Random Thought: The Nameless

"Names are not important. To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important. A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a man looks upon reality. He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying, 'What is it like, this thing you have seen?' So he tries to tell them. Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in the world. He tells them, 'It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors. It has no form, like water, flowing everywhere. It is warm, like the sun of summer, only warmer. It exists for a time upon a piece of wood, and then the wood is gone, as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be sifted like sand. When the wood is gone, it too is gone.' Therefore, the hearers must think reality is like a poppy, like water, like the sun, like that which eats and excretes. They think it is like to anything that they are told it is like by the man who has known it. But they have not looked upon fire. They cannot really know it. They can only know of it. But fire comes again into the world, many times. More men look upon fire. After a time, fire is as common as grass and clouds and the air they breathe. They see that, while it is like a poppy, it is not a poppy, while it is like water, it is not water, while it is like the sun, it is not the sun, and while it is like that which eats and passes wastes, it is not that which eats and passes wastes, but something different from each of these apart or all of these together. So they look upon this new thing and they make a new word to call it. They call it 'fire.' 

"If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean. So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what fire is like. As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it. They know that this man will never know reality from their words, though all the words in the world are theirs to use. He must look upon the fire, smell of it, warm his hands by it, stare into its heart, or remain forever ignorant. Therefore, 'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality, the Nameless."

- Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

It's fun to take thoughts like these and think about them. Oftentimes, I won't really think about them the moment I read them. It takes a long sleepy bus journey at two in the morning, from the library to my home, to set me free, so that I would float into the air, drift away, and understand what I've read in my own way.

I had fun analyzing this thought, in terms of digital signal processing. Suppose I see something, I see it in an analog sense. If you see it, you would understand it in an analog sense too. But suppose I see it, and you haven't seen it and I try to describe it to you, it's always going to be a digital understanding for you. And that's an approximation to the actual thing. It's not exact. The finer the words I choose (ie the higher the sampling rate), the better the approximation will be. But it's still only an approximation. 

Reality is individual for each person; it's the way each one perceives it. But when one tries to describe it to another, words aren't and won't ever be as complete as the actual experience itself. The process of putting something into words and describing it to another person is essentially a truncation, a sort of sampling, and while that can be made to resemble the actual case very closely, it never is really exact. 

It's much more fun then, to examine and discover the world on your own, because that makes for a complete experience. Of course, it helps to go along with others' descriptions and experiences, since those could present different points of view and thus enrich our own experience. But nothing is like the original experience itself. 

That's probably also why photographs printed out from film are so much more vivid and lively than digital photographs.

Coffeemaker

I once read this article in some old issue of Reader's Digest, by some lady who was given an old-fashioned home ice-cream maker as a wedding present. It was a time when a lot of new, zappy kitchen appliances were getting made, and it was a fad to gift things like that, so this particular gift occasioned some surprise to the lady. The old couple who were giving it smiled at the newlyweds' ill-disguised surprise, and told them that it would come in handy one day.

Well, the young couple settled down, and soon their life took the fast lane. Work pressures, kids, strain on their marital relationship. One fine day, when things were getting pretty hot, and everyone was sitting tired and stressed, the woman remembered the yet-unopened wedding present. She tossed up the idea. Everyone was surprised, but they pulled out the ice-cream maker, and started working it, putting together the ingredients, mixing up everything, and cooling the thing in the end. No modern day conveniences there. It was a lengthy process, and took a lot of effort, but it created space for some laughter and some family bonding. It brought a smile back to everyone, and a feeling as sweet as the ice-cream that they finally got to eat. It was a stress-buster. The couple then understood the wisdom of the older couple who had gifted them that ice-cream maker. And once secure in the stability of their marriage, they started to make the same gift to other newly married couples.

Now this story has nothing to do with my coffeemaker, which is about as modern and as functional as any other that you can buy nowadays. It was not a wedding present by some wise person in the hope that it would one day be instrumental in teaching me any valuable lessons about slowing down; it was a birthday gift from my aunt and uncle, in the hope of allowing me some nice modern convenience to save time. It's true I didn't pull it out the moment I got home, but I'm only two months older than I was when I got the thing. And I haven't had to make any great, relaxed efforts to prepare the ingredients; all it takes is cold water and the coffee grounds. I was just thinking of the Reader's Digest story, that's all. This coffeemaker has a different destiny than that ice-cream maker.

