Well, recently I have been experiencing a serious subject crisis. What I mean to say is : despite all the events that are happening around us, lately I have been feeling a lack of subjects or topics to write on/about. I cannot come up with a reason to explain this apparently strange phenomenon right now; maybe the things around me aren't inspiring the writer in me, or whatever. It need not be mentioned that the frequency with which I write blog posts is on an all time low. But the pen has to be kept in flow, lest the ink might dry up; hence I am putting forward this post. Before you judge me (on the basis of the content), let me ask you to read the opening sentence once again.
Well, pickup lines have been the basis of all population, if you know what I mean. When I say all population, I mean almost all population. Let us, for the sake of the argument, leave out India from the population I was talking about ( a logical thinker might protest this segregation, arguing that India is almost all the population in the world; oh, what the heck! ), for here the conventional protocol that leads to population is the concept called “arranged marriage”. For those oblivious of the concept of a pickup line, let me quickly enlighten you with the definition: a pick-up line is a conversation opener with the intent of engaging an unfamiliar person (usually of the opposite sex) for dating, romance or copulation. In other words, a pickup line is the hammer with which you strike the ice to break it.
Without making more fuss about it, I'll list fifteen pickup lines which I found worthy to be included in this post. Now that IIIT is full of new faces, these might come in handy for my college mates. For what it's worth, this might still make a good reading:
1.If I asked you out, would the answer to that question be the same as the answer to this one?
( I personally would give it a ten on ten. It is foolproof, only that nine out of ten people who 'd be addressed are likely to fail to figure this out. )
2.If I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put U and I together.
3.You've made me so nervous that I've totally forgotten my standard pick-up line.
4.(After the target walks in) And out of nowhere comes the sunshine!!
5.Do you have any raisins? No? How about a date?
6.I'm sorry, were you talking to me? Target: No. Well then, please start.
7.My friends bet me that I didn't have the guts to talk to the most beautiful girl in this bar. Wanna drink with their money?
8.Excuse me, but I DO think it's time we met.
9.I was blinded by your beauty so I'm going to need your name and number for insurance reasons.
10.I'm invisible. (Target : Really?) Can you see me? ( Target: Yes) How about tomorrow night?
11.Apart from being sexy, what do you do for a living?
12.Can I take a picture of you, so I can show Santa just what I want for Christmas.
13. Hey I just realized this, but you look alot like my next girlfriend.
14.Screw me if I am wrong, but haven't we met before?
15.I bet you $40 you're gonna turn me down.
Showing posts with label Spirituality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spirituality. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Remembering Murphy- Murphy's Law
I never had a slice of bread,
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
And always on the buttered side.
Everything is either said for a reason or for no reason at all. It is noteworthy how certain sentences say just what they're supposed to and never fail to astound us with their truth. Every person, unless he's dumb says something. Even the dumb who have been deprived of their power of speech say things by their actions. The responsibility of understanding what has been said is ours entirely and it is only us - who understand - who can actually propagate what we heard so that others can hear what we say.
One such man who said something worth pondering over was Edward A. Murphy, Jr., an engineer by profession. I respect him not only because he was an engineer but because of that something he said. His statement is called Murphy's law today and it exhibits the firmness of the grasp of this man on the ways of the world. He had understood what every living person had to live with and though many people might have realized the same, I salute him for he was the first one who said so.
Murphy law states,
“Anything that can possibly go wrong, does.”
Isn't it true? People might brand me a pessimist for repeating the statement but name calling never helps, so I suggest such people to save that energy and use it for nobler pursuits. Once seen in the right light, Murphy’s Law actually starts making sense: Shit happens in this world. Subtract the number of times you've succeeded from the number of times you've tried and if you're human you are bound to get a non-zero result. That my friend is the quantitative measure of Murphy's law holding. Upon dividing this result by the number of trials, you get a better estimate. And if the quotient of the previous division has no fractional part, you my friend are one specimen of either of the two species- God or the author's true alter ego (if the latter is the case, get in touch with me. Let's hang out together sometime.)
