England's Greatest Son!

Cromwell's Rule

The reference is to Oliver Cromwell, who famously wrote to the synod of the Church of Scotland on August 5, 1650 saying

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.^[2]

 

^{So you should always leave room for the impossible to happen just in case :-)}

Three Links

Text: http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm
Book: http://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Lives/dp/0375424040
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtSE4rglxbY

Exercise

Suddenly  I realized exercise has a far greater effect than I have imagined. Most significantly on the mind :-) I am going to hit it regularly then. Diet, Exercise and Rest are the three key ingredients I look to optimize in my lifestyle from now on (sounds old but works for me!)

Coming Back from A Precipice

I have danced long on the edge of a precipice. Its fallen and  the magic is gone and its time for me to return back. The word 'radical' has its etymology from latin radix or radicalis which means 'root'. Its going to be a tough long road to be back but it must be done. Rooting for myself  :-)

As a process of coming back, I need to document my path for myself as a waypointer rather than anything else and here I am..I write because it is as much therapy for me as reading. Writing is far more compelling than reading though (as a therapy of course).

Humming along..

"Then the piper will lead us to reason. ..
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long. ..
And the forests will echo with laughter. ..
And it makes me wonder"

The Final Lapse

Just because I like circles, here's a link to my first post.

First off, Thank you all who read my posts. I know of atleast two people on this planet who have done so, come rain or shine (thank you folks!) and my gratefulness extends to all those who subscribed to the rss feeds

I don't see any more point of me writing on this domain. I don't have any anonymity that was offered when I started (My dad reads my posts these days!). I don't have any new ideas to post but rather a bunch of links and I have many other reasons to append which finally boil down to the same result of rapping the door behind me.

Finally,I might have a penchant for writing again but it will be on a different domain as times would have changed and I like to start with a clean slate (if I were to do it again!). This marks the end of a phase!

May be if we are lucky, we'll meet again in the cyber-crossroads. If not, Have a Good Life.

I will definitely miss some of the folks I have interacted via this medium. To miss some people in your future is bad enough but to miss people in your past smacks of misfortune to me.

So Long and Thanks for all the fish.

Go Saints!

Wahoo! The team I support has won the Super Bowl. Its a fantastic outcome for me. It was on the shores of New Orleans that I dropped my anchor in the Fall of 1999. Superdome was an engineering marvel outside which PIGS (Poor Indian Graduate Students) sold beer. I can still recollect the scent of the city streets. Beignet with Coffee at Cafe Du Monde replaced my chai with samosas at Galaxy Cafe. Midnight pool and beer. Weekends spent at Razoos on Bourbon. They slowly waft out of the mists of my memory.

More importantly, I was introduced to the NFL there. Our then quarterback was Ricky Williams and I took the game instantly. Slowly, I realized the Saints were like West Indies cricket team where no amount of lead in a game is insurance against loss. Slowly they lost match after match and even the playoffs were a big deal for us.

I supported various other teams in the meanwhile. I moved to DC, so supported the RedSkins there who lost to the Cowboys when I cheered them. Moving to California, I tried to pick between Raiders and 49ers but no avail. I still went back to the saints who couldnt even make the playoffs.

Today, however, I feel great about the team making its debut superbowl into a triumphant success. Psychologically, I think we associate ourselves with the team and this its winning associatively translates into our winning. Deep down, there is a gratification in things that we can wait 10 years and still dreams will come true..

BTW for all this great ads during this superbowl, I loved Google's the best because it was simple,subtle and effective to its purpose.


Go Saints Go! You've all been canonized in the field just ahead of the Lent Season (so you could participate nicely for the Fat Tuesday and have an equally somber Ash Wednesday)

Word of the Day: Neoteny

Defined as The retention of juvenile characteristics in the adult.

Going through the Rye without being Phony

You guys must have heard the news. Too sad. He wrote a book that never made me want to grow up. One of the few books where a few lined haunted me in my past corporate crisis.Those lines were


The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause while the mark of the mature man is that wants to live humbly for one

More than a few folks got influenced by the book so will leave that alone for a while and give some snapshots as a homage

I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?'' he reasons. "The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question.

You ought to go to a boy's school sometimes. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together.


And finally I hope he rests in peace at a world like the following

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.

NeuroLingusitic Programming

One of the most basic desires of a human is to communicate. When you communicate something, there'll be a difference of opinion. Almost Always the difference happens to be because of the fact that people involved in the communication have different definitions. The so-called "being on the same page" involved the fact that all of them need to be defining the the same things in the same way.

So, one of the effects of how civilized you are is in the nature of how you handle the disagreements. Somebody disagrees with you fine. Start by asking what they think is the definition of the problem, the key issues, etc. You'll see its an easy way to bridge the definitions to resolve an issue than a forceful opinion of one side.

May be thats all just baloney but thats what I think today. Its a matter of not only programming code, its also of making sure your natural language is as clean as a 'C' code for example. it also means that as a byproduct by playing with the linguistic constructs you can make feel people they way you want to (or dont want to)..That explains why so many english language majors become lawyers because they know how to use language as a weapon of maneuvering.