I have never brewed coffee for myself before. It was made for me at the local stall outside my undergraduate college, and I paid for every cup that I drank. It was made by a guy who made his living selling tea, coffee and cigarettes day in and day out at that stall, a complete professional in the trade of streetside beverage, a person who knew how to brew the thing properly. I've had the miserable excuse for cold coffee that these modern day coffee bars are fond of dishing out to rich kids who have money to burn on something that doesn't deserve the greens being spent on it. I've never drunk coffee at home; my mother makes it for herself the old fashioned way - heat the water, add the coffee, add the milk and sugar. I've never even participated in the making of it. This was certainly a first time experience, brewing my own coffee, even though it was out of such a convenient appliance.

The thing looks very pretty, very classy, a lovely white coloured thing, sitting on my kitchen counter. I don't know how much it cost, how good a model it is compared with other models of coffeemakers, I don't how how this brand compares with other brands of coffeemakers. Hell, I don't even know whether other coffeemakers differ from this one in any essential detail of structure or mechanism. I just know that this one worked properly the first time I brewed coffee in it today.

I'm no expert on coffee either. I don't know the different kinds of coffee, or the different ways to brew it. I have no clue regarding the differences in flavour depending on where the coffee beans have been grown, or the different flavours that can be achieved by addition of extra ingredients. I know nothing of the differences in price between the various brands that market coffee. I'm not quite sure, even at this point, what the difference is between the coffee powder used to make coffee in the pan over the gas stove and the coffee grounds that are put into the filter of the coffeemaker. I just know nice, strong-tasting coffee when I drink it.

I brewed coffee in my coffeemaker today, and it was the first time for both, coffeemaking, and using a coffeemaker. I did just about everything wrong that could be done. I put in too much water. I forgot the milk and sugar. And I miscalculated the time it would take to brew the coffee, so I ended up having it right after a heavy lunch. It was essentially a strong, black, watery brew. But guess what? It was still fun.

What does your living room say about you?

There was a very nice young man at my door today; he lives in my building and he's a student with a photography major. He was doing a project of some kind, which involved taking impromptu shots of the living rooms of different people, and he wanted to know if I would allow him to photograph mine. I couldn't see any serious objection to it, so I agreed, and he was one delightful guy.

He came about an hour later with his equipment: a huge camera, using 70 mm film, a light meter, and a studio light on a tripod stand. He set up the light, and showed us how the light meter works. He took different shots and angles of the room, talking about his equipment, what he does, and asking about what we do. He talked about his stay in Paris, and how energizing and humbling an experience it was, to realize how large the world was, because Americans usually grow up thinking that America is the end of the world. There wasn't a single silent moment. His excitement and his love for what he does was palpable in every word he spoke.

It's always something new for Indians, to meet such people who are, as we put it, "always excited", because we as a people are so reserved in our manner. We seem to believe in keeping our emotions to ourselves, something that has come from a couple of centuries of British rule, no doubt, because those people are the last word in reserve of manner. I used to be quite a 'hyperactive' individual myself, but years of exile in a land of 'dull' people have worn me out, enough that it's somewhat of a wake up call when I see such an 'excited' individual. They are just so much more expressive than we are.

His project got me thinking too. I don't exactly know how he's putting it together, but the immediate vision that appeared to my mind when he mentioned his project was one of a huge collage, on a white background, of several different photographs of different living rooms, each photograph having on the back of it, a short precise description of the people whose living room it was. It got me thinking. If someone were to see my living room, or photos of it, without ever having met me or knowing anything about me, what conclusion would they come to?

I vaguely remember something of this nature being talked about by that wonderful young writer Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It was something to do with how much you could learn about someone by spending just ten minutes in their bedroom, compared with how much you could learn by going out with them for lunch everyday for a month (or something of the kind. I don't have the book at hand, so I don't have exact details). And that's a great book by the way, definitely worth a read (several, actually), and worth buying.

Of course, there are two views you can take of anything. The same thing might suggest a positive trait to one mind and a negative one to another. My living room is something like this. One half of the room is completely clear. And by clear, I mean that there is nothing but the carpet, and the internet modem and router, and associated wires. Occasionally you might find a couple of laptops and phone chargers lying the corner, somewhat out of the way. The other half is complete chaos. There are three tables, black ebony wood, standing against the three walls. Each table has a set of built in shelves, stacked with various things including textbooks, stationery, CDs, bags, flash drives, portable hard disks and other things which are good to keep handy. The tabletops themselves, usually have books and papers scattered on them, cleared up only when the table is actually used for writing or studying.

