The Hidden Power of Rhetoric

Oft times, we find ourselves tongue tied in situations. Situations where you plumb the depths of your vocabulary, situations where you attempt to find the best riposte and situations where you try to overwhelm your opposition with just the right words.
Certain other situations lend themselves to allow you the speaks to have an element of preparation to woo and wow the audience.
In this day and age of progress, financial turmoil, violent religious fervor and unprecedented overall greed and selfishness unseen in humanity of the past, it is important to dwell on what motivates us. How are we any different from being forced into action by a hate speech, or one of religious calling from say the time of Adolf Hitler or Nero? I doubt if very little has changed, except for the verbosity of speeches which may be contemporary, but the speech in itself would be so mired in bombast, rhetoric and pithy platitudes that we've in essence been listening to the same record, year after year, century after century and have somehow unwittingly not been able to assess the underlying driver behind all of them - to me the driver is Rhetoric

So what is Rhetoric?

Rhetoric in itself is a branch in politics and distance from logic. Not alarmingly it finds its best proponents in politicians, leaders and various religious rabble rousers over time. It is not far removed from political debate, courtroom arguments, and the typical lets-tighten-our-belts kind of speech given by hopeless CEO's in times of crises. While there are many branches to rhetoric, depending on which end of the chain it gets applied - we often as a humand race find solace in lofty words, false promises, and hope for a better dawn. How else do you explain time after time when people go out to exercise their franchise to listen to the bijli-sadak-paani nonsense time after time - bewitched by the utopian promises by spineless politicians and yet end up voting option 1 or option 2 back in power on a flip-flop. It really doesn't - we know what we like to hear, and our leadership panders to such cravings. Rhetoric is a key essence of motivation, however it loses its place in actual problem solving - If I, as an engineer, listened to a bombastic routine from any of my top management and if they could actually see the smirk and smug look on my face they would immediately stop - certain problems call for immediate and quick resolution. All others which require healing over time, can have the woollen gauze of rhetoric applied over them...

"Chronos" - ne pas abuser

In Greek mythology Chronos is THE personification of time.
In the modern day and age, I, the author, upholds Chronos with the dignity he truly deserves.
One of the primary principles, my pet peeves, and something that I find more insulting than someone calling me a "curd-rice eating whore" is when people don't keep appointments.
Have you heard the : "I shall have it done by 5pm" at 6:30 pm?
Have you heard the : "I shall be there in 5 minutes" an hour later?
In this day and age, when people carry watches, have cellphones with alarms, it is basically disrespectful when you propose to have something or commit to something and not deliver it by that time. In fact I am even willing to go out on a limb and allow for some latitude in when you cannot finish that task, its only because you are human - what is not acceptable is that you take your own sweet time in telling me that you will be late.
Following are the rules
1. Make a time-related commitment with me, if and only if you can adhere to it. Or else tell me you will be done before I die of old age..
2. Do not let me know you wont be done after the deadline has passed. That is strictly unprofessional. Also not when the deadline is about to pass.
Two things tell me about a person who would call me if he/she isnt able to make it to an appointment well in advance. It tells me the persons cares about my time - if you don't respect my time, I don't have the slightest iota of respect for you as a person - I don't care if you are Warren F-ing Buffet.
And time management has nothing to do with if you are the giver or the taker in that particular relationship - self-respect above everything else. Business is secondary.
So if you plan to meet me, let me know when - and show up at that time. There has been no appointment - either personal or professional where I havent showed up 10 minutes of before it - It is a habit I cherish a lot, and it tells a lot to people about me as a person - it says "I care" in louder words and makes an excellent impression. I have my flaws, of which there aren't many ;-) , but if you matter to me in the slightest possible way you will have my respect, and you will have my time - Question is, do you respect my time, ergo do you respect me?

