Preview - The Nature of Code

Normally books  attempting to teach numerical / scientific programming are rather hard to read  . One needs to be proficient not just in programming but also atleast good enough to follow the often heavy math /science involved . It takes hours to even go through the first few pages in Numerical recipes in C before one can start understanding it . However the book isnt to blame . It wasnt ever meant to be like Learn Java in 24hrs .

Enter the Nature of Code
This book is a rather different take on programming for the real world. It attempts to teach you the basics of physics , geometry and some computer science and does it in a simple way. I have barely scratched its surface and yet I am beginning to like it . The book is free to read online and has a pay what you like policy to buy the pdf. I cheaped out and got it for free to see just how good it is . It is really beginner friendly and not like hardcore programming textbooks . The book uses processing.js for code ( which is just javascript code) . So if you are new to programming and would love to do some physics programming , here is the best book to get you started

Congress bids to tap into INTERNET generation , declares Orkut as Other Backward Caste.

The congress government in a bid to change its sagging image over YoPappusoDumb tweets has decided to play the divide and conquer card by declaring Orkut users as a Other Backward Community and therefore eligible to avail the plethora of schemes under the UPA government.

The moves comes after the UPA's efforts to effectively mobilise social media and support of internet savvy youngsters blew up like North Korea's nuclear missile . Citing increased abuse of the minority community on facebook and twitter , the Congress government's megaphone Diggy Singh gave the following report to our reporter “ We have watched the pathetic state of Orkut since 2009 when it was eclipsed by other social media networking sites . They have not only stolen away the intelligent users from Orkut , they also mock members of Orkut publicly and subject them to great humiliation . There is even a profile called Wall of Shame in facebook where orkut user's email id and phone numbers are posted so that members can make fun of Orkut users in other online communities . In fact one of our very own party officials have been subject to tremendous humiliation when the BJP and other parties knew that he had an Orkut account. “ When asked by our reporter to identify the official involved in the harassment case , Diggy declined citing privacy concerns . He however added that the person is now recuperating after such a vicious attack online in Italy . Ending the conversation with a firm note , he said “ As a secular state , we just cannot tolerate this kind of rampant communalism as practised by Modiji who sends updates only via his tweets . Every ,community needs to be addressed equally .”

The government has also said that it will direct BSNL to provide 27% reservation in internet bandwidth to certified Orkut users . The opposition condemned the move so strongly that online communities froze for over a minute before coming out of shock and resuming normal activities . A probe has been demanded to be taken up by the Election Commission for what many describe as a bribe to convert users into Orkut . BJP leaders meanwhile have added that “along with a ban on religious conversions , a ban on online community conversion will also be put into law once it comes into power”

Critics on facebook and twitter accused the congress of playing the minority card to manipulate vote banks during the next general elections . “Honestly who the bloody hell gives a scrap about these Orkut users “ posted a fb-ian on his wall , which was then liked and shared by fellow fb-ians .Facebook users destroyed effigies of Orkut pages on facebook and assaulted orkut supporters by spamming their walls with viagra and poonam pandey pictures . #BoycottOrkutAndolan became the trending hashtag on twitter . 

“  If bearing with people who had Shahid Kapoor themes for their profiles wasnt enough , I now have to hand over 27% of my bandwidth to these bollywood listening idiots “ laments Aditya Rockdick , a rocker from New Delhi both an active facebookie and twitterati .

Google meanwhile welcomes the move. “Honestly , we were in a conundrum as neither Orkut nor Google+ did as well as we expected . “ quotes Sergey Brin. “ The OBC status should bring a lot of relief and comfort to Orkut users who have been ignored by the rest of the world and have become unfriendables on other networks . No one should have to ever go through the experience of opening their accounts after 3 weeks and find just underwear ads and no updates from friends . Its too inhumane of us to even think of subjecting a person to such torture . “

Sergey Brin also added that he would like to see Google+ users given a scheduled tribe status in India. “you know its a wilderness out there in the world of google+. One rarely gets to see another active user . Google+ is a jungle with neither stalkers nor girls “

