Some drops

That's all folks

2010-07-25T16:53:00.000+05:30

I guess I have nothing more to add to this blog. It's been a wonderful journey. Every time I think of writing something, it seems either pointless to write it, or it's already been mentioned somewhere out there. I don't have any motivation to continue writing about the kind of topics this blog was for. Mostly I just don't know what to write about.

Hopefully, this post will give me the closure I need. Better to leave a dead body in a grave!

Ubuntu hangups

2009-06-16T05:31:00.004+05:30

Ubuntu has been awesome to me. It's stable, never crashes and lightning fast.
But yesterday I found myself booting to windows.

Linux needs Photoshop. Or atleast GIMP needs to be far better. Right now, it's a ugly piece of software that runs too many windows and everything just gets in the way. Photoshop is by far one of the best softwares I've used(under any category).
Great iPod support. Rhythmbox is nonsense. Last time I opened Rhythmbox when my iPod was connected, I lost all my album art. Songbird is by far the best song player software I've used. BUT, it doesn't have album art support for the iPod. Sad!
Chrome. Firefox is good. But sometimes, for some quick browsing, Chrome is just fast and gets the job done. Opera tends to be buggy on Linux. I just don't like seeing my page size shoot up on Linux.
More "slicker"! Jaunty is amazing. But sometimes, the fonts don't feel as slick. I always have this weird feeling that everything in Ubuntu is oversized. But Jaunty is miles ahead of the previous distros. I like the dark gray themes.

Admittedly, software options on Linux aren't as much as that on Windows/Mac. But considering it's free as in speech and beer(libre and gratis), you can't beat it.
If only I had a fast processor and truck loads of RAM to use VirtualBox + Photoshop...

Burnt by the Gods

2009-06-14T02:50:00.003+05:30

I came across this.

"14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite "

What the!

Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw "ball of light" heading straight towards him from the sky.
A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground.

The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million - but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand.

That is just insane.

The bright side is, he has a super cool scar. There isn't an image of it, but I can almost imagine Harry Potter fans aligning their foreheads for this one!

This one is totally incredible:

The only other known example of a human being surviving a meteor strike happened in Alabama, USA, in November 1954 when a grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a house, bounced off furniture and landed on a sleeping woman.

What the! If painful scars aren't your thing, then the above is just the right meteorite delivery system.

The only meteorites I'll ever get to see are shooting stars. It's nice that I've seen three in NITK. I used to think it was impossible to see them and you have to be totally jobless to see them. But I've caught all three when I was randomly staring at the sky.

However, I still haven't managed to see the Milky Way. Some people say you can see it, especially the Star Gazing Club nuts. But I can't see a thing. It all looks like black background and white dots. No white band anywhere.

Maybe you need to go to a dark place to see it like this

What's happened to Dosas and Idlis?

2009-06-13T05:10:00.004+05:30

Has anyone noticed that when someone talks about Indian food - they're usually referring to North Indian food.

Typical scenario: You're with a bunch of friends and you want to go eat some place. So, there's Italian(pizza), Fast food(Burgers), Chinese, Thai, Continental aanndddd Indian. Usually, when everyone ends up in an Indian restaurant, it's the Naans, Kulchas and PBM(Paneer Butter Masala for those hapless souls). It's so rare for someone to go eat South Indian food. It's not that people don't. South Indian food is more of an Indian "fast food" in the Darshinis. North Indian food is reserved for "occasions".

The situation is worse for people abroad. They talk about Indian food and no one seems to talk about Dosas and Idlis. It's always the biriyanis and tikkas. Have we reached a point where North Indian food has become the flag holder for Indian food?

I think so. Perhaps it's because South Indian people eat that food all the time at home. So they'd like a change when they go out. Atleast, that's the case with me.

But don't the North Indian people eat South Indian food? Hmm maybe not. Perhaps South Indian food isn't suited for their climate(the dosa batter doesn't ferment?). Perhaps, North Indians just don't like our food? I really don't know.

