life’s mysteries to unfold before me as I typed ‘1’. But I swear nothing happened. Nothing. I suppose that is the mystery of life.

There is nothing to expect when you expect it.

Then of course, there are these huge matrices of letters telling you that the first word you find describes you the best. I found ‘TUB’ I wonder what that means…oh well.

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