Man dead, killed by falling Rupee

The Indian rupee's fall has never had fatal consequences  , until now . Mr.Bechara ,a labourer was walking on Rajiv Gandhi Marg when the rupee that has been falling for the past few days fell on his head , fatally injuring him . He was rushed to the nearest Rajiv Gandhi hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival . The incident shocked citizens across the country  as nobody till now has ever been affected directly by the falling rupee. "I was only worried about the rising price of Onion so far . Never has the fall of the rupee ever worried me . But now times have changed " laments Mr.Khan who is not a terrorist but a citizen of this country . 
The government has express its condolence over the death of Bechara and has provided a compensation of 1.25 lakhs to his family .

man tweets happy independence day against wishes

Owing to overwhelming  pressure of patriotic tweets ,shares and likes sweeping the country a man today was forced to tweet "Happy Independence day" tweets and reply to incoming wishes on his facebook wall. 
Mr. Jai Hind Singh , a programmer in Bangalore , who thought he would be independent of his American master for one day and sit and enjoy a day not staring at a monitor for 20 hrs , was perturbed  when his cellphone started beeping and spitting out independence day tweets and shares . Not wanting to be seen as a terrorist by the NSA and UPA monitoring his tweets, Mr. Singh quickly tweeted an independence day tweet and due to this simple mistake was forced to respond to each and every mention with the #indyday tag from his social circle. Infact the only thing Mr.Singh was able to do on independence day was to go to the toilet without having  to told to do so . Mr.Singh's friend Vijaykanth says " I waz enraged when I bound dad Singh did nod dweed Aapy independence dai. I dot dad he waz bakistaaan deeviravadhi and celebraded Independence Dai yesderdai . Only aafder his dweed did I conclude dad he is Gundian ".                        

Indian Railways plans to replace IRCTC web portal with Telegraph

In a stunning move to improve the speed of booking tickets online , after complaints that spanned the breadth and width of India , Indian Railways has decided to replace its online portal with the just retired  Telegraph service . An highly placed railways official said " Indian Railways always believes that old is gold and what truly is classic will never die. We even keep the seats dirty and use coaches dating back to the Raj in our trains  to give passengers a nostalgic journey. Infact , we are even thinking of replacing the diesel engines with coal powered ones owing to the high fuel prices . Our decision to replace the online portal was not easy . However our internal performance reports show that booking
tickets via telegrams is faster than using our online portal . The railways minister Malliarjun Kharge was so impressed that he immediately fired all the IT staff at IRCTC and then bought out all now useless telegraph equipment from the BSNL exchange nearby and their engineers and operators ."  
The official also stressed on the fact that this system of booking tickets is unique and exists nowhere else in the world . He also points out that the system is unhackable  " Who the bloody hell knows morse code these days . The only thing people know today is C and Java code . " Meanwhile anticipating a huge demand for telegraph thanks to the move by IRCTC ,  NIIT has started offering Morse Code programming classes with guaranteed placements in IRCTC after completion of the course . 





-this is the beginning of my tidbit fake news column where i treat you to a small tasty snack once in every few days

The importance of habit and mathematics for programmers

I  think I am in the right position to write an article on the importance of mathematics in my career. No this isnt a rehash of Steve Yegge's Math for programmers article. The outline is similar but this is based on my own experience.
I was lazy when it was the right time for me to study. I wasted my high school days ,playing games on my computer , reading Sci-Fi novels and bumming time with my friends on the road , hanging out like there is no tomorrow. We hung out till late night ,returning home often late.  I rarely gave a shit about my studies , by the middle of my final year at high school , I guess I should have realized that there is no way I'd make decent marks in the exam . Yet I was over confident , thinking that I still could burn the midnight oil and study in time for my final exam. I had this distorted view of the world where I believed that I was only a few hours away from learning everything .
All these dreams shattered on the day of the result . Confident of a rather decent marks in math , I was shattered when I saw my math results. low 70s . Not bad , but bad enough in today's world to ensure that I get stuck in a dump for the next 4 years wearing formal dresses  and being trained to be a corporate slave. I wanted out . Thankfully I got a second chance . A decent course at a rather good college. Some freedom . Yet I bummed most of my next 3 years too out of sheer habit.