East and west on pollution and related

2009-06-07T01:16:00.003+05:30

First, check out Gulatis post about how people in the West are wasteful and that people should not point fingers when somebody is polluting the planet.

I find it ironic that he talks about how "India's duty is to her 800 million poor people" and while talking about the "efficient waste management system - the local rag-picker" so that he can slam a "fancy machine[s] at the supermarket" that "segregate the waste".

It's either a fancy machine or poverty. No one will ever pay a rag picker as much as anybody. If there are laws in place that means everyone should be paid a minimum amount of money, then there won't be a rag picker. Which, by the way, is what has happened in the west!

I'm not saying the developed world doesn't pollute. I think they overdo everything which leads to lots of pollution. Lots of cleanliness, lots of sanitisers, lots of plastic, lots of waste.

The amount of "standard of living" you get for every resource spent is a diminishing return. To be a little more comfortable, when you're already very comfortable, you need to spend a LOT more. This is pretty much what has happened in the western countries. Considering the population boom plus the standard of living boom, there is no way natural resources can keep up with human consumption.

But this is not what the post is about. It's about the "pointing fingers" Gulati is talking about. There are several points I need to talk about.

Nobody (not in a literal sense) is blaming India for pollution or global warming. It IS the the USA and other developed countries. It's a fact. If people don't know that, then they are ignorant. So it's the peoples fault, not a scientific one.
If normal people don't know that, there is a good reason why. Pollution in the west is NOT obvious. There is NO smoke. Ever. I have not seen smoke in the US at all. No dust. Nothing that looks like pollution. It's easy to think the place is very clean. It is! But pollution is a different thing. It hasn't got much to do with pollution, in the global warming sense. AND, companies nowadays have gotten a LOT cleaner. And are going to get hundreds of times cleaner in the coming decade.
When people from abroad criticise India about pollution, it's not the actual pollution they are blaming. They are blaming the "don't care" mentality. It's true that Americans are polluting a lot more. But, they care. And now that they've learnt about it, they want to do something about it. The problem with Indians, not just with this pollution debate, is that they don't care. They don't take the responsibility. We've always been like that. That's the mentality that is so strikingly different. The common person is part of the debate.

It's good that India doesn't pollute. But think about the costs involved. How many maids do we have and how many "kelsa gaaru" do we have? On the other hand, look at the costs involved in keeping everyone at a high standard of living. I think both places are the extremes and both need to moderate their behaviours.

Edit: And what I find even worse is that most of the young people are strongly trying to emulate western culture. Infact, most of what we learn in school and college today is western knowledge. Except for "0". Don't say that they haven't given us anything.

And I wish people would stop talking about their own respective countries. Everywhere. The time we are in is beyond that. What happens in one part of the world affects everyone else. Think about Google, melting glaciers, Afghanistan, outsourcing and kickass research in CERN. We're all in it together. It sucks that age old traditions like patriotism still exists. I suppose cave men created the concept so that they stay together and not get eaten by bears. But that's not the case anymore.

Thinking about luck

2009-06-05T04:06:00.002+05:30

Well, what is all this 'luck' business about?

I think luck more has to do with "being at the right place at the right time". It's just a way of abstracting the results of encounters with the unknown. It's just like any other encounter with other person, but the result will not be known, simply because, the encounter is with the unknown. The overall "angle" of your results simply tells whether you have good or bad luck. The distribution of luck, ofcourse, depends on the distribution of good and bad stuff relative to the distribution of unknown stuff people are exposed. What may be a factor of luck for some people, may not be for others. Example: Game shows. Wooo.

The Elder Scrolls RPG has a factor called Luck. So if you have a greater "luck", the more gold and rare items you find on bodies, crates, etc.