Of "Nice" sugar-biscuits and "Monaco" salt-biscuits

I was in Nice .. I still am at the time of writing this.. There are no big biscuit factories as I was lead to believe by the Parle biscuit manufacturers! In fact all "Nice" biscuits come from - hold your breath - Vile Parle!! Oh my God - I was duped as a kid!!
And while I was just settling in from the shock I went over to Monaco - expecting a nice salty treat - the ocean breeze from the Mediterranean blew into my face - aaaah mining the ocean to make biscuits - brilliant - even the Tata's couldn't have thought of this brilliant business idea, me thought! Just when I stepped in and out of a few stores to find out if I could get a tasty salty treat - unamused French shopkeepers shoo-ed me away - my despair grew into a saddened acceptance that Parle manufactures Monaco in, of all places, in Vile Parle! Oh, the duplicity of the Indians.. I was seething with rage.
Meanwhile I snapped a few pictures of the place - It wasn't too bad as one might think [;-)]

Nizza!

Imagine working in an office atop a mountain which overlooks the azure blue mediterranean sea..
Been there, done that..
Here I am in Nice [Nizza], France - and the picture is of me atop one of the mountains in a place called Villeneuve-Loubet.




Yes that is a HELIPAD! SWEET innit?

Right or Wrong

Raj Thackeray beating up Biharis - WRONG
Biharis/UP-ites flooding Mumbai - WRONG
Shooting of Rahul Raj in a BEST BUS - RIGHT
Home Minister RR Patil's defence of the same - RIGHT
MNS Activists beating up Bihari candidates - WRONG
Ban demanded on MNS - Right
Murder of UP laborer on a Khopoli train - WRONG
Obama is the premier US Presidential candidate - by a long shot - WRONG
McCain, if in office, will carry out Bush policies - WRONG
Obama will be friendly towards India - WRONG
McCain will ruin the world like BUSH - WRONG
Republicans are bad, Democrats are good - WRONG
Palin is a nobody - WRONG
Malegaon blasts lead by Hindu Terror outfits - ??? No evidence thus far ???
Money collected in TamilNadu goes to Tamil relief - WRONG
India won't suffer on account of the global meltdown - WRONG
Shivraj Patil is useless, incompetent, and highly impotent - RIGHT

Only the good die young

Some of the greatest composers, writers and poets have died in penury.
Some of India's greatest mathematicians and poets have died unsung.
It is only in posterity that history grudgingly recognizes the brilliance of these men and then questions the manner in which they passed on.
Ramanujam was barely 32 or so when he died of tuberculosis. To think of the amazing things the man could have done if someone had seen him for a brilliant mathematician and not some poor brahmin. How many in India actually study what his contributions are to mathematics. I knew about him in school because he was a tamil brahmin, and because he died a young man. I think we had like a chapter on him in school.
The poet/writer Subramaniya Bharathi was barely 39 when he died - A dozen people showed up at his funeral.
I quoted one of his poetries, albeit translated into english, at one of the poetry competitions in school - the rhetoric, the heart-felt need for social change, and the burning pride of nationalism were amongst the foremost messages that come from the man.
Needless to say, I only won first prize but only because I quoted his vision. He was a champion for change and strove to break down the caste barrier. People prefer EVR Naicker's idol breaking ways to Bharathi's peaceful methods. So much for the dravidian gratitude.

It is heart wrenching to see such souls not know what they could have been had they lived their fullest lives. And even so with the marginalization of the tamil brahmin community in dravidian south India with the Periyar effect and what not.

Outside India as well, it must be admitted the best and brightest came when their childhood was filled with poverty, and they had to fight their way to the top based on pure genius. And true genius finds a way, and has many takers in today's world. A lot of today's "geniuses" are products of schools that tend to push them out the door like production lines. Solving problems are a banal task - The best and brightest are the ones who conjure up the problems - and then find a way to resolve them. The latter in my mind isn't as important as the former. That is the difference between a guy who does research and the guy who has a job at the office - some luxuries are to be afforded to research on account of the nature of the job. The research culture is non-existent in India. We are all glorified IT coolies.

Creativity finds its outlets when people are pushed to corners - to think differently and to come up with solutions. I don't think Einstein ever did anything without the love for it.

Identify, appreciate and nurture talent. But don't let people get over their heads because of it. The worth of the individual is only as long as he/she contributes significantly in any domain. And look through the rocks - you will find the diamonds you oh-so-badly need. And appreciate if for what they can do for you, not for who they are or where they come from.