I then realized at the end of the 3rd year that the reason I was failing to learn math was not because I was bad at math. It was because of the fact that I learnt to make it a habit to learn math the way its meant to be learnt . Unlike 10th grade CBSE where I learnt most of my subjects by reading the book like a novel in less than 30 mins , there is no way you could learn calculus or matrices just by skimming problems , theorems and solution. You have to work them out , find answers , break your head over incomprehensible solutions and hints . Its a mental exercise . I spent all my time in high school learning matrices without knowing what is a singular matrix. I just learnt it a few days ago. For a guy that dreams of being a Computational Scientist this is like shooting an elephant with a revolver . You are just going to get trampled. I spent a lot of time , reading problems , reading solutions , but NEVER spent time solving them .
I cant stress on the importance of maths in a programmer's toolbox enough. Imagine trying to build a bicycle without a spanner. Can it be done ? Even if thats possible , what do you lose in terms of time and energy  ? Math is the language of science. With a knowledge of mathematics you don't just learn about numbers. You learn how to use it to solve problems AND analyze your solutions. You have a powerful toolkit in your hand with which you can build efficient solutions . Some of you must have heard of NP-complete problems. Basically its a problem where the solution takes tonnes of time and for a problem of sufficiently big size it will take a time beyond that of humanity's lifetime . However instead of being defeated at the prospect of such daunting problems , mathematics gives programmers tools to solve a few problems in a (slightly) shorter period of time. There are ways to defeat problems in specific contexts even though you cant find a general solution for the set of such problems .
From measuring running times , to formulating proofs for the correctness of your solution to a problem , math is really really important to a programmer's toolbox.
Some of you might say , "but I don't work with mathematics . I work on projects that arent really mathy or too involved in computer science . I design websites and create software for online applications "
Granted , such projects are not too involved in math. But the very fundamentals of your software lies in mathematics. Why is a linked list slower than a hash table ? Why is merge sort preferred over quicksort or bubble sort ? Such questions are answers based on math. You are indirectly using the product of mathematics in your software. If it weren't for such tools we'd all be stuck in the stone age of computers , trying to make faster and bigger computers never realizing that math can help solve some problems faster by giving you a set of more appropriate tools. In fact to every programmer I'd suggest learning math purely for the profound enlightenment it gives when you can understand something that you take for granted .
And habit ? where does that figure in ? Well , its important to cultivate a habit for solving problems and trying to formulate your solutions before attempting to search for one . I cant stress on this enough . Granted solutions to problems are available all over. But the reason people learn maths is to enjoy the journey and not the destination. By solving you problems you train yourself to identify solutions and generate a heuristic for solving problems in the future . You discover patterns in problems and methods that are quite an experience by themselves . A habit of solving problems makes it easier to solve the N+1 th problem after solving N problems . You dont have to really push yourself to solve it . Your brain does it by itself. You learn the intricacies of a method and can find shortcuts and many other alternatives . It feels more like a walk in the park  on a cool breezy evening , rather than a sprint across hot concrete .
So if you are a programmer and you have problems like me learning mathematics , remember that it is never too late to learn mathematics . There are plenty of sites of learn . Khanacademy is one of my favorites as the videos are designed for young people and are very very approachable. Additionally I find some math lectures of MIT to be easy to understand too . So start learning math today 

Choosing an online course .

No I am not a showoff. Starting since yesterday I have decided to blog about stuff that occurs in my life .And since I havent received any recommendations I chose to write about that I am familiar with .

The start of every May means one thing . Heat and boredom .  A complete disorientation with day and time. Spent lurking in my bedroom , sleeping till noon and having coffee at 12 . Nights stretch into the wee hours of the morning , dozing off only when I am too sleepy to realize that I am lying on the keyboard face down. And I thought to myself one fine day ( yesterday  doesn't sound dramatic)
 "I am sitting here wasting my life , and the hard-earned money of my parents . Who gives  a fuck if the cat can do somersaults or the dog knows to sing a song ? . I must get on with something useful and stop slacking off. "

I decided to do 2 useful things over the summer and the next 6 months (intern sem ! yipee !) . Learn to write better programs .
Draw dragons .

Seriously. I am not kidding when I mention that I want to draw dragons . It started with the Harry Potter mania when I first saw the Hungarian Horntail on the cover of the Goblet of fire and was all the more encouraged when I read the Inheritance series (remember the series starting with Eragon ? ) . Big bad-ass creatures breathing mouthful of fire  and growing as big as an entire village  inspired pure awesomeness . The only thing I could breathe out is the stinking vapor of onion   from last night's  chutney . Govind therefore resolved to learn how to paint your dragon  over the next semester.Its what people call extra-curricular activities.

