Change

"The only thing constant is change"
It is time to update your links, bookmarks, homepages (ok homepage sounds a lil too much) to this new location http://phoenixblogs.blogspot.com

The study

According to a new study, one third of all the studies made are nonsense...

Confused by the claim made I did not know if I should read this particular new study or not ;) . Here is the abstract!

Warrior's guide in the battlefield...

Disclaimer: This is my views based on my understanding of things I read.


Warrior's guide in the battlefield might be a possible title if the Bhagavad Gita is written today instead of it being writen in 3000 BC. The Gita (Bhagavad Gita), one of the most coveted religious texts in Hinduism is the counsel that Krishna offers to Arjuna (the archer) in the battlefield of Kurukshetra.

Arjuna has to fight this enemies, but faces a great distress before fighting because the enemies consists of his teacher, other persons whom he has greatest respects for. Arjuna faces a lot of conflicts thinking about fighting his Guru who has taught him archery. Arjuna wants to drop his weapons and run away from the battlefield because of the same. The Gita is about how krishna counsels arjuna to fight and helping him overcome his internal conflicts.

Why is it important to me? I am not an warrior and I am not gonna fight any battle in my life time. So why should I care about somebody's counsel to a warrior in a battlefield.

I think that the battlefield is a metaphor (or a simili dont know which is correct), and we are the warriors. To give examples, to a basketball player the court he plays is the battlefield, to a student his school is the battlefield, this could be extended in every possible walks and dimensions. The whole idea of Gita (as i understand) is to do our duties in the battlefield with discipline and not quitting the battlefield at any time because of our inner conflicts. So if I were a student (warrior) I must perform the duties in my school (battlefield) so on and soforth for all walks of life.

(Often) We stumble upon conflicts and problems in performing duties in our battlefield, there are times that we face so much stress that we opt to quit the battlefield as we have some problem or the other in performing duties. This spirtual text is for Arjuna in us not to quit the battlefield but to stay in it and perform our duties with discipline.

On a relevant note, I happened to read what Vivek Paul has said in reply for being asked what is the secret of success (i have paraphrased the question )...Paul replies that having large goals and having the strictest discipline in working towards it is the secret of sucess...

The Gita ends with this words...

"Where Krishna is the lord of discipline,
and Arjuna is the archer,
there do fortune, victory, abundance,
and mortality exist, so I think"

I see a lot of same thing being said in Vivek Paul's reply and in the last few lines of the gita and I think it is totally cool way to end the awesome book.

This is what I think how the Gita does touch upon Existentialism, here is a previous post for the context and background.

The Gita speaks all the time that in a battlefield a man must perform his duties with discipline, but it never explains what the duties of the man in the battlefield is...which may hint subtly that man is free to choose his duties but must perform the duty he chose with utmost discipline which correlates well with the ideologies of existentialism...

The God of abstract things...

Just a (wierd) thought...what would be the god of abstract things... with due apologies to Arundhathi Roy ! ;)

	C++ class		an abstract base class
	a COM object		IUnkown
If I were	Linux	God to me is	init process
	A CPU		Transistor
	Mathematics		Equation
	A bug		the developer

His day...

He is supposed to be one the most valuble asset to the company, but is never thanked enough for his duties. People know his worth only if things dont go on well, though he may work day and night to keep things runnning smoothly..Today (07/29) is system administrator's day....Atlast the guy who truly deserves a day for himself gets a day.

After Thoughts:
I think Feb 15th is a good day for ex-girlfriend /ex-boyfriend's day ...Because you may have a chance to pair up with your ex's if your Feb 14th plan did not work...It is a nice chance to rekindle lost romance right? ;-) What say folks?

The Stranger

This post was triggered because of this article by Lazygeek

I have enjoyed reading some books and even after years after reading find it absolutely wonderful recalling some aspects of the book. Some books were wonderful just reading it and I donot have special liking afterwards. But there is one and only book which I HATED while reading, felt pathetic after reading but after a few months I find that book absolutely wonderful.

The Stranger (L'etranger) by Albert Camus is that book which i detested while reading but enjoy every aspect of it afterwards...I did not read the French version which is the original by Camus, but a translated one. Moi francias est ne pas tres bon, ok you know why I read the le translation ;)

The book was suggested to me by my friend who believes in existentialism...He did not tell me what existentialism was but handed me this book and told me to read.

The story revolves around a man called Mersault. Mersault is dull, dispassionate and has a no ambition in him, that is the kinda character that is portrayed. He describes his mom's death with a least bit of passion and remorse...The book starts off with Mersault's description of his mom's death, "Mom died today or may be the yesterday I dont know" clearly showing a lack of attachment. He has a girlfriend but does not feel anything for her. He shoots a guy for no apparent reason and does not even feel a slightest bit of remorse for the person whom he killed. The entire story revolves around Mersault and what happens to him.

I felt really pathetic after reading half of the story and wanted to drop the book, but I kept on going to see what happens to Mersault...Ok, i am not a moron to give away the ending..But I felt really pathetic after reading the book and wondered why my friend gave me that book to read....I did not look into to see what existentialism was either....

After a few months I casually came across this term (existentialism) and to my found the concept absolutely wonderful. That is the philosophy I always believed in not knowing any concept that such a concept already existed.

Existentialism has varied meanings these days and various people have various interpretations of the same...But I like this interpretation the best...Man is responsible for his own actions and behaviours, he is free to choose what he wants to be.Another popular phrase which I like is existence preceeds essence, which is "meant to mean" that there is no predefined essence to humanity but the one he (a human) creates by his existence.

After I read this thing about existentialism my whole view of The Stranger changed like I was having a breath of fresh air...I think it is one of the classics I have ever read...The beauty of the book is that it is Camus view of existentialism as is..There is no interpretation attached to it. So if one were to read that book he will hate that book to the core, but if you know the philosophy after or before reading the book the entire experience is amazing.

Existentialism is not new chapter to Indian philosophy, it is has been already said in The Bhavagad Gita but in a very very subtle way...(will talk of it in the future as this post is getting longer...)

Polynomiography

If you find mathematics dull, hard to imagine; there is a breath of fresh air for you called Polynomiography which could make things look interesting for you. If you love math then there is more to explore in polynomiography....

Polynomiography is a new field of math, which deals with visualizing polynomials....





The above figure is not created by an artist but it is a polynomial visualization of roots of a polynomial. Cool aint it? ;)

Polynomiography a new field discovered by Dr. Bahman Kalantari at Rutgers is a confluence of math, art and comp science. One of the important applications of this field is to make Math even more interesting from a education point of view (to school kids), other application could be to create new design cards, animations and visualization... If you are interested you can check more info here, here is a SIGGRAPH paper whichis worth reading !!

There is software in this site which is fun to play with.