The Palin McCain campaign

Those were Sarah Palin's exact words - not the McCain-Palin campaign but the Palin-McCain campaign. Okay so she has more testosterone than the flagellating septugenarian - okay, we understand that she comes from a state so RED [read republican], that it makes the texas chainsaw massacre look like a garden of yellow tulips.
Wait - so what was Palin's qualification again - Wait what was George Bush's qualification again? He went to Yale - phhbbttt - "Is our children learning" - yeah right. Who cares?

The elections to the highest posts are not made on degrees - this isn't a job interview at Microsoft. Its an administrative position. Emotions are involved rather than issues - topics get discusses but not issues. Slander is the order of the day, political nitpicking, mud-slinging, its all cool.
Politicians don't make laws - Congressmen and their lobbyists make laws - who reads them all - only the lawyers on the payrolls or parties, and bureaucrats do. Politicians are the pretty faces of the bureaucrats - at the end of the day Red or Blue a bunch of lawyers with connections to big business houses enact laws. Period. All else is just an eyewash. You could roll a dice and choose Obama/Biden over McCain/Palin - it really doesn't matter. When push comes to shove America is never known to hold its punches - Democrat or Republican they will come at you like a tonne or bricks.

So Palin's claim to fame may not be something more than a few paragraphs long. But then this was never about the issues - it was about a public face to push for an agenda to continue the Iraqi war and push the economy, although unknowingly, into a quicksand of self destruction - hey, more power to see them go - with them so will China, the sweatshop of the world. Good riddance to both. God bless India!

Dancing with the Engineers

Dancing with the Engineers :
Contestant 1 : He wrote the Linux kernel and now he is here to do the Salsa...
Contestant 2: He designed the chip with a complete optical interconnect, and he is here to do the Cha-Cha.

Now that's what I call a show!
Okay so quick background check.

Engineers - people who can fix-er-up your satellite dish to your toaster, so you could cook breakfast while you watch re-runs of the Starship Enterprise. Aaah, the breed of nerds, haunched over their laptops, pummelling their keyboards. Give us a bag of Lays, a nice soda [preferably diet, we want to watch that figure, as much as the next seat does ;-)] and a C compiler, and we will bring the world to you!

I digress.
This was meant to be a blog post on us engineers; of us our "moves" on the dance floor. I mean while we can co-ordinate those cruddy semaphores and mutexes in perfect binary unison, we find it difficult to do the two-step on the dance floor. But fear not - on my current trip to Finland I've found the perfect recipe to produce dancing engineers - Its called an on-site in October.
Or as I see it pictorially: o| o
And those are the exact components in the male anatomy which freeze over first in the weather. There I was life going along swimmingly in rustic Bangalore - aah the smell of fresh garbage and IT coolie sweat wafting through the early morning vortex of traffic at Bellandur junction. How I miss that! But here I am finding my penchant for all those dance moves.

In class 4, Mrs. Fernandes taught me as part of a dance routine for the annual day function. She called it the gypsy dance - I have no idea how I got into it - teachers would pick volunteers - I call them conscripts. This was worse than the army - I mean here you are a pre-pubescent 10 year old with a 40 year old woman screaming in your face to get your damn steps right. Since I was the tallest kid in the entire dancing troupe I got pushed to the end of the dance routine - or perhaps I was the worst and hence got send there, but I never really cared to find out. I came out with flying colors!

So here's to finding novel ways to keeping warm and keeping fit. Head to Scandinavia for the winter. I am sure you will find the right moves to compete in the next edition of "Dancing with the engineers"!

Don't forget to unpack your woolies!
My shoulders are haunched in the picture because my folks wanted to see me in something other than my crummy pull-over. Here Ma, I stand before thee - a frozen popsicle :-(
Oh and I call that the Robot-Dance.

Tampere - September 2008

Its been a pretty hectic trip - I was in 4 cities over a 5 day period and the daily travel was demanding but I didn't feel the physical strain of it thanks to awesome Finnair, and VR for making all those rides feel comfy.


Tampere is the 3rd largest city in Finland.
Its not exceedingly pretty or a world class city by any stretch of imagination. The entire city has the pulse of say - Kormangala in Bangalore [okay maybe just 1st block].
I love walking around the place though - with its well manicured roads, walkways and greenery all around even in September.
The temperature is down to 8 degrees even on most days, but its bearable without the chilly nippy wind, and ice-cold rain.