Point 1 is my primary target . I do code. But not as much as I like . And certainly not as good as I want to . Knowing C , C++ , Java, Guava , R,S,X,D is like learning French,German, Watusi, Inuit .
It certainly helps to know languages . But there IS a difference between literature and  advertisement (read Shakespeare vs Arindham Chaudhari).Mere knowledge of programming lang. wont help. The ones that actually worth learning are techniques and principles.

To enhance my insubstantial skills in programming I have decided to do an online course with 2 constraints .
1. Take  only one course at a time
2. Any course as long as it doesn't involve Java

Point 1 is the wisdom resulting from years of experience trying to multi-task and failing in all of them miserably. I have taken 10 courses so far and have left all of them in the middle without completion . Either I cant finish the exercises on time , or get wrong answers or dont understand the questions or all of them .  Single tasking is like playing test cricket . Takes time and is boring but in the end is the best way to do something .
Multi-tasking is like IPL . Full of glitz , glam , energy and stupidity . Our mind isnt designed to handle parallel tasks by nature .

Point 2 is a very  important one from a personal perspective. Java is like learning Hindi or Tamil at school . You dont like it . You dont want it . You would do away with it . Yet you have no choice but to learn .

Imagine that you are doing something. You are a mature person capable or reasoning and taking your own decisions . But your nanny doesn't think so .She thinks you are mischievous like you were as a child (read C and buffer overflow). She automatically assumes that anything you do has an unstated intent to it . So she decides to discipline you. You cant just go to pee. You'd have to say (throw clause): "Dear Ms.McNanny. It is my intention to pee.Can I go to pee and come back in exactly 2 mins  ?"
To that Nanny would reply : "Certainly my dear. Take 5 minutes and not more else I will have to whoop your ass" (try catch)
Then you would go into the bathroom , take your wiener out and take a pee. And if you take an extra second to make sure that you do the deed without messing yourself, the nanny would come  right in bursting into the toilet with a stick to whoop your ass(Exception e)

Sounds boring ? Imagine this 10 times over everyday. Welcome to Java 101.

Unfortunately this nanny behavior is so much enamored by the Academic world in India that everyone insists that you use Java . Its type-safe , garbage collected , platform-independent , safe, generic blah blah blah .....

Kill me please.

Anyway apologies if you my dear non-programmer couldn't understand half the shit I posted above. Don't worry. I didnt either .I do hope you get the gist of what I said though.

Anyway coming back to the point , my search for an online course is still on. 5 years ago , there was just Khan academy (I think) . Today you have tonnes of sites with thousands of courses to take and work on . Going through all of them is a course in itself.Let me see  if I can get my hands on a good one .

resolution of the day : blogging with regularity

I know it wont last for more than a month. Still worth a try . I have blogging irregularly for the past year and  a half. After the initial euphoria of getting readers for your article , the elated feeling inside your heart dies down and as usual you get bored and stop writing . My tablet , laptop , phone has made me their combined slave , making me check for content every 10 seconds. From a producer I became a mere consumer of content , groking blog posts one minute and forgetting them the next .

Its very hard to maintain regularity while blogging . I do not like blogging about general issues or about my life or first-world problems . Usually I brainstorm about the topics I want to blog about , choose one and proceed. However the fun wears off and it becomes a chore to think of new issues to rant about. Given that my blogs are what I consider sarcastic and mostly about dissing of something or the other , it becomes very hard to think of new subjects to make fun of . I ran out of topics after the first few months.  Everything else feels the same with minor variations like today's smartphones . A tweak here a tweak there and boom , its the defining phone of the era. And I am still curious about the smart part . It reminds me of stuff when I forget and presents me the weather . so does a dairy and the newspaper .

Getting back to topic , in my attempt to blog more I am planning to dilute the subjects I usually take on. Granted this might alienate the core readers of my blog ( only my alter-ego probably) but I am doing this to attract more readers with more family friendly content than adult-content( think PG era vs Attitude era) . I think of blogging more about the latest power rangers series , Top Chef Just Desserts, Justin Beaver ( sorry my fingers automatically replace ieb with eav ) , plants , food , pop songs and bullshit. That way I would take less that 2 years to reach the next 1000 page views . And thank you dear readers  by the way. My blog has reached a 1000 pageviews over the past 2 years .Half of it probably are mine .