There is a chair to each table, and occasionally there may be a jacket lying on a chair. There is a printer in one corner, covered by a cloth except when in use, and its power cord and USB cable are within sight. The printer's box, as well as that of one of the laptops is also in the same corner, albeit not very neatly arranged. There are also various bags, but no guesses as to the contents. A laptop bag in the same place reclines against my table, which is located on one side of this corner.

The shelves of my own table also include, apart from what has already been mentioned, books for general reading, the college academic catalogue, stacks of coins, an i-Pod charger, a point-and-shoot camera and its USB cable, and binders containing class notes. The top of my table usually carries a mug with a steel spoon, some tissues, my i-Pod, phone, laptop, spectacles, a four-foot long pair of tube-lights in their holder, a couple of hair accessories, my contact lenses' pouch and cleaning solution, and several sheets of paper containing scratch work. If I'm at home, add a flexible binder containing the notes of the day's classes, and maybe my set of house keys too. My chair may also hold a towel, a pair of jeans or shorts, or a t-shirt, apart from the jacket.

So what does such a vision suggest to you? Of course, one can't escape the clues that lead to the conclusion of a student-run household - the textbooks are the biggest giveaway, as are the abundance of filler paper and class notes. Of course, this is my place, so nothing would strike me about it, except that it's familiar and it's normal... but you, oh reader, are not constrained thus... but perhaps I can ask questions to guide thinking?

What ideas do the following things inspire, for a start?

• One half of the room is clear, and the other cluttered. 
• Each person has a different number of books - one person has very few while another has nothing but books.
• One table has an excess of scratch paper.
• There are no other photos or personal memoirs on any table.
• One table has what looks like a personal diary.
• One table has a plate with bread crumbs on it, next to several pages written and initialed in very neat handwriting.
• The various clothes lying on the chairs.

What impression do these facts give you, when you consider them separately, and then when you consider them together? You see? It's really hard to generalize. And yet - "Same story, different versions, and all are true." - Tia Dalma, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

"Hi, I'd like to talk to you about..."

Well, it had to happen one day. I'd read that you can't be for too long in this country before you encounter an evangelizer, who's going to start the conversation with a huge smile and a big, Oh my, you're from India? and then ask if you have ever thought about life, and God, and what is the purpose of life. 

It's easy to see the purpose of their life. They have nothing better to do, than go about trying to achieve conversion of the people, who aren't already of their flock. Now, as an atheist, I seriously believe that most people are simply fooling themselves with whatever concepts of divinity and religion they're feeding on, but really, most of those people are harmless, and dangerous only to themselves, and as long as they stay that way, I really don't give a damn. It's when they start preaching their ideas to you, without any sense or invitation to do so, that they begin to get on your nerves. 

I don't have anything against Christians, or people of any religion for that matter. Rather, I should say that I do not think any the worse about someone simply because of their religion or religious belief. I do think their sanity is somewhat questionable, but that doesn't mean they can't be good people at heart. It's an open question, and though I believe what science has to say about the world, and I feel that science has the greater probability of being right about the issue, I will go so far being politically correct as to acknowledge that others have the right to think differently, if such is their inclination. No, the problem arises when people try to inflict their ideas on other people, without offering any reasonable justification for what they believe. 

I met a couple of young women today, out strolling their babies on the college campus. This is pretty common: the campus is a lovely, peaceful place, and it's nice to take a walk there. What I don't usually get is being stopped and questioned about my beliefs. They said hi, introduced themselves, and told me they were alumni, and had studied so many years back (not too long). Then, gently, they asked me if I have ever thought about life, and the purpose of life, if I had thought about what is lacking in life and happiness, even though humans have so much in their lives for them.

I knew what was coming. The next few sentences would be evangelical lines, and come they did. They started out by saying they believe in God, and they believe in Jesus, and they believe that Jesus loves them. They paused to ask me what I think. I replied stating that I have never thought about it, because I don't think I'm old enough yet to think of it, to which they immediately replied that "you may think so now, but one day, it may be too late to think about it", and something of the sort. They asked me if I knew anything about Jesus. I said yes, I've read about all the religions in school in Social Studies, and I have Christian friends too, I'm quite familiar with all the ideas.

The funny thing is, instead of picking up on that, as I was expecting them to, they went off in a totally different direction. "Oh, we guess you must be a Hindu?" and then they started on a tale of how the reason that we are always searching, is "because God is a virtuous God, a holy God, but Man is not so; Man is born sinful", followed by something about "searching for something to fill the emptiness inside, and that's why people make up so many religions, but in spite of all that, the search never ends", and then one female said something pretty weird, in the vein of, "you say you have Christian friends, but... don't know how Christian they are..." Then followed some idea about how "we all are sinful, but Jesus died for us, and so covered our sins, so that when God sees us, he doesn't see our sins, because Jesus is covering us".