Now some people might have qualms about the involvement of science in this law. Well, doubts in the verity of a statement are good signs, both for the person who has doubts and for the person who stated the law. Since Murphy's been dead for quite sometime, I take on the prerogative to answer for him, to the best of my ability. ( If you think I am bullshitting you, I might have done that. Do not hate Murphy for what I say because these thoughts are mine in their entirety and they do not reflect what Murphy had in mind when he said what he said.) Ask yourself what science is. I've found texts to support that science is the quest to know. In this sense history is science, right? Isn’t history a little something when it comes to gaining knowledge? In all these years history has been an important tool to the achievement of this objective- knowing. Time and again we have turned the pages of the past to satisfy our quest to know. And history has shown us that things have gone wrong when they could've gone wrong. So, there is science in the law. It might not have a hundred percent chance of holding, but no law has that luxury. Ask someone who knows, is V=IR always? Ohm's law doesn't hold always : even the textbooks show that the characteristic straight line is a curve in the practical sense, but you call that a law.
There have been many stated versions of the this law and I will list a few of them, in my style of writing. Forgive me if you find the language blasphemous, for it is just intended to bring in some humor. I've made additions at my discretion in places to bring about the same effect.
1.If anything can go wrong, it will, at the most inopportune time. It will all be your fault and everyone will know it.
2.If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
An extreme version would be,
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the FIRST one to go wrong.
3.If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
4.Nature always sides with the hidden flaw. The hidden flaw doesn't remain hidden for long. And then people find out it was your fault.
5.Mother nature is a bitch.
6.The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.
7.You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. ( Try and relate this to the four lines that mark the beginning of this composition.) Now, read the next point.
8.The chance of the buttered side of the bread falling face down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
The following statements could be classified as Murphy's Laws of Selective Gravitation:
9.A falling object will always land where it can do the most damage.
10. An unbreakable object will always fall on the only surface hard enough to crack or break it.
11. A paint drip will always find the hole in the newspaper and land on the carpet underneath (and will not be discovered until it has dried).
12. A dropped power tool will always land on the concrete instead of the soft ground (if outdoors) or the carpet (if indoors) - unless it is running, in which case it will fall on something it can damage (like your foot).
13. If a dish is dropped while removing it from the cupboard, it will hit the sink, breaking the dish and chipping or denting the sink in the process.
14. A valuable dropped item will always fall into an inaccessible place (a diamond ring down the drain, for example.)
15. The greater the value of the rug, the greater the probability that the pet dog will throw up on it.
The following statements form the equivalences in shopping:
16. No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.
17. The other line always moves faster.
The statements pertaining to love:
18. All the good ones are taken.
19. If the person isn't taken, there's a reason.
20. Brains x Beauty x Availability = Constant.
This constant is always zero.
21. "This won't hurt, I promise." is not true.
The statements for a computer:
22. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
23. Bugs will appear in one part of a working program when another 'unrelated' part is modified.
24. Line number 108 : m=n;
Line number 109 : assert ( m==n);
Output : Execution Aborted. Assertion failed in line 109.
25. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
26. If such a program has not crashed yet, it is waiting for a critical moment before it crashes.
27. The speed with which components become obsolete is directly proportional to the price of the component.
28. Software bugs are impossible to detect by anybody except the end user. And the end user can do nothing about it than wait for the next version of the software. The next version of the software will have bigger bugs.
29. The maintenance engineer will never have seen a model quite like yours before.
30. Any manufacturer making his warranties dependent upon the device being earthed will only supply power cabling with two wires.
31. If a circuit requires n components, then there will be only n - 1 components in locally-held stocks.
32. Each computer code has five bugs, and this number does not depend on how many bugs have been already found (it is conservative).
33. Whenever you're in a hurry, the server is down.
There are more statements- thousands of them, all stating the obvious. All of them support the law. For instance, Steven Right once said,“If Murphy's law is correct, everything East of the San Andreas Fault will slide into the Atlantic.” Since nothing of that sort has happened so far, you might be tempted to think Murphy's law doesn't hold. Well the good thing about Murphy's law is, even when it doesn't hold, it holds, “If Murphy's Law can go wrong it will.”
