Category: Personal

It has been an unusually long and eventful weekend. And I have a lot to say. I cannot say all here and so some of them are on my space weblog.

The exam dates are out. This means lower net presence over the next 3 weeks. I am looking forward to this small hiatus. After that, I believe I will be going to my native place. Tickets are booked.

At the same time, the plan for studying is ready. Everything is set for the exam mode. I also plan to have a small school reunion next week that may be pull-pushed.

Over the past six-months I have been reading articles of creating new architectures of the Internet to make it better, safer and more accessible to people around the world. These seemed to have been running around at the back of my head. Reading the second part of Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence sort of brought it back into the realms of thinking.

So, I ask this question, if a network as vast as the Internet can be changed, why not Science. Heck, why not Philosophy?

And, in the next second that sounds odd if you don’t follow it through a series of thought-process. Think: What’s the problem with science? and end at “If its not right..why not change it?”

I posted a snippet on Unniyarcha yesterday. That’s because Asianet ( the first malayalam private cable channel – am i right? ) is beaming a programme related to her. She’s been made famous before in a movie staring Mammooty called Oru Vadakan Veeragatha (A Northern Story of Bravery) but there the focus was lateral not direct.

Mammooty plays the role of Chandu who is blamed for the death of Unniyarcha’s husband. The plot runs deeper because Unniyarcha was destined to be married to Chandu but was married to the man who Chandu allegedly killed.

Unniyarcha prepares her children to kill Chandu. He beats them in a straight fight. However they refuse to give up until they or Chandu die. At this point, Chandu commits suicide with the last words that Unniyarcha’s children should never loose. The story is actually more romantic action.

All of this is supposedly the next set of tales after the story of Unniyarcha herself.

If I got the story wrong, feel free to correct it! If you have an online snippet of the story feel free to post it!

I don’t really understand this, but I am going again and again to text. I seem not so good with images and making things interesting. And I’ve switched from the in-your-face Cutline to the sublime-and-mystic Tarski. Love that theme. But, there is some problems on how it shows comments on the individual posts. Nothing I can do about it though – so scroll down to read the comments on a post if there are any!

If you’ve seen the url properly you will see the words pradx.

This is not supposed to be some sort of an odd gen-x thing. I am using x as a variable as used in algebra and stuff in pure mathematics.

All my ids have only one constant thing – prad. The rest of the id changes. eg. it’s prad2609 on Yahoo!, it’s pradeepnair on YouTube…etc. etc.

Legendary warrior figure, sister of Aromal Chekayar, mother Aromalunny. The songs and chronicles to this day kept the legend alive. She was born in the Puthooram Veedu family. The famous warriors, Aromal Chevakar and Unnikannan were her brothers. Like her brothers, Unniyarcha was also trained in the arts of war. She is praised in Vadakanpattu. She is considered as a heroine and symbol of female ability.

[source]

I do not like to mix photos and text. Just one exception though. I might end up using more time studying and so I might just put up photos on my blog. Photos like the ones I put up yesterday. Hopefully I have some 150 MB of storage space. WordPress gives me 50 MB, Picasa gives me 100 MB, and some from Flickr. So, not a bad thing all in all.

Hope you like the photos. These are my picks. Also keep an eye on my link blog in the sidebar to see the stuff that I am reading on Google Reader. This change to photos is happening because I can’t afford to write for about a month now. I can upload photos even within an hour. Not so with photographs.

Spend today listening to lounge music.

I have to remind myself that a lot of maintainence work needs to be done in this weblog. I prefer the fuller version.

Talks of Web 3.0 abound. Guess we have to talk of many things in that language. The old description of “The beginning of a new era” was so much better. Atleast, people don’t say life 2.0. If they did, I don’t know which version number I would be.

I was wondering. Is the world really such a complex place? Or is it the Governments making it that way?

Some word on Enigma, because I’m listening to it now, from the CD literature:

Enigma is the brainchild of Michael Cretu, a Romania born electronics and studio wizard who blended various global sounds to catchy samples and incredible sound design. While Cretu composed and produced the music, his wife Sandra chipped in with haunting vocal passages. The music cuts across all barriers and appeals to all generations.

Learn more about Enigma from Wikipedia

I wonder what will happen to this weblog once they become passe or when..What happens to all these words logged in notebooks with several of the people’s thoughts have been typed in. And yet, there are many things that are not online. We will become mature about the Internet only when we set it’s limitations – in terms of time, affect on offline life etc.

Is the habit of children drawing on the walls the result of our ancestors drawing on their wall centuries ago?

Report after report talks about the SC order to stay reservations in this academic year. Oh, by the way the reservation is an increase of 27% to nearly 49%.

This report in the morning newspaper freaked me:

“It will come as a major relief to students of the backward and reserved categories, if Mumbai University’s plan to reduce the admission fees to the management and computer degree courses ranging between Rs. 50,000 and Rs. 1.5 lakhs to only Rs. 75 (Seventy five only, if you can’t believe it) is okayed. Once in place, it will allow ppor and backward class students to take admission in the best management institutes which have very high admission fees.”

Report from the Mumbai Mirror.

I’m all for educating the poor. But, what promise can you offer that these people will continue to work in this country once they’ve finished. Why does that matter? Well, it is the Government’s (which it gets through people paying taxes) money that will have to fill in the rest. Shouldn’t they be bound since they’re getting a benefit from us to stay in India for a period of 5 years? That’s the least you can do to ensure that student’s whose education the Government pays for pays back some money to the Government in taxes? Or, you can also offer students special funding as loans which they can repay later on. That makes sense.

But investing in something with the hope that the students will stay on and work in India is like a VC’s job that the Government is doing.

Hell, what would the Government do, if the richer people pay their way through to becoming OBCs and get their education done in Rs. 75? And what about ordinary people’s kids who won’t get a chance to enter these institutions?

Also, do you think students will value their education if they don’t have to work hard for getting that degree. And with standards of education allegedly falling, what will they gain?

Another interesting point is about how the opinion of the people and the politicians on the ground vary so much.

If you do not teach these communities to be self-reliant and be independent what you will face in the future is just unimaginable. That is the reason for my not backing these or any reservations. However, I don’t really mind, because after working for five or six years to ensure that I give back to India the debt that I owe her, I plan to leave this country. I will be greatful for being born in such a diverse land whose diversity was its strength in the past but just might become its weakness in the future.