I got a little angry at this point. It's hard to believe things like this really happen, that people can be so brazen, even though you've read about it a hundred times before. So people make up religions, do they? Well, darling, of course they do, and your own is equally made up, and there is not a shred of evidence to support any one religion more than any other, be it a religion in my country or yours. And I suppose my friends were not "Christian" enough, because apparently they hadn't tried yet to convert me! (This is one thing I read about on the net. Some people are convinced the only "true" Christians are those who actively work to convert all non-believers.) If you try to get picky and take apart that last sentence, about the 'covering' and the rest of it, you get lost somewhere. It just does not make any sense at all.

I purposely did not (and do not usually) let out that I am an atheist, because I was in no mood to get into a beautiful argument about belief and non-belief. My hair would start to whiten prematurely with having to dish out the same argument to every person I meet upon the street corner. I am not really a good debatist either, and I was also in a hurry to get someplace that was more interesting than anything these two would have had to say. Already, I was regretting trying to be politically correct by humoring their idiocy. 

Fifteen minutes of beautiful time utterly wasted. Of course, this sort of religious idiocy is not something possessed only by Christians. There are a whole bunch of people back home, who believe in all sorts of religious bullshit (horoscopes, eclipses are evil, superstitions of various kinds, etc), but their bullshit is easier to ignore, because it's more of a personal practice. If my friend thinks that the shadow of an eclipse is something evil, she can satisfy herself and stay at home, but woe betide her if she tries to press that idea on me, and stop me from leaving the house, and she knows that.

People back home usually don't bother with forcing their ideas on you (although I have a feeling it's mostly due to the misbegotten idea that you think the same way that they do). Works fine that way. And when they do try to impose, you can actually just tell them to go rot. They won't care. They won't bother. "The rest of the world can go to hell if it chooses to; I'm gonna take care of myself." We each follow the same policy in the end. Religious bullshit here might prove to be a lot more difficult to handle though, because there's an entire force of idiots actively trying to feed it to you. "Oh no, we can't and won't let you go to hell, when you can be SAVED!!!"

I wonder if a change in policy would help.

Geek, Dork, and Nerd

Geek: A person who finds interest in quirky, out-of-the-world, uncommon stuff, and becomes fanatically obsessed with knowing every detail of it.

Dork: A person who is socially clueless.

Nerd: A person who prefers intellectual activity to social activity.

Which one are you?

Source: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=401

Theatre Experience

August: Osage County by Tracy Letts, Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize, Steppenwolf Production Company

Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare

Palestine, New Mexico by Culture Clash

I never went to a play in India. I never got to go to a play; my parents weren't so much into theatre, or rather we couldn't be, because theatre is not so commonplace that it is affordable. Plus, there wasn't much to be said for English language theatre where I grew up. And once I reached an age where I could have taken up an interest, it just didn't happen. Certain personal circumstances interfered with it, one of them being the fact that I was in high school, and high school in India means a never ending series of books to study. Not even read. Study.

Still, not being sharp doesn't mean you're condemned to be blunt. Being in Los Angeles, and being in my university brought me the perfect opportunity to at last taste, somewhat belatedly, a lot of the things that I never got to experience at a younger age, one of them being theatre.

It is something, to watch a play unfold on stage before you. Sure, it is not exactly like watching a movie. You get to watch only certain angles. You don't have mikes on stage, or at least not ones that will capture a tiny whisper, so theatre dialogue has to be conducted with a certain loudness, a certain toughness, a certain carrying quality of voice, so that the lines may be understood. Emotions are thus more dependent on facial expression, rather than a combination of expressions and dialogue delivery. Actors have to be able to connect with the audience. It's a very personal thing, seeing an actor up there a few feet away from you, visually telling you a story. You start to enjoy a play, when you can immerse yourself in the story, and connect with what the actor is telling you, thinking about what that character is doing and why.

Plays written today are different from the plays written in the past. Each play represents, somehow, the period it was written in - not just in style, but also in the story, the characters, the way the play treats the situations it addresses, and the reason why it does so. Shakespearean plays were made sometimes for entertainment, as in the case of As You Like It, sometimes about the comedy and tragedy of love, as in Love's Labour's Lost and Romeo and Juliet, sometimes for drama, exemplified by Macbeth and Hamlet, and sometimes for history, King Henry et al. In later periods, before motion pictures became so popular and widespread, theatre was the main form of entertainment for presenting a story. Agatha Christie, and others, wrote quite a few plays, apart from the usual novels and short stories.