It's fascinating that luck can play such a major role in our lives. Often the effect seems exaggerated because luck, by it's very nature, catches us by surprise. I guess that's why it seems to play such a large role, although statistically, it may not!

Yaari.com sucks

2009-05-31T08:38:00.002+05:30

Ok, After getting infinite invitations from yaari.com "friends", I thought, what the heck if everybody is joining, lets see what the hell it's about. So I screwed up and hit the register button and put in all the usual crap. Only, I had already registered! So, I was staring blankly at a "This email is already registered" message. What the F***?!

Why IS it sending me hundreds of emails asking me to join?? I've even reported spam, but yaari.com is smarter than that. It sends the invitation mail from you're beloved friends email. So, you can't block the damn thing, else all your friends are blocked. Bummer!

What's worse, the site itself is miserable. It makes flushing your head in the toilet a pleasurable activity. Gah! You answer quizzes, lame ones, the level of stupid facebook quizzes, to find friend "matches". Needless to say, the site attracts "Can I be friendship with you" types, like a sleek polished electronic gadget attracts fingerprints.

Gah! Bah! *ah, where * is every letter possible! Miserable!

Beating the block

2009-04-25T21:53:00.002+05:30

Its quite annoying when something bad happens to you. Personally, I've never thought anything horrible could happen. You read about all the earthquakes, the murders, etc and you think - "Well, this could never happen to ME". Not that we think we're invincible and super lucky. It's just the odds are so small, we feel it won't just happen.

Interesting. When it does happen, you ejaculate a loud, "Why me?".

Of course, all this is obvious. Why the hell am I writing about this?

Probably because something like that happened to me. (It was a measly hard drive).

Which brings me to my main point, people are selfish.

Obvious.

I have a pessimistic view of life. (the above didn't seem to work well as my main point)

Obvious again.

*Desperately searches for something not obvious*

Aha, Fevibond sticks shoe soles waayyy better than fevikwik. Fevikwik just gets sucked in by the rubber type material. Fevibond rocks.

Do not smoke fevikwik. NO.

Did I beat the block? Perhaps...

The RSS Aggregator Hunt

2009-02-28T03:43:00.005+05:30

So I have too many sites to keep track of. And I've stopped using my last RSS reader, Google Reader, months ago due to lack of interest.

I guess I need to get back to some reading organisation and I need a RSS reader. So I need to take a look at a bunch of software other than Google Reader. I took at look the list of aggregators in the wiki page and looked for some best rss reader articles. Most of these articles are outdated though. Looks like most people have settled!

1) Desktop based readers. There are a lot of good non web based rss software. But I opted out of this category first thing. Mainly because if I have my rss on the desktop, I'll probably not read it because I can always read it. RSSOwl is a good offline reader at any rate.

2) FeedShow : Ugh, why did I go here? Such a ugly interface. I want a shiny artistic interface! OUT!

3) Newsgator: Hmm, it has a decent interface. Has folders, etc. Thats all I care about. But something is missing...Hmm...Maybe take a look at other software.

4) Bloglines: This was my first aggregator. Now that I go back and check on it, it's almost had no changes it feels like. Same interface for 2/3 years? Even with Ajax,etc coming in? Bye bloglines.

5) Tiny Tiny RSS: Again, felt too outlook-ish. I don't like outlooks interface, regardless of how convienient it is. Turned me off.

6) Live.com: I started looking at their personalized homepage thing. Hey, I can have everything on one page! Had some high hopes on this one. But all that showed up on Opera was the header and the footer fused together and a lot of warnings about how ill lose my customisations if I navigate away.

7) Netvibes: This is another start page. I can check my mail and my rss and my chat, everything here! And what's more, it looks great! The only hang up is that it doesn't seem like a good idea if you have a lot of feeds. For me, its ok because I don't plan to follow too many feeds. And pages can help organise the rss.

So that's that! I'll go and customise my page now!