I'd like the readers to write down similar statements in the comments section. It'll be an amusing exercise.
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
And always on the buttered side.
Everything is either said for a reason or for no reason at all. It is noteworthy how certain sentences say just what they're supposed to and never fail to astound us with their truth. Every person, unless he's dumb says something. Even the dumb who have been deprived of their power of speech say things by their actions. The responsibility of understanding what has been said is ours entirely and it is only us - who understand - who can actually propagate what we heard so that others can hear what we say.
One such man who said something worth pondering over was Edward A. Murphy, Jr., an engineer by profession. I respect him not only because he was an engineer but because of that something he said. His statement is called Murphy's law today and it exhibits the firmness of the grasp of this man on the ways of the world. He had understood what every living person had to live with and though many people might have realized the same, I salute him for he was the first one who said so.
Murphy law states,
“Anything that can possibly go wrong, does.”
Isn't it true? People might brand me a pessimist for repeating the statement but name calling never helps, so I suggest such people to save that energy and use it for nobler pursuits. Once seen in the right light, Murphy’s Law actually starts making sense: Shit happens in this world. Subtract the number of times you've succeeded from the number of times you've tried and if you're human you are bound to get a non-zero result. That my friend is the quantitative measure of Murphy's law holding. Upon dividing this result by the number of trials, you get a better estimate. And if the quotient of the previous division has no fractional part, you my friend are one specimen of either of the two species- God or the author's true alter ego (if the latter is the case, get in touch with me. Let's hang out together sometime.)
Now some people might have qualms about the involvement of science in this law. Well, doubts in the verity of a statement are good signs, both for the person who has doubts and for the person who stated the law. Since Murphy's been dead for quite sometime, I take on the prerogative to answer for him, to the best of my ability. ( If you think I am bullshitting you, I might have done that. Do not hate Murphy for what I say because these thoughts are mine in their entirety and they do not reflect what Murphy had in mind when he said what he said.) Ask yourself what science is. I've found texts to support that science is the quest to know. In this sense history is science, right? Isn’t history a little something when it comes to gaining knowledge? In all these years history has been an important tool to the achievement of this objective- knowing. Time and again we have turned the pages of the past to satisfy our quest to know. And history has shown us that things have gone wrong when they could've gone wrong. So, there is science in the law. It might not have a hundred percent chance of holding, but no law has that luxury. Ask someone who knows, is V=IR always? Ohm's law doesn't hold always : even the textbooks show that the characteristic straight line is a curve in the practical sense, but you call that a law.
There have been many stated versions of the this law and I will list a few of them, in my style of writing. Forgive me if you find the language blasphemous, for it is just intended to bring in some humor. I've made additions at my discretion in places to bring about the same effect.
1.If anything can go wrong, it will, at the most inopportune time. It will all be your fault and everyone will know it.
2.If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
An extreme version would be,
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the FIRST one to go wrong.
3.If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
4.Nature always sides with the hidden flaw. The hidden flaw doesn't remain hidden for long. And then people find out it was your fault.
5.Mother nature is a bitch.
6.The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.
7.You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. ( Try and relate this to the four lines that mark the beginning of this composition.) Now, read the next point.
8.The chance of the buttered side of the bread falling face down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
The following statements could be classified as Murphy's Laws of Selective Gravitation:
9.A falling object will always land where it can do the most damage.
10. An unbreakable object will always fall on the only surface hard enough to crack or break it.
11. A paint drip will always find the hole in the newspaper and land on the carpet underneath (and will not be discovered until it has dried).
12. A dropped power tool will always land on the concrete instead of the soft ground (if outdoors) or the carpet (if indoors) - unless it is running, in which case it will fall on something it can damage (like your foot).
13. If a dish is dropped while removing it from the cupboard, it will hit the sink, breaking the dish and chipping or denting the sink in the process.