I also thought of another way to attract page reads . I could probably blog about technology and stuff , the real purpose for which I started this blog .But  turns out  that its a surefire way to stay virgin for the rest of my life and I am not some saint wishing to remain so that way for the next 70 or so years . Plus with all the goddamn tech pages maintained by every goddamn tween and teen wanting to buy a smartphone I doubt that even a tech blog from a person of my caliber and aptitude would get more 5 views a year.


I would like your suggestions on topics which you would like me to blog about . It can be anything from cats to kim kardashian's underpants.I wouldn't take offense if you ask me to write on the next big movie in Bollywood. Although a fair bit of warning , my alter-ego Darthvader doesn't really like fluffy ,colorful and masti stuff. He is a moody guy having lost his computer at a young age and listens only to Death metal by Cannibal corpse. You wouldn't want to face his wrath on your wall now  , wouldn't ya ?

So please post your suggestions below and I would try to blog something about them . Or else keep it bare like usual to let me choose my own.

Why I dont really follow football these days

I have nothing against God . Its his fan club that I hate with a passion.
                                                             -Anonymous atheist on the internet

The situation with football fans isnt different either .
Its a polarized world where racism is still rampant . However the color that matters depends on the jersey you support. You are trolled mercilessly , taunted and mocked at for supporting Red , Blue or Yellow . We need a Nelson Mandela and a Martin Luther King Jr to bring a Civil Rights football act to prevent such racist attacks on fans of other teams .

I'm just bullshitting but you get the gist.

Football fans these days are or of the 2 types .
a. Colorblind club supporters ( read ManUUUUU fans)
b. Messi or Ronaldo fans


 Its hard to find a football fan these days with real passion for the game and appreciates a wide spectrum of clubs , players and tactics . Fans these days are mostly tweens and teens playing FIFA XX 24X7 online , calling each other  fags and gays . To them the only thing that matters are the trophies their teams won recently.Granted like exams ,trophies are the hallmarks of a club's success . But its just doesn't end there . Football is a beautiful game with more than meets the eye . Tactics , strategies , the passing style  all combine to form a wonderful 90 mins . Lets explain that with a cricket analogy . You dont watch Rahul Dravid for his record scores  or how he trashes the opponent in T20 and stacks cup after cup in his shelves . Rahul Dravid is admired for his classy batting style and his ability to piss off any bowler in a Test match . Football in  the same way isnt just about trophies or goal differences . Its the style and the way it is played that makes it one of the most elegant sports on the earth .

Lets me illustrate with an example why modern tween gay fans make it really hard for other fans to retain their passion for football . In my list of friends there is a person called Deep Shit ( name changed to preserve anonymity but retain stupidity ). Deep Shit follows a club which has only recently ( in football time) become popular . Deep Shit is a big hater of the colorblind team and tries his best to troll them . Unfortunately for him , Manure  ( I cant type ManUUUUU everywhere) beats Deep Shit's team most of the time so his chances to troll them are limited . Now Deep Shit( lets shorten it to DS , no not Data Structures) as far as I know doesnt really update statuses about how his team's players passed or how they played a beautiful game. His status posts are in undecipherable baboon speak , like for eg "OOO!!Awwww We won 2-0 . Suck it looozers ... " or "fag ! referee . Manure won with the 12th man ////. you suckzzzzzzzz ". Occasionally he posts shit like this on the pages of football team that are about to go head to head against his team .

The funniest part is I dont think DS can even run 100m without throwing up 3 times.And takes 15 mins to do so .
The colorblind fans are even worse . I recall an fb status where a Manure fan in my list asked his fellow Manure fans to wear their lucky Manure coated underwear to watch a match on television at his home .And I know for a fact that the particular Manure fan is a shitty football player .
Most of these fanboys are . Fan boys are just that. Boys . Here are  a few qualifications from for fanboys
a.memorize players , stats and strategy of team you support.
b.Take a piss at every other team in the league of your team.
c. Troll other fanboys with words like gay , fag , tween etc.

and here in comes the most important factor
THOU SHALL NOT PLAY FOOTBALL ON A FIELD WITH REAL PEOPLE .
yeah . download the latest copy from P2P and enjoy it on a console with others . Way to go football fans .

Its also  about the hep factor of the club  or the players these days . The giants Barcelona deemed the best football team on earth are crumbling these days . Perhaps not as much as Arsenal or Liverpool do but still they arent the unbeatable , tiki-taka passing , crazily instinctive team they once were . Each and every team has an era . Like Leeds United did .  Once the Catalans of the 70s and 80s ( I think ) they are hardly looked upon today . Would the fanboys still support Barcelona after they become something like Leeds United ?