Its about that time of year - Fall Colors as they used to call it back in North Carolina - leaves are a-changing, to brilliant hues of yellow, and violet. I heard the Laplands are a must-visit at this time of the year to witness the beautiful color changes, but alas I am a little pressed for time on this trip - Perhaps some other time?



I sit across the embankment - to the left of this picture - there are a few trees and park benches - to just sit and watch the water fall across a 20-foot cascade. The wild life consists of a bunch of ducks swimming around. There are a few kids who fish too - although I haven't seen anyone catch anything.


Shopping has been a dissapointment though - I head to the local flea-markets, supermarkets, malls - with an open mind to buy anything which would be considered a souvenir to take back home - I haven't been rewarded yet - today is my last weekend in this place, so let me see if I can scope something out to take back home. All I have left is my memories [ and there aren't a lot of them ;-) ]

Blast in

So another day another blast.
A kid got killed, twenty-odd people injured.
The government's reaction - boo-fuc#ing-hoo.
The opposition's reaction - screw the government over
The people's reaction - am I okay? Now let's move the fuc% on
Terrorists reaction - soft targets, they are worse than pussies....

Time to reflect on what is and what has been, the Indian government's policy on security and value for human life - ZILCH.
The following institutions in my mind are responsible for the security of the country
1. Police
2. Armed Forces
3. Intelligence

The less said about cops the better - they are not equipped to handle a house break-in, what will they do deciphering emails and cryptic messages. Fat pouty corrupt bastards all of them, if they ever get time from lining their obese pockets and making out with the political top brass, they would get off their fat asses and do something about it.
The armed forces are devoid of motivation - the top brass is a piece of crap without the balls for surgical strikes and are stifled with myopic vision. The junior cadres are more interested in raping the locals after being away from family for just 2-3 months [heck there are millions of IT professionals who do this, you don't see them raping americans while they are onsite!], and the officers are busy pushing into more lucrative careers prospects in the public sector and who can blame them?
The intelligence setup in india is set up from cops, and well, the iterative venom I spewed on cops basically applies here too.

There is no respite for you, the common indian from this - there are good chances, that you the reader is one of the victims some time in the future. As for your fight/effort to get rid of the scourge of terrorism, look no further - the people who are supposed to be doing their jobs are out screwing the country. Take a good look around, there is no one to save soft targets like you - you and this country are fuc$ed.

Poverty is terrorism

I saw a beemer go on the road yesterday while I was driving my "fuel efficient" Suzuki around. The inside of me just threw up a little bit. How dare, would one on account of his shameless display of capitalist leanings drive around in a vehicle so expensive and so unique, whilst I, the white collared pseudo-IT coolie be so harshly delegated to the banal annals of auto-uncool-dom?
Then I went home and switched on NDTV - a channel so red with its dazzling display-color and political hue, that I got hooked on to it like Fardeen Khan on smack. They had a variety of people on it - but mostly Human Rights activists with a penchant for barking - Infact I named one female the "Rottweiler", and the other minority loving fur-bucket as "Bulldog". So Rottie and Bulldog seem to be saying India's collective failure in providing for its citizens meant home-grown terrorism would come and bite the nation in its proverbial-ass. We are a poor country, they whined at high frequency, so high that only other dogs could hear. We are poor, and hence we cannot provide for our citizens. I see, so if somehow with the flick of a switch we were as rich as the Luxemborg-ians, we wouldn't have this problem, me thinks. But the time was not for a practical solution. Rottie and Bulldog were on song, one of those loud long howls which canines let out when they look at the moon - oooooh this as must watch TV. These folks had been saying what I was thinking all along - if you don't get what you want, its not just because you didn't try - it was becasue THE MAN wouldn't let you have it - free market capitalism without government intervention not bringing you out of poverty? Blame the Government! But India isn't a socialist economy you croak? WRONG! Thou shalst not turn away from your Nehruvian socialist roots, lest thou be banished to the dark recesses of political oblivion.
So I reflected back on that middle aged man with the beemer the other day - I don't have what he has not because I wasn't trying to get rich. And I knew how to get there - Terrorism. For when all else fails, taking lives of other people for money helps get you up the class ladder. Thank you NDTV, I am towards getting myself a 7 series.