14. A valuable dropped item will always fall into an inaccessible place (a diamond ring down the drain, for example.)
15. The greater the value of the rug, the greater the probability that the pet dog will throw up on it.
The following statements form the equivalences in shopping:
16. No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.
17. The other line always moves faster.
The statements pertaining to love:
18. All the good ones are taken.
19. If the person isn't taken, there's a reason.
20. Brains x Beauty x Availability = Constant.
This constant is always zero.
21. "This won't hurt, I promise." is not true.
The statements for a computer:
22. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
23. Bugs will appear in one part of a working program when another 'unrelated' part is modified.
24. Line number 108 : m=n;
Line number 109 : assert ( m==n);
Output : Execution Aborted. Assertion failed in line 109.
25. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
26. If such a program has not crashed yet, it is waiting for a critical moment before it crashes.
27. The speed with which components become obsolete is directly proportional to the price of the component.
28. Software bugs are impossible to detect by anybody except the end user. And the end user can do nothing about it than wait for the next version of the software. The next version of the software will have bigger bugs.
29. The maintenance engineer will never have seen a model quite like yours before.
30. Any manufacturer making his warranties dependent upon the device being earthed will only supply power cabling with two wires.
31. If a circuit requires n components, then there will be only n - 1 components in locally-held stocks.
32. Each computer code has five bugs, and this number does not depend on how many bugs have been already found (it is conservative).
33. Whenever you're in a hurry, the server is down.
There are more statements- thousands of them, all stating the obvious. All of them support the law. For instance, Steven Right once said,“If Murphy's law is correct, everything East of the San Andreas Fault will slide into the Atlantic.” Since nothing of that sort has happened so far, you might be tempted to think Murphy's law doesn't hold. Well the good thing about Murphy's law is, even when it doesn't hold, it holds, “If Murphy's Law can go wrong it will.”
I'd like the readers to write down similar statements in the comments section. It'll be an amusing exercise.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Closer to Nowhere
Do you know who you are?
Do you ever think about it?
If you were told it’s a place
Would you drive until you found it?
Or would you turn down a street
That you know would lead to where you were before?
You call it home, but are you really sure
That’s your home?
-Jen Foster
We are born to this world like everyone else. We are made to believe that we’re special. Everyone is special in a way- everyone is special for himself. In all these years I have not come across one person who’s an exception to the rule. I believe that is what humanness is all about. Of course different people would say different things - disagree with me or agree and yet say that my analysis is incomplete. But I’m not claiming that I’ve said everything that needs to be said, or that what I’m saying is conclusive. I’m just putting my thoughts to paper and I choose to do so- at times to amuse myself, at times to kill time and at other times to swallow the venom that is offered to me and employ my disturbed mind in an activity that doesn’t require interaction with the outer world .
When a person comes to this paradise called the world, he’s instantly associated with other mortals- his family. Even if he doesn’t find a family, he gets one, for a family is indispensable at that stage, it is a much needed life sustaining survival kit. We are animals, not plants and we need to be fed and tended. From what I hear, life is a gift and we must go to great extents to preserve it. This is perhaps one of the very first instructions that we’re fed, as part of the human doctrine. And we follow this religiously. We fall in love with our lives and take away others’ for we’re not geniuses at understanding principles. Some of us do, but that hardly matters as long as the others exist. It is only a quantitative issue.
As we continue to live, we learn things. We are made to learn things. Since we lack experience, someone else has to show the way and we take the path shown to us and walk on it for the rest of our lives. Some of us do not, but that hardly matters, as long as the others exist. It is merely a quantitative issue these days. So we do what we are expected to and do however much is expected from us and we fail- we’re ordinary mortals and we’re bound to fail. Some do not fail, but that hardly matters as long as the others exist. It is just a quantitative issue. So we fall and we rise and rise to win the race. But some of us do not rise and win the race, and I wish it did not matter, but it does, for it is a quantitative issue.