And then you have these even less knowledgeable Messi / Ronaldo fans. Ask them why you like them and they go " They are the best football players ever " . So you mean people like Socrates , Marco van Basten , Gerd Mueller , Dennis Bergkamp ,  Nistlerooy, Zidane , Henry are amateurs who played sunday evening football wearing sandals and beach shorts ?

 There was once this PT Teacher  at a school where another friend of mine studied  When he was asked the team he would support during Euro 2008 He replied "Argentina" .  The reason ? "Because Maradona still plays for the team ".
The irony of this coming from a PT Teacher .  Even Deep Shit and Manure fans are a lot better compared to this guy . It takes the fun out of football.

These days its hard to not come off as a poser . When you mention a popular team people think you are one of the tween gay fanboys . When you mention an underdog or a less popular team as your favorite , people think that you are a poser because you DONT WANT to come off as  a poser . So I am a poser if I support either Manure or Galatasaray . This seriously sucks ( and no I am not a Galatasaray fan ) .

The trouble with  fanboyism  is that these fanboys ( a majority of them) are dungeon dwellers . They don't play football at school or at home . They dont go out with friends and kick a ba
The trouble with  fanboyism  is that these fanboys ( a majority of them) are dungeon dwellers . They don't play football at school or at home . They don't go out with friends and kick a ball across the grass or sand , taking a breath of fresh air . They dont go out in the heat and sweat like a pig from head to toe . They don't know whats its like to get to head a ball correctly or give a pass  . They don't know how to stop an aerial pass . No sir . All they know is to press D  when the forward gets to the goal post and press A to pass the ball . I seriously doubt if half of them have even been near a football post in the last 6 months .
ll across the grass or sand , taking a breath of fresh air . They dont go out in the heat and sweat like a pig from head to toe . They dont know whats its like to get to head a ball correctly or give a pass  . They dont know how to stop an aerial pass . No sir . All they know is to press D  when the forward gets to the goal post and press A to pass the ball . I seriously doubt if half of them have even been near a football post in the last 6 months .



Football must be  enjoyed for the pure exhilaration it gives . When I get into the ground I don't play it 'cause I like the teams or players . I like it because football lets me run like a dog chasing balls across the field . I like to think of strategies  to get the maximum score and tactics to cross defenders . I like it because it tires me physically and gives me kick of adrenaline . I like it because I get together with my friends and we play it as a team . And we dont care about who supports which team or player because all that matters is that we have fun playing the sport we love.

Without distinctions

Pondering over stuff as usual while on one of my frequent  walks I thought about how it would be to live without any sort of distinction . Nothing literally . No race , no sex ( that however seems a bit far-fetched) , no nationality , no classification as liberal ,  conservative , neutral  . Nothing . You are Mr.X. That's it . Further description of you will involve a long and a detailed resume .

What would it be like ? Is it good ? or rather would it help progress the society as a whole to a better state that what it was ?
By better I mean how close we are to  the realization of our goals in creating what I consider a perfect  civilization : sympathy for other beings , a co-operative society that allows misfits to live in peacefully and a society dedicated towards scientific progress and peaceful co-existence.

If there is one thing science teaches us , its that nothing is permanent . Events happen , things around us change . Explanations or solutions that once were presumed correct have proven time and again to be wrong . After the discovery of Electromagnetic forces in the early 20th century , one scientist famously said "Physics as you know , will end in 10 years ".

Almost a hundred years later , we are still to figure out the fundamental particle model . String theory says that there are more dimensions than what we perceive .
Aristotle and Ptolemy believed that the Earth was at the center of the Universe . The other planets revolved around it . This explanation was taken up by the Bible and the Catholic church as the model of the Universe. Scores were tortured and crucified when they spoke out against such ideas including Copernicus and the famous Galileo, an ardent catholic himself.

Around the same time  , the findings made by Tycho Brahe , Johannes Kepler and Newton shattered the Geocentric model and established classical Physics which was presumed to descibe the universe as it exists . A little over 3 centuries later it was again shattered by Quantum mechanics which says that nothing is definite and only a probability can be established of the event ( note that I am really not a physicist and what I say is what I understand from reading stuff. Please feel free to correct me. )



Time and again , science tells that the marriage of truth and specific ideas is not a good one . One must not put all his weight behind in a belief system . I was really inspired by the ideas presented by Sir Karl Popper ,a British philosopher. Karl Popper's philosophy was termed by himself as critical rationalism ( I do really hate  such "buzz words" but hey I didn't invent them) . Ignoring all the pompous and euphemistic words , it simply says that no amount of evidence claiming that  logically, no number of positive outcomes at the level of experimental testing can confirm a scientific theory, but a single counterexample is logically decisive.