Dry spell

2009-02-23T04:37:00.003+05:30

I haven't blogged anything for quite a while. I attribute it mostly to not being very active in the social net-o-sphere off late. And that's mostly attributed to me trying to desperately get things(read Naabo, Engi, and my future) running. Seems like the more I try, the more it gets away from me.

I don't have writers block or anything. Actually, I have a lot of opinions about a lot of topics. It's just that I feel most people probably aren't interested in hearing them. That's mostly because my opinions are cynical, since I have strong black hat tendencies(ask de Bono). I can't help it, sorry. At any rate, I've decided to go ahead and post something. Perhaps something interesting will come out of it. Funnily all this is motivated by an anime characters' name "Revive Revival" and ND's speech.

2009 has been a pretty normal year. They always are. No resolutions ever work. Good thing I didn't have any.

I haven't been reading many blogs either. Doesn't seem like there's been much activity on the "one degree of separation" level atleast. Sheki's post about Emotion Graphs was good. Shashi's blog quietly popped out of existence. Quite a few other interesting reads. Then there were the usual posts using ridiculous, superflous vocabulary and sentence structures to create "beautiful essays" that mean nothing.

From octal to nonal

2008-12-31T15:43:00.007+05:30

Tipping Point

2008------^-----2009

What I'm thinking:

Osama versus Obama! Just sounds cool
Colbert Report/The Daily Show is imba!
Naabos techonology can one day help identify corpses!
Life really isn't so serious
Somebody said 2008+1!! Ya dude, so is 2000+9 and 1988+21.
Sixth semester is a drag. Especially if you're cooped up in a tiny dark room, with 60 others who refuse to mass bunk.
Sixth semester is a drag. Especially if you have a retarded teacher who thinks ignorant students taking seminars is the ultimate path to education.

It ain't rocket science

2008-12-15T14:49:00.002+05:30

A 200 foot line of people stand behind one another, chatting away. The mass of people fills the entire corridor in the building. They move slowly and people in the front disperse away occasionally carrying with them a white piece of paper with a bunch of lines and two numbers. More fellows line up from the behind and some slip in between people by claim of friendship or knowing-ship, while fellows behind curse quietly - "It's not fair!"

This isn't Tirupati, folks. It's not Black Friday either. It's the college fee line in NITK.

Why a couple of women need to write the amount of fees (a one way function with a domain of about 6) on a cheap disposable form pushing wait times on the queue to over 1.5 hrs beats my fantasies. Perhaps they want to force us to pay 135 bucks for the cheap disposable T shirt. Perhaps they want to torture us. Perhaps it's part of the stimulus package to create new jobs (Hah, Americans! Learn from that!) Perhaps it's because they're too dumb to realise we can do that ourselves. It ain't rocket science.

Whatever it is, it's extremely annoying. What's even worse is they want to process to 3000 students this way, at a rate of 30 students per hour in 4 days time. Do the math. Impossible.

How to do media

2008-12-04T12:23:00.002+05:30

Talk sensationally, even if it's groundless!
Rumor monger! Who cares about facts?
Be a drama queen. "Oh my God, he said THAT!"
Discount other media for rumor mongering.
Edit out areas of information and pick out phrases so that they really mean something else. Eg: "He screwed her dishwashers door" -> "He screwed her". Ooh, don't the journalists just get turned on by that?
Be pretty.

Dark Blight

2008-07-23T14:55:00.001+05:30

When I first watched the Dark Knight, I kind of agreed that it was a good movie. Better than most of the Juno/21/most of the crap that's been coming out off late. But when Dark Knight hit #1 in IMDB, over Godfather, I couldn't believe. Surely, the movie isn't THAT good.
Ofcourse it isn't. I guess people of this time have been afflicted with stupidity syndrome. It's true. If you think about it, there has been no major technological/scientific breakthrough the last decade. Not as many as the 30s or the 60s or before. Our generation is a big bunch of dumbees.
Anyway, back to Dark Knight. What do people think that made it so amazing? The story?
Here's what pisses me off now that I go back and think about it.