Modern plays are about people, and the way they interact with each other. August: Osage County, for instance, is about a family, and the different tangled webs of secrets, lies, personal problems, and convoluted sexual relationships that the members of that family are entrenched in. Palestine, New Mexico, is about an army captain who goes to talk to the father of a Native American soldier who died under her command, and in the process uncovers the realities of life on a Native American reservation - the way they struggle to deal with different identities of religion, race and tribe. Modern theatre nowadays is as much an art form, as painting and sculpture are.

The characters of plays are also as distinct as the stories, in relation to the period the play was written in. Modern plays deal with very realistic characters, with very realistic traits and behaviour, because the stories they tell are those of people you can relate to. Some exaggeration was allowed, and in fact necessary in earlier plays (again, compare something from today, with something like anything Shakespeare wrote). Dialogue has always been like the speech of the current time, which is why plays today have direct speech that you can follow, while with the older plays, the older it gets, the more convoluted the language. (Though it's hard to believe that people spoke with that kind of convolution in daily life in those times. Perhaps only the lettered and educated people did so.)

There is also a distinct difference, in the setup and logistics of plays, as they are written today, and as they were written in the past, apart from the obvious differences of story and characters. Plays nowadays won't have too many costume changes. The stories cover a very short period of time, and often do not have more than one change of scene, so that the sets need not have more than very superficial changes, mostly some quick shifting of small furniture, and very cleverly coordinated lighting, so the entire play must be seen essentially against a single setting. This also allows that single set to be pretty elaborate and detailed; there can be structure in it. The set for August:Osage County was an entire three-storey house, with the kitchen and living room detailed across the stage. The action involved frequent climbing of the stairs from the living room, and disappearance behind doors which led ostensibly to bedrooms. The set for Palestine, New Mexico was a small clearing in front of a small hill, complete with the shrubs and sands of the desert and plains, rocks and caves, and steps leading up to the reservation on the top of the hill. The play is worth 80 minutes of time, and is performed continuously without an interval.

The set for Love's Labour's Lost was composed of a brilliantly constructed and painted facade, which had sliding panels, ladders, doors and curtains, so that it could be used alternately to represent a room in the castle, or the gates of the city, or the woods outside the city. Furniture was quickly moved about in the few seconds of darkness between subsequent acts of the play. They couldn't have done it otherwise; Shakespeare's plays were written at a time when just such things were required of the stage managers; to produce a forest, or a castle, or a courtyard, when needed to. In the older days, they would've just presented beautifully woven backdrops.

Of course technology today continues to bring forth ever new ways of enhancing the quality of the experience of a play, by allowing for increasingly grand sets, sound, lighting and even special effects. Indeed, it is pretty normal to have some nice pyrotechnic effects, very realistic booming gunshots, roaring ocean waves, and even the relative time of day, created by some smart stage engineers, working with sound, light and special props. Palestine, New Mexico had a rather delightful trick: a special burner, which when triggered, instantly gave out a bright, very convincing campfire. That wouldn't have been so easy to pull off in the old days.

I daresay regular theatre fans have seen all of it, and know intimately the finer nuances of theatre past and present. But to someone who hasn't ever experienced it before, it's certainly something novel, and exciting. And with time to soak up the new sunshine falling on me, my own intellect will make good hay, before the end of the day.

(My experiences courtesy the Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, The Broad Stage, Santa Monica, the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles)

Free Stress Test

While roaming around one of the most popular streets of my current city of living, my friend and I were stopped by this soft-spoken gentleman about taking a free stress test, with some advice on how to deal with it. Now I am very well clued on how to deal with stress, but even then I wouldn't normally resist something that was being offered free, just to have some fun; I noticed just in time that this was a store that was into selling and promoting the works of L. Ron Hubbard, the chap responsible for Dianetics and Scientology. Indeed, the store display was lined with copies of the book in various languages. I was all for turning away, but was not quick enough, because my friend, knowing nothing about the subject, thought it was a great idea and walked in. I had no choice but to follow.

It turned out to be a fun(ny) experience anyway. The testing equipment consisted of a sufficiently complicated looking device, with a pointer display, some knobs and dials, and two hollow metal cylinders hooked up to it. All you had to do was take one cylinder in each hand, sit down and relax, and think about the questions the guy was asking. Depending on how your mind reacted to the thoughts in your brain, you'd have some invisible response, which would measure up as stress on the display. The funny parts were two: the guy could not convincingly answer any questions we asked him about how the device worked, and secondly, I managed to actually hoodwink the machine.