While this holds well for scientific theories I would like to change it a little to express my point with respect to politics : Just because one way of organizing the society so far doesn't mean that it is THE perfect model till eternity .  In simple terms , if you choose to divide a society or the people on the basis of some classification say X , the classification is valid only if classifying the people on the basis of X doesn't cause grief to them . For eg , if you classify people on the basis of their race , the classification is valid only if the racial segregation doesn't create grief for the people . Unfortunately though , racism has been the basis of subjugation and oppression of an entire continent of people for more than 2000 years since the times of the Roman Empire .

Having established my premise of what is an ideal way to classify society I would like to establish my point of the best way to organize society .
Zero distinctions .
No nation states , no race or gender . An entire world as a whole . No mythical beings , the stuff of legend and fiction to divide us .No mere symbols made centuries ago ,to turn us into mortal enemies. No borders or nation-states that say that we are aliens if we move out a certain piece of land  . No belief in ideas that differentiate between one man and another . 
No sexual preference that makes us the target of attacks and harassment .

Lets make a list of organizational units of the society that made has prevailed so far with a few examples of each
Color and physique  Black / White/Asian
Tribe Huns / Goths / Gauls
Language  Tamils / Sinhalese /
Nations France / Germany / England
Monarchy The gazillion royal families  in Europe
Ideas based on market Communism / Capitalism
Work ( this however was an idea misinterpreted over the years ) the Varna system of Vedic India
and many more

lets look at the problems created by such classification
Cold war - Capital vs Communist
Color and physical - The holocaust of WWII , the genocide against the Tamils in Sri Lanka
Monarchy - Frequent wars in Europe and Colonial Africa  
 Nations - The two world wars

I do not strive for extreme accuracy here . My intention is to prove the fact that distinctions time and again create problems so large that it takes society years to relieve itself of the consequences before it starts again on the path towards progress . An Indian lady died in Ireland just because some of the medicail staff was divided on the issue of abortion based on religious beliefs . The landmark Roe vs Wade case , responsible for the drastic reduction in crime rate in the US throughout the 90s ( refer to freakanomics for more details on this ) threatens to endanger the lives of millions of women just because some idiots in high places feel that it is not PRO-LIFE and against the teachings of God . In fact some societies go as far as prohibiting individuals from seeking pleasure from themselves ( masturbation ) based on some book written by a mythical person whose existence cannot be proved outside of it .

All these problems tells us one thing . That our marriage to beliefs is what ultimately kills us .A skeptical view is what promoted science to its standard now . Its still the same thing that will help us make progress  . A belief system runs in the exact opposite direction. That an idea requires absolute faith . Without questions . Or proof . Even the presence of the proof doesn't mean that the idea is perfect.  A single case of falsehood  is enough to falsify it . Like we saw with Karl Popper's ideas . We can say the same thing about distinctions .
Having a distinction that helps us organize our society and our identity so far only leads to a certain amount of good before it causes harm . In order to make rapid progress we have to remain forever skeptical and truly without distinctions .

Designed for Humans . Priced for Aliens .

I took me 2 years to plead and beg for a computer that costed 35k when it was bought new in 2007.  An iPhone 5 bought today having  half the computing power of my PC sells for 55k . And it has 1/10 the storage mine offers . Lesser RAM and boots slower .

It will become worthless in the next year .

Depreciation has never been so sexier.


I have realised from my quest for gadgets that the worst way to spend your money is to invest in anything with a microchip . Fellers bleed value faster than a chicken   gut with a machete .For the few months of their availability each is seen as a 9 inch penis . Their owners tout it as an example of their supreme domination over the rest of us mere mortals. Until a few months after when they realise that I bought it for of what they paid initially . Oh the look on their faces !! Such satisfaction  on seeing their erection falter into nothingness :D
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Anyway the point here is these buggering cellphones in my humble and skeptical opinion are  nothing but fancy pieces of buggering useless toys . One : they break faster than an expired condom .
Two : they cost more than a girlfriend to maintain .  Three : there is nothing special about them . Millions of idiots with micro penises have them anyway ( I only now realise that the MP in a cellphone's camera means micron <long>  penis ).