The Dark-ened Knight

Sometimes when you come out of a movie theater you have a satisfied feeling. You feel riveted through the time you sat through the movie.
Hats off to Heath Ledger for making one of my favorite villains into my "Favorite Villain". I mean there are enough tributes paid to his role as the Joker in the Dark Knight, and I say he deserves each and every one of it. Its only tragic his life had to be cut short. All for what?
Well he did what is a quoted in the movie : You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become the villain. He quit when he was at the top - and what a top is has been. We will remember you for this one - R.I.P Heath Ledger, R.I.P

Kung Fu-ntastique

Kung-Fu Panda is easily the best animation movie to come out of Hollywood for some time now. Its been so long I forgot what was the last good pure animation movie I've seen in the last decade.
So Americans love the perpetual under-dog story. Little guy shackled in a boring life, suddenly gets thrust into the limelight, and a few montages later is ready to heed his call. Been there, done that a million times, and its not so much with the story line. After all its an animation movie. The animation is fast paced typical of kung-fu movie genre. Double takes, great dialogues, and great characters make this a good watch.
The only sad part was the movie was pretty short - 1:25 runtime is normal for movies of this nature, but I was just sad it all had to end. Some of the animators and story tellers had some amazing imagination because the fight scenes - especially Tailang's escape from prison, and the fight scene across the rope bridge were really amazing.
And the characters are all based on typical chinese good luck fortunes or cultural references, without any fake heavy accents - very neutral, very normal - without being caricatures. Its a feel good movie to go have a look at, and it sure has made my weekend.
I feel like a dragon warrior.

This lady is hilarious - She is a SW engineer [bleh, who isn't] but she breaks the monotony with her kavita in chaste Hindi - with a touch of American tadka.

I liked it a lot, so I'm paying her a little tribute.

Just posted a link to her youtube video on my blog.

Good take on matrimony in the Silicon Valley.

Funny Man - 1

Tell us a joke oh funny man
Tell us a joke tonight,
`Coz we are all in a mood for laughter,
And you've got us feeling all right..
La.. la .. la dee dee daa.. La dee dee daa...

[Shamelessly ripped from Billy Joel's album and song by the same name : Piano Man]

Watch for post 2 on this topic.
I plan a taxonomy of jokes. Something Darwinian. Like separating into different categories. Just not that exhaustive. Probably try a structured attempt at humor.

The Perpetual Fountain

Well before I post the remainder of the blog, let me put up a disclaimer.
It AINT possible. Nyet! You are not going to have a perpetual motion machine at least on planet earth.
The perpetual machine works on a simple concept. Well - just that isn't possible, but its a different matter. It states that the a perpetual motion machine works on the principle that it produces more energy output than its input energy. Now in the IT industry, we know people are over-paid slobs. But that's another matter. It is not possible for any machine, your mechanics text-books would tell you for you to build a machine which is > 100% efficient.
The main problem behind a perpetual motion machine obviously lies in the conversion losses. All reactions lead to losses in terms of either resistance or friction.
In the following picture, the classic case of the perpetual motion machine shows how friction on the shaft actually slows down the movement of the ball bearings.


There is a fountain in front of the place that I work - it has two simple levels across which water cascades as shown below.
My aim was to build an energyless [yea I know it sounds stupid - since I know what happens with perpetual machines], but I came up with this idea nevertheless.
Somehow I thought this was a panacea - although I kind of knew this wouldn't work, and it would be apparent to a high school student, I wasn't quite convinced otherwise. It took me a good 30 minutes before I figured out why.
Imagine the gardener who decided to build this perpetual fountain. The moment he drops water into the bigger tank it would start filling up the other tank as well. So what if I close the inlet valve between the two tanks you ask? Well the moment you open up the inlet valve, it is in the nature of water, and characterized by Bernoulli's principle that water will find its level, provided no external forces are acting upon it [energy input = 0 in my case], and so the tanks would try to level off. If the level in one isn't enough it will spill out of the shorter tank until it so reaches a volume [max height of small tank] where the two levels would reconcile and the fountain would stop. This has to do with the forces of gravity trying to ensure that the pressure exerted by one column of water downwards is the same as that by the other provided no other forces act upon it, and the redistribution of water levels ensure this parity.
Oh well, another day gone, and another lesson learnt.