I knew a certain character in this whole play - directed by the latent forces that created us - who realized that the paths were misleading; in fact they never took you some place nice. You kept on driving in circles and you saw the milestones from far away and felt you were advancing but you never really bothered to read the stones and all of them had the same figure on them: You were in this state called stagnancy in motion, where you were moving but not getting anywhere. Of course his was a different path and not all of us are on that one, but that hardly matters as long as that path exists. It is only a quantitative issue. And one day, he stopped driving- he parked and sat on the grass, silently observing the others racing past each other on the road that led to the hypothetical place called nowhere. And they stared at him, frowned upon him, ridiculed him and called him names, and he smelled the lavender that grew beside the grass. He had no companion but the wind that blew past him and the dew that made his bed in the grass each night and greeted him good morning, when he woke up each day. He died this morning, and the leaves from the nearby maple tree made his shroud, his burial garment. No one came to his funeral but the wind that caressed his hair and the dew that kissed him goodbye.
We go on, race on and keep on rocking in the free world, oblivious of others like him, for the fact that there are people like him hardly matters. It is only a quantitative issue.
Do you ever think about it?
If you were told it’s a place
Would you drive until you found it?
Or would you turn down a street
That you know would lead to where you were before?
You call it home, but are you really sure
That’s your home?
-Jen Foster
We are born to this world like everyone else. We are made to believe that we’re special. Everyone is special in a way- everyone is special for himself. In all these years I have not come across one person who’s an exception to the rule. I believe that is what humanness is all about. Of course different people would say different things - disagree with me or agree and yet say that my analysis is incomplete. But I’m not claiming that I’ve said everything that needs to be said, or that what I’m saying is conclusive. I’m just putting my thoughts to paper and I choose to do so- at times to amuse myself, at times to kill time and at other times to swallow the venom that is offered to me and employ my disturbed mind in an activity that doesn’t require interaction with the outer world .
When a person comes to this paradise called the world, he’s instantly associated with other mortals- his family. Even if he doesn’t find a family, he gets one, for a family is indispensable at that stage, it is a much needed life sustaining survival kit. We are animals, not plants and we need to be fed and tended. From what I hear, life is a gift and we must go to great extents to preserve it. This is perhaps one of the very first instructions that we’re fed, as part of the human doctrine. And we follow this religiously. We fall in love with our lives and take away others’ for we’re not geniuses at understanding principles. Some of us do, but that hardly matters as long as the others exist. It is only a quantitative issue.
As we continue to live, we learn things. We are made to learn things. Since we lack experience, someone else has to show the way and we take the path shown to us and walk on it for the rest of our lives. Some of us do not, but that hardly matters, as long as the others exist. It is merely a quantitative issue these days. So we do what we are expected to and do however much is expected from us and we fail- we’re ordinary mortals and we’re bound to fail. Some do not fail, but that hardly matters as long as the others exist. It is just a quantitative issue. So we fall and we rise and rise to win the race. But some of us do not rise and win the race, and I wish it did not matter, but it does, for it is a quantitative issue.
I knew a certain character in this whole play - directed by the latent forces that created us - who realized that the paths were misleading; in fact they never took you some place nice. You kept on driving in circles and you saw the milestones from far away and felt you were advancing but you never really bothered to read the stones and all of them had the same figure on them: You were in this state called stagnancy in motion, where you were moving but not getting anywhere. Of course his was a different path and not all of us are on that one, but that hardly matters as long as that path exists. It is only a quantitative issue. And one day, he stopped driving- he parked and sat on the grass, silently observing the others racing past each other on the road that led to the hypothetical place called nowhere. And they stared at him, frowned upon him, ridiculed him and called him names, and he smelled the lavender that grew beside the grass. He had no companion but the wind that blew past him and the dew that made his bed in the grass each night and greeted him good morning, when he woke up each day. He died this morning, and the leaves from the nearby maple tree made his shroud, his burial garment. No one came to his funeral but the wind that caressed his hair and the dew that kissed him goodbye.
We go on, race on and keep on rocking in the free world, oblivious of others like him, for the fact that there are people like him hardly matters. It is only a quantitative issue.
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