Take the  majority of cellphones today : They suck at battery life . My old Samsung feature phone gave me a week of battery life . Even older Nokias offer close to 10 days . My Xperia ?  30 mins if I don't use it . 2 mins if I even turn on the Wi-Fi . The battery bar drops faster than the stock market during recession . Yet it packs a battery atleast twice as big as my previous phone .

I cant take my SIM card out without turning it off . Nor the microSD card . Its like having to go to the doctor everytime you need to change your  dress .

Worse , I cant delete stuff from my own phone . I cant dictate what apps it can run and what it cant . I cant update it to the latest Pendroid/Android version that is released by almighty Googleji .  To do that I need to install an app in my computer that updates itself consuming the 25 kbps I get from BSNL in 2013 and then updates the phone. Kind of ironical for a phone that calls itself "SMART" .

My 600 rs Casio watch can resists water upto 50m . The 60k iPhone will sputter and die like a fatso choking on a gigantic piece of chicken arse if dipped even in a bowl of Holy Water . Yo Steve yonder in heaven , art thou listening ? We need an iBone that doesn't iDIE when immersed .


Worse yet  ,everywhere you go , you have idiots snapping pictures with their stupid cellphones , pimping it with filters and uploading it to instagram and calling it photography . The only thing worse are those assholes with more lenses and DSLR bodies than brains. After all the filters they put on their photo  I seriously doubt if anybody can tell the difference between a woman's boobs and an elephant's . ( On the side note though there are photographers like Chase Jarvis that take really good pics using cellphones and go on to publish books using that work . The author , in the interest of self-disclosure  mentions that he occasionally snaps pictures using his 3.15 MP Xperia camera that seems to oddly thinks that it is a water color artist and spits out pictures that seem like they were  taken while doing a Harlem shake )

4-core , Dual-core , Octa-core . What does it matter ? As long as there is tonnes of hardcore stuff on certain secluded parts of the internet . Like that makes a difference to how fast you can get laid with your girlfriend ? The only thing it makes faster is the duration in which my batteries get drained . And secondly with your retarded brain moving slower than a sloth I doubt whether all that speed can make a difference . All that core stuff matters when you are doing scientific computing or 3-d rendering . Where the difference matters in terms of electricity costs and time to prototype.
Pretty much  BS if all that computing power is going into hurling fat birds onto stupid pigs .

 And then there is the price.

The galaxy sIII . Utterly useless @ 35k . A human kidney costs less . A trip to Goa even less. Plus you can  even get laid in reality instead of honking a balloon y bazonka with your little finger late at night sweating like a pig not wanting to wake up the entire neighborhood to the screams of a computer .
Think of all the stuff you can do with 35k instead.
Take your friends out for a treat at Pizza hut. 10 times over.
Take your friends out for a treat at a local eatery . 100 times over.
Put some 35k more and get a nice bike.
Spend it one some plants and a nice pure-bred puppy. Unlike bitchy girlfriends , this guy will stake his life  for you even if you  kick him in his ass every hour .
Instead you spend it on a lump of plastic and silicon that needs to be cleaned , fed with electricity and balance .Every day. And then it dies suddenly without giving a shit about you .
( I  for one love the trip to Goa stuff )

Plus there is this sickening feeling that every time it leaves your hand that it might get raped ,sodomized by numerous cables , its modesty violated everytime someone wants the "Bhakti Bhajans" folder in your mSD card . Once dropped , its virginity is lost , never reaching its potential value ever again , forever feeling cheap and inferior . Plus it might even commit suicide if the rape(fall) is too hard and not even the doctor at the factory can save it .



Enough ranting . What features would I need in "SMART " phone to call it truly perfect  ?

facility to talk and text.
mp3
a keyboard.
a torchlight.
calculator.
7 day battery life .
SD card slot .
headphone jack.
a screen that can withstand immense abuse.


Wait a minute . My mom's phone already does all of this . And costs 1.7k . and comes  with a one year warranty.
 
So long suckers .  Looks like I have been looking in all sorts of places to find the solution when it was here all along on my table.
and BTW , my Xperia ST-21i is up for sale . If you think you like it forget all of what you've just read and contact me . Yours for 6k .