How many ever chances the DK gets to kill the Joker, he doesn't. Instead he allows the joker to kill others. Wow DK. Amazing sense of justice you have. Save a life to kill others. Amazing. Best not to get your hands dirty eh?

Batman falls off the building some 20 times from 20 floors. And literally walks away. Two face, a minor pain in the butt btw, falls 2 floors and dies!! What the hell. Poor two face. And whatever happens to the Joker at the end of the story?

DKs voice...That is the biggest joke ever. It's utterly ridiculous.

Cell phone sonar? Have you lost your mind? I'm sure the story writers are a bunch of morons with no education. These are the kind of people who make hacker movies in which hackers press a button to hack a giant ultra secure military database. Fools.

Just because an actor dies doesn't mean you have to watch the movie and praise it to be best the world has ever seen. Oh wait. This reminds me of the Rajkumar situation. Oh wait. It can develop into a business strategy. Kill off an actor after the movie and be sure your movie grand success.

Okay, got to agree the Joker was good. He was way more interesting than Batman. They should have named the movie Joker. Morons.

Oh and the thing about the two boats. A big murderer actually THROWS out the switch. That's plain stupid. The Milgram Experiment(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) proves that chances are people blow each other up.

Anyway, it was a good movie. But it's plain insulting to life as we know it to call it the best movie ever.

Fags

2008-07-21T22:03:00.000+05:30

Stupid annoying government officials who think they run the world, only they don't realise that their sphere of influence doesn't even extend to the cockroaches at his place.

Stupid annoying government officials who somehow find ways to justify the shit they do

Stupid annoying government officials who are underpaid and overpissed and therefore exert their failure in lives on us

Stupid annoying government officials who think that they have big *****

Stupid annoying government officials who actually think Yahoo! is a monopolisitic oganisation promoting cannibalism

Stupid annoying government officials who think attendance is the prime factor in indicating intelligence

The Noobs' Guide to Getting Decent(er) Autos

2008-07-12T14:14:00.002+05:30

It's a pain to get screwed by auto drivers. I mean you never know when a mad one hits you or when the meter shows 100 when it should show 60! Here are some tips that give you a better chance at getting a sane auto driver.

Do NOT even bother going near auto drivers who are just standing around in the 'auto stand'. Especially when the auto stand isn't fast moving. This means the fellow is a lazy a-hole and he will screw you, ask you for ridiculous amounts of money, start fights over 10 rupees and what not.
Do NOT get into autos who have big speakers. These auto drivers need high income to support their speakers and frankly you shouldn't care unless you like listening to blasting "Allele thuntu kanna sundari" or some other recent kannada super hit song.
Do NOT get into autos or even negotiate if the auto driver asks for extra money in broad daylight. Just say no, don't even bother negotiating. You may win now, but you will get screwed later.
Do get into autos who are roaming the streets looking for people. These are the hard workers and will give you a fairer price.
When naming the place, don't name some landmark close to where you want. If you do, state clearly so. Otherwise you might find yourself stranded 400 meters from where you want to be.
State clearly the route you want him to take. Otherwise, prepare for a city tour. Don't bother asking him about the route, he'll take whatever he wants.
If the guy seems friendly, and you will need some bargaining power(late nights), try to have a chat with the dude. Comment about the rash drivers or the annoying police or the muslims! Whatever will get you connected with the driver. It'll shave off 10 or 20 bucks off the double/triple/one and half.
If the meter is flying, either you didn't follow the above principles, or you're just plain unlucky. You can get out of the auto, or continue to get screwed. You should try the former. The general rule is more than 30% extra on the actual price is getting fucked. Most meters have about 15% extra 'mileage'.
And do not annoy the auto driver unless you want an ugly crazed fight in the middle of the road.