Man's most brilliant creation

Of all the things that man has made, and he has made many, I am of the belief that music is the most abstract yet pleasurable creations ever. I am not one to willingly accept God, religion. I am a man of science who moves electrons without thinking twice, but there is poetry in the way the notes move on an instrument, or off the lips of a young female singer.
I was watching a movie last night - something I had seen back in 1998, its called Mr. Holland's Opus with the lead role played by Richard Dreyfus. It is a beautiful movie about one man's love for music, and why and how it mattered to him to make others love it as much as he did. But he struggles to teach his own son, who is deaf from birth, to love something which has been his life. What started out as a part-time job for him to make some money enough to get into composing for his own, turned on to become his life mission. To teach music to kids. To make them love it as much as he did. Not just reading notes, but to feel it through them.
In the end he gets a tribute for his 30 years of selfless devotion that brings tears to the eyes of those who watch as much as it did to Mr. Holland. What more could you ask for fulfillment in life?
The other movie that I liked, but was on a very different scale, was School of Rock - Jack Black is really amazing in his role as the fake substitute teacher. He made me love AC-DC again - he made hard rock cool, without the profanities. While a lot of the plot is suspended disbelief, he makes me love the way he loves to play.
Its a shame we in India never teach our children music in schools, except perhaps for the most priciest private schools. I learnt to play a little bit of the violin as a kid, and I learnt it more because I played by ear rather than learn music. I tried getting hooked on to the guitar but I never really caught on - and its sad. I love the beauty of music composition more than any other thing, and its the pleasure of hearing people create those melodies, which makes it all worthwhile.

Down at Fraggle Rock

When I was a kid, a couple of decades ago [sniffle, sniffle], I would watch this muppet series on TV on Saturday evenings. It was called Fraggle Rock.

Here is the intro song to every episode : The song is so friggin' timeless that even now 20 years later I recollect every word along with the funky claps in between the words as fillers, its just brings tears to my eyes...



So the fraggles are these tiny creatures without any leaders. And they love radish. They tend to steal the radishes from the garden of these 22 foot tall creatures called the Gorgs. The Gorgs are not the total evil neither good-natured idiots, and the Gorgs have never seen any civilization beyond their own family, and speak with a pronounced Southern [South as in America] accent. Which probably explains their almost trailer trash kind of existance.
Lots of interesting facts and features, include the talking garbage can/trash which spouts out worldly wisdom and advice. One of the characters had an uncle who travelled around the world, and made it a point to send postcards to his fraggle nephew. The nephew would risk life and limb everytime to go collect the postcard, as he had to negotiate a human [this was easy] and his eager to please gigantic furry dog.
I loved the fraggles, and looks like a few of their seasons are out on DVD. Would make a nice present though - and if I ever have kids, or if you have kids, I say this is highly recommended and clean viewing as compared to the Japanese nonsense conquering the screens of today. Its not highly moralistic, and has good entertainment value. And its nice to watch something that you grew up with, with your own kid, as it opens the nostalgia box.

Revenge of the Washing Machine

I threw in a load of my clothes to wash today into my Whirlpool top loader. She is not a very quiet machine especially when it comes to the final tumble cycle - but mostly she is a very good and spotless cleaner. I have had her for over a year now, and she has done an excellent job so far.
So as I said, I threw in a load today and was watching the telly. It was down to the last 7 minutes of the final rinse when my machine decided to tumble dry, but not where she stood. She had decided to take a little stroll around and explore other household items in the process. Needless to say the machine had jumped off its stand and was now ducking and weaving around like Muhammed Ali vs Joe Frazer. I had to come and tried to yank the electricity off, but she was cutting into my hand with those tubes and wires. Finally I managed to stop her.
I later found out the external stand she stands on was the culprit. A little weaker and out of shape after over a 100 washes in the past year. But it was quite disconcerting but funny nevertheless to see the machine go for a little stroll like that. It sure made my day!

Forgive me Lord..

For I have sinned.

Oh God, why have ye blessed me
with a tongue so sharp
And a wit so quick

I can't help but
Extricate myself out of situations
Where my mouth works
Faster than my brain

Lest I end up making fun of
That pretty little lady I meet
Can you please make something
Come out of me that sounds sweet?