Anyone with basic high school science education should have been able to figure out that the entire setup was nothing more than a very elaborate stethoscope: your fingers carry a very gentle pulse, which would be transmitted through the cylinder and wires and fed to a very sensitive transducer, that would produce a very tiny current which would move the pointer accordingly (using a basic galvanometer arrangement). It helps that I'm trained as an electrical engineer, but these are basic concepts that you learn in Class 9 Physics in school. One can also design the thing to have knobs to control sensitivity and the zero setting of the galvanometer (which was there in this case).

My friend went first. Certainly, the machine reacted the way I expected it to react; the pointed zoomed out of range when he thought about stressful things. The guy didn't spend much time with him; hardly thirty seconds, because he simply asked him to think about his life and recent events in it. After my friend answered, the guy asked him what he had been thinking about (as expected, the recent exams and the grades that followed). His basic method was easy to figure out. By asking you to think about something, he's very indirectly leading you to think about something stressful, because most people usually have some problem bugging them, and if you sit them down and ask them to think about recent events, their thoughts will jump first to that problem, and their pulse will correspondingly rise, depending on how deep the problem is. To generate a little more 'stress', the guy can start asking questions relating to specific areas of life - family, relationships, work, social activities, anything. Somewhere or the other there is bound to be something, which generates an emotional reaction, leading to that increase in heartbeat.

When my turn came, I kept a smooth, even tone of voice, and a steady breath, to control my heartbeat so that the machine wouldn't react. As expected, it didn't. The guy started to ask me questions almost immediately, starting with what I do. I answered I'm a student, so he asked me if there was something bothering me there. On purpose, I brought a worried tone to my voice as I started talking about courses and grades, but kept my breathing even. The machine stayed even. The guy started to increase sensitivity at various intervals then onwards. He next asked about my family, if I'd had any losses or tragedies. I lost my grandfather a few years back, but I've had deeper losses than that, and I was able to lie my way through it without the machine turning a blip. If the guy was discomfited, he didn't show it, because next he went on to ask about relationships: if I was presently in one, to which I said no (actually the answer is yes); if I had been in one earlier, to which I answered yes (truthfully); what had happened to that relationship, to which I said it hadn't been working out so we broke up.

At this point he came out, saying that I was a very unusual person, because most people get pretty stressed when they think about past relationships and their breakup. My heart did a flip, hoping he wouldn't figure out that I had deliberately been cheating on this test, and then the pointer zoomed! He noticed this, and was quick to jump on it, asking how it was that I wasn't feeling stressed out when thinking about past events of my life, but was showing a reaction after I was done thinking about them. I had to look straight at him and invent a fib on the spot, which wasn't too difficult; I simply told him that I'd moved on quite definitely from my past and had made my peace with it, and thinking about my own past again did not cause me any stress; what did cause me stress was him asking about how I'd made my peace, because that hadn't been an easy thing to do. This wasn't completely a fib though, it was at least partially true. I checked the sensitivity knob surreptitiously; it was at 9 on a scale from 0 to 10!

We asked him about how the device worked, how it actually was able to measure stress. He did not answer clearly. Either he was ignorant of how it worked, or did not want to reveal it and spoil the wonder device for us. We mentioned that we study engineering, and this device looks interesting and so on, but he was careful to lead the conversation towards what was really on his agenda: to talk about Dianetics; the philosophy, book and its author. That Hubbard discovered the 'active' and 'reactive' mind and how the reactive mind behaves, that he wrote this book which is the best selling book in the world today (huh? I thought that was the Bible, but never mind), and that he founded Scientology, which is helping so many people overcome their problems by aiming at the root, rather than the symptoms. He talked about how psychology is now dead, how modern psychology treats humans as mere animals, without paying any attention to the 'spirit', and deplored the state of psychology medicine today. What nonsense. (It was funny to watch him sidestep the questions though.)

I haven't read Dianetics myself, but I remember I did try once. I couldn't get beyond the first page. I've read summaries of the ideas in it, and by all standards, they are fanciful and despicable. That so many people believed in that nonsense, started over fifty years ago, and still believe in it to the extent that there is now a Church of Scientology which feeds all those and even crazier ideas to the unsuspecting public stands testimony as to how stupid people can be. And cleverly enough, the Church maintains a strict copyright over its documents and teachings, so that only initiates have access to it, and those who do cannot make them public for fear of severe legal action. Of course, there are always leaks, so we have some idea of what those teachings precisely are, but I would think that one read of Dianetics (for those brave enough to undergo such torture), or of the gist of it (for those smart enough to spare themselves the torment) should be enough to indicate the level of ludicrousness that Scientology must be attaining with its initiates, never mind the secrecy.