When it comes to living off nothing

2008-06-29T20:07:00.001+05:30

NITKians have it boiled down to an art. Deferring eating yet ingesting randomly, we are alive!

Airtel sucks

2008-06-28T23:14:00.003+05:30

So my Airtel validity ended uneventfully. BOOM! Out of nowhere. At 2 in the morning I realize I can't send messages. And someone couldn't wake me up in the morning for work. Because calls were barred.

So I proceed with my usual journey to the shop with the Airtel Recharge(A humble Chemists store 100 metres from my place).

Me: Airtel recharge kodi. 1 year validity beku, college plan.

Chemist dude: Ah, ondu nimisha.

My Cellphone: ERecharge not successful

Me: WTF! @!$#@!!

After a long time trying, Airtel tells chemist dude to tell me to tell airtel to get the 565 thing ENABLED. Whatever the hell that means.

So I do, only I am told there is no SUCH THING. As I suspected. Also I am told the 565 thing SHOULD work.

It doesn't.

So I call Airtel again. They tell me to call after 1 hr because askdjska!! Yes, he said actually something like "askdjska". 3 times. I pretended to understand.

I call them up after 1 hr. The thing gets disconnected. Just like that. Your call is important...Please hold the li..beeeeeep beeeeeep beeeeeep. WTF

Next the Chemist guy calls up. They tell him to call after 9:30! That's like 3 hrs away. Chemist dude reassures me he will.

So I call up Airtel again later anyway. Airtel tells me to try 566 next! But that changes my plan. To a pathetic 50p per call, 10p per SMS! WTF! My current plan is 25p per call, free SMS!! Why do I have to change plans??

This sucks. They keep changing their pathetic plans hoping that people will get caught in some sadass plan paying more than they should just because they have to tell their friend they're walking down the stairs or reassure that he will be there on time or some such. It's sad. Phone companies suck.

Update: So I went to a proper Airtel shop. After 3 days of fiddling around and little help from a good friend of mine, I got them to do a 777 recharge and it's all fine now! Phew. Morons.

Stairway to Heaven

2008-06-25T18:12:00.002+05:30

Superbug

2008-05-30T22:02:00.002+05:30

Have a head ache? No problem! Just take a pill!

Slight cold? Take the arbitrary cold tablet.

This is the birth of the super bug. It hides and breeds. Antibodies swarm around it and they are powerless. Antibiotics stream and attack it fiercely. Not a scrape on it. It floats around undeterred. Multiplies unquestioned. Destroys its host. But as far as it's concerned, it got there with help and it's just surviving. Like homo erectus killed the lions that attacked their camp, and monkeys scratch and bite you if you try to steal their young ones.

Patient walks into a clinic with a simple incurable common cold. Doctor pushes antibiotic to convince patient he's done something. Naive patient unwittingly takes in and feels better', a.k.a. , Placebo effect. Virii get exposure to weak antibiotics and eventually develop immunity. Grows stronger.

It's not speculation anymore. It's a fact of life. Really. Google it if you don't believe me. Eventually, we are going to have serious problems. When fevers can kill and colds incapacitate. Think about it. Some day, patients who are actually ill won't get treatment.

Getting to the top

2008-05-17T22:39:00.009+05:30

So, I was thinking about people and how smart they can be and how each person decides his own destiny and all that sort of related gibberish. Everyone does this some time or the other.

I was thinking, hmm, everyone is born with some inner latent ability/talent. Some persons are just smart, and some are just dumb, but most are in between! This is obviously demonstrated by a normal curve! Let's call this the inner ability everybody has the Latent Factor(L).

Also, not only does it matter that a person has a high L, it also matters how much effort they put into their lives. Let's call this the Effort Factor(E). As a sweeping generalization(a logical fallacy I agree), we'll assume that this variable also has normal distribution.

