Arjun's Blog: ThoughtVent

Monday Morning Blues -- Not For Twitter

What is 4 oranges + 5 mangoes?

I just got out of my computer system architecture class. Today's discussion revolved around floating point arithmetic. After seeing how computers actually go around floating point math, I couldn't help feeling "How the heck can that ever get me anywhere close to the real answer". The number of assumptions and simplification to the really complex problem of real number arithmetic makes it look impossible for computers. But well, I suppose we can live with the approximation. Currently, there are many sophisticated algorithms for carrying out the math (check the bc tool in linux). It seems as if we had the perfect tool for doing all the math we could think up of. Unfortunately, the world around us does not seem to follow the laws of arithmetic. For instances, what is 4 oranges + 5 mangoes? What is a collection of 4 random people called? Why not use the same word when referring to me and my brother collectively? Instead we are called siblings. There is a huge amount of symbolism in human communication. This symbolism is simply the random assignment of names to various things in the world. (If there is any logic to this assignment, I would love to know about it). This makes life very hard for us computer folks. Actually, it makes it very hard for us to instruct the computer system what it should do when someone tells it "please turn off." which is exactly same as "switch off." !

Can we ever conquer this army of symbols? The ever changing, contextual implication of combination of words, combined with background knowledge (which we can never guarantee if we ever have). I don't know. But it sure as hell would be useful, if we had programs which could crawl the web, look at this blog post's title and reply "9 Fruits".

What makes people so dogmatic?

I have a little story to tell. A few years back, we came to know that a person we knew quite well was in into drugs. I tried to speak to him on which he retorted "Its my life. Let me do what I want." Not able to press the matter further, I let it go. A month or so later, we came to know that a party gone bad put him in rehab and a close friend of his had died. The point I am trying to make is that what makes people so rigid. Why do people have to 'stick' to meaningless pillars of illogical support. What makes people 'stick' to what they think is right, when they know they are doing is wrong, or do they? What makes people never leave their "safe house" and take a look around and maybe do something different. Why are people so 'religious'? You don't have to be revolutionary all the time. Just take a short walk on a path that you have never seen before.

Here is my question to you: What do you think is the reason for this? Why do you think people are afraid to step out of the shoes of what they always do and do something even trivially different from what they are 'supposed' to do?

Atheism or Religion?

To be religious or to be atheist? That is a question I have often asked myself and found difficult to answer. I never believed religion to be the absolute path towards god. Nor do I see god in the form as religion depicts. What annoys me is the vast loads of strict rituals and baseless restrictions imposed onto people, which appear completely meaningless. It is this strictness associated with religion, which later blends into culture, that worries me. It is this imposed adherence to a single path of life which makes absolutely no sense. Its annoying to hear a person say she does not eat meat, because her religion forbids her to do so! Can't they just dislike the taste or refrain from killing someone to fill their own stomach. At the same time, religion can have a nice side. In fact many religious occasions have given me some good memories. Memories of meeting lots of friends, distant relatives and having a good time.

At the other end of spectrum lies the school of atheism. But here again, there are ideas which you *must* adhere to. For eg, you must not believe in God. Ever seen an atheist who believes in God? I think God exists. Not in the way religion says he does, but he does. But atheism will forbid me from thinking so! If religion makes your ideas confined to a particular set, so does atheism. That means that atheism is a religion in itself!

Atheists are large proponents of logic and science. Their biggest arguments against God is "You cannot prove or show me God, so he must not". Well, you cannot prove something does not exist just because its not observable or it cannot be proved that it does exist. The leap of blind faith which is completely unscientific is something which raises eyebrows. But isn't blind faith a part of everyone's daily lives? We have some blind faith in a lot of things we do.

So we come to a standpoint. There are various schools of thought. Each having its own thought process. When a person becomes a part of a school, there is some "light" because of which, they are taking this step. Its important to respect this. If something makes someone content or even better, happy, that must be respected. Its this ignorance of respect which has created a lot of problems which we face today. I think I will respect religion, religious people, atheism, atheists and every other entity who comes in between, but I will choose to be none of them. The best "school", I can join is the school of open mindedness. A school where you respect everything (even the vegetarian lady), nothing is imposed on you. You get to enjoy any aspect of life which you think is enjoyable, and its not "against the rules" to do so.

This is what I stand by today. But if needed to extend this idea to accomodate some more good things in life, I will do it.

Not sure if my new school has a webpage, but if you know about it, let me know :)

The Golden Quadrilateral

India is building a superhighway system connecting its four major cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata). This should give you a better idea of the route. National Geographic has a very good presentation about this structure. It is nice to see India undertaking such large projects, without assistance from foreign countries. This project is a good one considering the current road infrastructure. It would be really beneficial for truck drivers who otherwise have to take long trips regularly.

The article depicts not only the state of the highway but also summarizes the entire culture of India. It says that "some Indians live in the 13th century. Some in the 21st, and there are people living in every century in between." It describes problems faced by people from transportation to corrupt politicians. The plight of the common man is shown very well with an interviews of a truck driver who goes on tell that his employment is at stake if he sleeps at night. They actually use drugs mixed with tobacco to keep themselves awake for pretty much the whole day. This culture of labour exploitation is not just among truck drivers, it is quite prevalent in all industries of India, including IT.

At the same time, the presentation emphasizes on very quick growth in some parts of India, because of large companies setting up manufacturing units and employing lots of people. This is a nice thing, but the quick growth makes you think twice. Getting large returns too quickly can be dangerous. Its weird that some parts of the country are still stagnant and some are growing at a pace which can be disruptive.

HTML 5

Like many others, I have been excited about the new HTML 5 standard. It had some really interesting features like TCP Socket Connections (Websocket), Multimedia Support (not the way I would have liked it to be, but anything out of HTML is better than Flash). Unfortunately, It seems that the spec is going to take 13 more years to become official. Ugh! The good thing is that we can forget about the whole thing for a while as its not going to help us much in the near future and use the new 'unofficial' tools which keep popping up now and then. For Hickson's sake, lets just hope that HTML does not get obsolete in 13 years.