Anyone who wants to read a good summary of Dianetics can read the relevant chapter in the book Fads & Fallacies: In The Name Of Science, by that excellent gentleman Martin Gardner. The language of the book may seem harsh to many, and the book was written in the 1950s, so quite a few of the fads mentioned have been rendered irrelevant in today's world. Nevertheless, it is an excellent book, painstakingly researched and written, evident by the details presented in the book. For those who want to buy it, it's available on Amazon. (If you'd rather just read about Dianetics and Scientology, you can read up on Wikipedia. It is truly hilarious.) Fifty years on, I would be highly delighted to read a book written and updated to reflect pseudoscience today (hopefully there isn't too much of it floating around, apart from this Scientology madness). Of course, it won't be easy, with all the tangled webs of copyright protections and such, but if anyone can direct me to such a book, I'd be highly grateful. If there isn't one yet, maybe I'll write one in due time.

And moving back to the stress test, well, once we were done with the Dianetics lecture, I made a firm case for leaving, without buying the book (he offered us a Hindi translation of it!), and once out of there, explained the entire thing in detail to my friend. To his credit, he is not a gullible person and had retained enough skepticism all throughout the session to be able to see through the charade, and we laughed a lot over the entire thing afterwards.

You'd ask me why I was fooling around with this guy; even if it is pretty elaborate, at least he is giving you a stress test and telling you that something's not okay, right? Wrong. If it's nothing more than an elaborate stethoscope, let him come out and say that. There is no cause for anyone to try make an impression by showing magic tricks and illusions in matters such as stress, which have been shown to profoundly impact health. Also, this is not being done with a goal to helping people; it is nothing more than a money-making exercise. The aim of going through that entire routine of a stress test is to harp on later about Dianetics and how great it is, this is a sales pitch in the end. Don't sit back and tell me that the choice of buying the book is mine in the end. People are smart enough to know without being told that they are under stress.

I do not have to waste time sitting through this charade of a stress test, then find out that I'm stressed, listen to a sales pitch from someone who has little or no training in medicine and finally buy and read a book of pseudoscientific fairy tales. It makes much more sense to seek professional help (qualified professional help at that). Any good psychologist would be able to not only tell me if I'm stressed, but also help objectively determine factors causing that stress, counsel me accordingly, and prescribe lifestyle changes, diagnostic procedures, therapeutic treatment or medication as required. The last thing they would do is tell me to read some crackpot book and believe what it says. If nothing else, this episode highlights how important it is for every individual on this planet to have a firm grounding in basic science at the school level.

Dancing Lady

Thanks are due to the naughtiest guy in class for this. It's not spectacularly amazing or anything, but just pure fun, and really, really, time consuming.

Which direction is this lady dancing in? She is definitely spinning, and she is spinning backwards (for herself). But is she going clockwise or counterclockwise?

There are probably hundreds of such trick images circulating the internet, each one perhaps equally interesting, because each probably presents a different trick, or a different way in which our mind plays tricks on us. Of course this particular one has no answer, because depending on how you see it, she can be moving in either direction. If you try hard enough, you can see both types of spin, and you can even train yourself to make her change direction at will. It's actually really simple: you just have to figure out that critical point of her spin, from where your brain starts to pick up on the direction of her motion. If you happen to start looking at her only from that critical point onwards (achieved easily and simply by a quick shutting and opening of the eyes), you can make her change direction. It's important not to preserve the image of her motion in the mind as you're trying this.

If you received this in a chain mail or forwarded message over the internet, you probably also got a lot of text about left brain and right brain and their relative abilities and so on and so forth. While all of that is probably very interesting, it is perhaps best left to the explanatory capabilities of Wikipedia or some other reliable encyclopedia. For the moment, concentration on enjoying the illusion. This is magic at its best -  the magic of the human mind.

(Image courtesy http://www.nicholasroussos.com/ who're hosting it up there for people to link to)

In A Mood To Experiment

Experimentation is an awesome thing. I'm not talking about huge things like going on a bungee-jumping adventure or something wild like that. I'm talking about simple everyday things, mundane things, things that you would never think twice about in the normal course of life, things that don't count way up there on the Bucket List or anything. Simple experiments with how you live and what you do in your daily life. They enrich life, spice things up a little, are fun to do, and often end up with rather positive results.