So from these two variables, a person's Quality Product(Q), or how good a person is in general at something is given by

Q = E x L

Now, L is generally a constant, but E isn't. An overall distribution for a population would would like this...(spare the inaccuracies, please)

But the thing is, the top percent on the L graph don't have to be top 10% in the E graph. Or just put, someone with an L of 0.5, the worldwide average, can easily have as much Q as someone with a high L(say,1), simply because of the fact that most people have a Q of around 1/2!! Of course, now the question becomes, how hard is it to get a high E, to sufficiently bump up your Quality Product to super-average levels? Just work hard I guess!

4 reasons why Facebook sucks

2008-05-01T21:18:00.001+05:30

1) Every time I do ANYTHING, I'm interrupted by the page, which takes frikkin' forever to load, that tells me to send some shitty invite to all my friends.
2) Because of the above, I get about 20 invitations to totally arbitrary things from sending 'drinks' and 'gifts' and other quizzes about movies totally unheard of!
3) Again, because of the above two, the supposedly most important part of social whatevering - the messaging, done by a unique tool called The Wall in Facebook, comes at the end of a 10,000,000 pixel long page. That's roughly about 'Oh shit, I'm closing this window' long.
4) It's just like windows - allow some blasted noobs to write 'apps' for you, 'Face' a big load of annoying bugs and totally unusable interfaces.

Drawing the fine line

2008-02-11T21:50:00.002+05:30

It's totally pathetic when we're talking about something and the result is "In such a case, do this. In the other case, do this... and so on and so forth". This is like drawing not just a fine line, but a plethora of such fine lines, making Clarity into a cobweb of confusion. I wish there was some sort of elegant formula which you could apply to every problem/situation and make them simple. To illustrate,

"How much alcohol one can drink (legal point of view)"
A solution such as "If not near mad beach, upto high level 4, else upto high level 8. If not near parents, high level 9,else upto level 2..."

This is mundane and ridiculous. It's like those math formulas, where you say f(x)=blah, at point 1, blahmore, at point 2 and so on and so forth. How lame.

In so many cases, the true answer is so complex and boring that one wouldn't even be least interested. In the mind,"Who the hell cares? Give me something simple and easy". And at a certain level, it begins to sink into one's tiny head that if the answer for something is too complicated for the actual use, then screw it! It's far better not even bother with the answer!
S0, you start wondering about a concept or an ideology of thinking that'll allow you to have simple answers for all your questions. That way, everything will start being worth the time! Wow, methinks I've found an amazing path in life. So I start thinking about it. Hmm. What the , this is too complicated. Get out! But then, this answer is worth finding...but I'm too lazy. So I'll just screw this question and make the answer "Screw every blarmed other thing and don't even bother!"

Peace

Morals or Friends?

2008-02-04T15:56:00.001+05:30

After an inexcusable hiatus, I'm back blogging. Happy New Year!

A lot of times, one is faced with choosing whether to support a friend or screw it and choose the right moral path. And it can be a horrible fork in the road to face. But thinking about it, I came to realize that my values were only mine. But people are with everyone. Unless such a value isn't so important, I'd take the friend path. Sometimes friends and values are on the same side, no problems.

Today, I might choose the 'right path', and piss off a friend. But later tomorrow, no value is going to stand up for me. I'll have only my values...pretty lonely if you ask me.

But morality is really important. Noam Chomsky says,

... if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right
(or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not
rise to the minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards
they apply to others -- more stringent ones, in fact -- plainly cannot
be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or
of right and wrong, good and evil.

That means one who doesn't have certain standards are just not trustworthy. I'm not saying abandon all ethical values. Then even your friends won't believe you!

Now the other angle is when is it right to lie or steal? What moral level gives us such rights? That's such a situational thing with so many factors in play that a definite answer is really tough. Everyone loves the Robin Hood concept, maybe breaking a few rules is good there. Robin Hood chose friends.

If one chooses morality, they better have the integrity to stand up for them. We're not all Brutus'.

Click it

2007-12-23T00:28:00.001+05:30