One experiment I did recently was chop off my own hair, rather than go to a hairdresser. Now I confess, I'm no professional. I did a rather bad job of it. I used a pair of scissors which has become a little blunt through years of use (in cutting paper at that). I cut the entire thing very unevenly (it's turned out shorter on one side that on the other, and quite a few locks of hair that should've been cut were left untouched). I cut it shorter than I intended to. And yet, with all that, it's not a huge disaster that I absolutely cannot deal with. Lucky for me, my hair curl and wave a lot, so that covers up the uneven length. Because of the way I cut it, I ended up changing my style entirely, and guess what, the new style is pretty flexible and suits me too. And regular shampooing and conditioning ensures that they stay manageable. I probably couldn't go to a formal party looking like this, but nobody in my daily life seemed to feel there was anything wrong with it, which is a lot more than I ask for.

Another experiment, which effectively occurs twice a week, is my cooking. I have no training of any kind there either, whether by a professional expert, or by an amateur one (by which I mean my mom). Every time I enter the kitchen to cook is a time for a new experiment, a new random choice of vegetables, spices and cooking time. Well, not completely random either, I do try to make things conform to what has been approved already by the experts. But my lack of expertise means it won't always turn out that way, and often there are no preapproved guidelines to follow. So it's effectively an experiment, and quite often, if I don't worry unnecessarily about the results, it turns out pretty decent.

A third, more general experiment, is walking about and negotiating stuff alone. A slightly risky experiment to make, I admit, but this falls more into the realm of exploring. The fact that each human being needs to seek their own way and learn to negotiate the world on their own anyway doesn't make it any less of an experiment. An experiment seems to indicate some sense of underlying choice for most people, the choice of whether to do the experiment or not, in which case, negotiating the world is not an experiment, because you don't have a choice there. I disagree, because an experiment is anything where something new is attempted to gain a result, and you don't have to know that result. You only have to find it. Doing it with someone always makes it easier, simply because you have two thinking minds, so you can have two varying opinions, and some amount of cross critical thinking can get you far ahead. Doing it alone is slightly more of a challenge, because you have to pose questions to yourself and answer them yourself as well. But that makes the challenge only more challenging, doesn't it?

I'm in a mood to experiment. I have been for the past few years in fact, perhaps a little passively, perhaps only in erratically timed spurts. The mood feels good, and a little more active right now. I'm happy.

I Went There. So?

I'm an atheist, or at least I am far on the side of the spectrum that leads towards atheism. I don't believe in gods or in divine or supernatural presences, and I think people who do are kidding themselves in some way. But I still participate in certain religious ceremonies or excursions, when my family or friends have them. In a way, I think it's hypocritical and it is, but blandly saying that I won't be a part of it because I don't believe in it is also a little difficult for me.

The trouble is most of these religious functions are also social functions. I can't refuse to attend my cousin's wedding just because it's a religious ceremony; it's her wedding, she's happy and I'm happy for her, and I should be there to celebrate it with her. The same goes for every wedding ceremony or reception that I've ever attended. I've never gone to a wedding that was simply a court marriage followed by a simple reception or celebration party. Or if there's a festival around or something, and everyone's going to a temple or some kind of celebration, it's not just about going there to worship or pray. There's a kind of social bonding taking place as well, the very act of going out together, cooking together and spending time together. And people just expect you to be there, without asking whether you believe or not: they just assume that you do.

So I go along for the ride, I go to all these temples, I take the offerings that are given, I go through all the rounds of worship rituals. Actually, no, I don't do most of the ritualistic things. I simply stand there while everyone else is doing them, and I look at everyone and feel lost and awkward, because in my heart, I know I should not be there. Then once the ritualistic part is over, the social part starts. The food, the photographs, the talking, the laughing. Apparently it's a package deal; I cannot just avoid the ritual part of it and stay for the social part of it; it's either take it all or leave it all. Even if it doesn't mean anything to me.

I've tried objecting to it, even screaming at times that it doesn't make sense because I don't believe in it at all, but would you believe it, they still want me to go through with it. They think that either I'm being deliberately difficult, or I'm somewhat misguided, or that I should be made to do it for my own good, even when I don't believe. It's even funny in a way: people will be pleased with an outward show even when I openly declare that I do not believe, while the reason that they themselves do it is because they sincerely believe. Apparently, it's also a face-saving exercise in the end.

So now, I just go along for the ride. I still have to deal with the feeling of being lost and awkward, but once that's over, the fun begins. So, I wait for the party to start.