I have a weight loss tip. Completely free. Ready?
Go to the moon.
Ha, ha.
Oh, you wanted a practical tip?
But really, so many people say they want to lose weight. I know, we are shallow. But there is a small physics lesson here. Technically speaking, what people really want to lose is mass. Mass and weight are different.
Your mass is the same everywhere you go. I am simplifying a bit and pissing off Einstein's ghost, but just roll with me here. Your mass is the same everywhere you go. And it is this mass that you pay your gym membership for.
What about your weight? It is decided by mother Earth. Yes, that planet you always trusted...
See, unlike your mass, your weight actually depends on where you are. Particularly, how big the planet you are standing on, is. Your weight is tied to your planet's size through a simple and elegant mathematical equation.
Whoda thunk it?
(Er...Newton, that's who.)
Every planet has a number that represents its gravity. Bigger the planet, larger the number. Earth's is 9.8.
9.8 what? Doesn't matter. You can think of it as 9.8 kilo-candles or 9.8 cow-patties. Nobody cares. Units are kinda arbitrary anyway. A "meter" exists because we say so. It is all convention. There is no such thing in reality. Don't believe me? Look up the definition of a "meter". Go ahead. I'll wait.
So the earth's number is 9.8.
The moon's number is 1.6, since it is so widdle.
And the sun's number is a whopping 274.
It is this number that you have to multiply your mass by to arrive at your weight. So once again, your mass is constant. For all practical purposes. But to find your weight, you have to multiply.
On the sun, Twiggy would weigh like a motherfucker. On the moon, you could be Elvis Presley sitting in a vat of peanut butter and not give a damn, as long as nobody handed you a mirror.
Since our muscles are uniquely adapted to earth's number, we can do some strange things when on the moon. Like jump about six or seven feet straight into the air. Our muscles are suddenly much stronger, having had to "fight" earth's number all our lives (every time we walk or so much as raise a finger, we are fighting earth's number). So we sneeze at the moon's number when visiting there.
If there were moon-people and if they ever got uppity with the earth people and started a war, they would be so weak compared to us, we could simply slap them to a bloody pulp.
So they better not start a war, wherever they are hiding.
Er...bye now.
Now for the boring bits. All this stuff above about mass and weight boils down to Newton's Second Law, one of the most important derivations in physics: Force = Mass x Acceleration (due to gravity)
Or, in short: F = ma
Your weight is a downward force acting on the planet. You arrive at it by multiplying your mass by the planet's gravity. The "downward" bit is important since force is a vector quantity, having the same direction as the acceleration due to gravity. Never, ever, mix up your scalars and vectors. Your physics will be all wrong and this will make the sun-people very very mad. And they are very very strong.
How fragile are we?
Very.
There is a very, very tiny corner of the Universe in which we humans can live in comfort. Or live at all, really.
So let's talk about the Universe a little bit. The Universe, my daughter, is a big place. Tremendous, stupefying, mind-numbing big. Just how big it is, is a topic for another time, but trust me that it is bigger than anything you've seen. It's bigger than that elephant we saw at the zoo, it's bigger than our house, it's bigger than Deeda's car, it's bigger than even Deeda. It was pretty close for a while, but then the Universe had a late growth spurt, and I didn't. [If we were to split hairs, that is actually quite true; at one point, the Universe wasn't just smaller than Deeda, it was smaller than even you...all compressed into an infinitely dense point that we, rather weakly I think, call a "singularity".]
But to get things rolling, here's a sense of scale. Look at the picture below.
That is a picture of Earth taken by the Voyager space probe from within our own solar system, just beyond the orbit of Pluto. There floating on a beam of sunlight, you see our home, the size of a pixel in that photograph. The radio signals that carried that photograph back to Earth traveled for five and a half hours at the speed of light to give us that perspective of our place in the cosmos.
One more picture.
See that blue glow around our planet? That is our atmosphere. That thin skin around our planet is what gives us life and protects us from deep space. And even within that layer, we cannot live comfortably everywhere. We need a very narrow range of temperature and pressure. Too much sunlight and radiation and we are...toast. We are like Goldilocks; things have to just right. Deserts and tall mountains won't cut it. Deep sea, nuh-uh. Too far to the right or left of California weather, and our numbers dwindle rapidly. You wouldn't think like that when cooling off by the A/C or soaking in the July sun, but when it comes to livable conditions, clemency is the exception. Hostility is the norm.
That is why I say we are so very fragile. And perhaps astronomically lucky to be here, walking around in that thin layer of breathable gases on a bit of space-dust that we call Earth. Surrounded literally everywhere by an incredibly inhospitable Universe. So remember that and try to be nice to everybody who shares this bit of luck with you.
So we are a bit of a wuss-out, for sure, when it comes to being a species. Who's tough? What animal on this planet do you think is better suited than us to tackle all this sucktitude the Universe is chucking at us?
Meet Mr. Tardigrade. Or more cutely known as the water bear. Believe me, this is the least scary picture I could find of him on the Internet.
That little guy--grows to about a millimeter--is tough. Super tough. If we were a tenth as tough as him, we would get our swag on and give the Universe the smackdown it so deserves. He is what is conversationally called an extremeophile ("loves extreme conditions"). Try using that in a conversation next time.
If you check out his eHarmony profile (or wikipedia entry), you would notice that he says:
1. Athletic build.
2. Agnostic.
3. Willing to live in almost absolute zero temperature to well above boiling point of water.
4. Can survive pressures six times higher than the deepest ocean trenches.
5. Can go for over 10 years without food or water (but loves a good mug of stout).
6. Can suck down hundreds time more radiation than would kill a human. (eat your heart out, Dr. Bruce Banner).
7. Smokes: Socially.
So there you have it. The original Quiet Man, the John Wayne of Nature. Beware his tiny fists.
There is a very, very tiny corner of the Universe in which we humans can live in comfort. Or live at all, really.
So let's talk about the Universe a little bit. The Universe, my daughter, is a big place. Tremendous, stupefying, mind-numbing big. Just how big it is, is a topic for another time, but trust me that it is bigger than anything you've seen. It's bigger than that elephant we saw at the zoo, it's bigger than our house, it's bigger than Deeda's car, it's bigger than even Deeda. It was pretty close for a while, but then the Universe had a late growth spurt, and I didn't. [If we were to split hairs, that is actually quite true; at one point, the Universe wasn't just smaller than Deeda, it was smaller than even you...all compressed into an infinitely dense point that we, rather weakly I think, call a "singularity".]
But to get things rolling, here's a sense of scale. Look at the picture below.
That is a picture of Earth taken by the Voyager space probe from within our own solar system, just beyond the orbit of Pluto. There floating on a beam of sunlight, you see our home, the size of a pixel in that photograph. The radio signals that carried that photograph back to Earth traveled for five and a half hours at the speed of light to give us that perspective of our place in the cosmos.
One more picture.
See that blue glow around our planet? That is our atmosphere. That thin skin around our planet is what gives us life and protects us from deep space. And even within that layer, we cannot live comfortably everywhere. We need a very narrow range of temperature and pressure. Too much sunlight and radiation and we are...toast. We are like Goldilocks; things have to just right. Deserts and tall mountains won't cut it. Deep sea, nuh-uh. Too far to the right or left of California weather, and our numbers dwindle rapidly. You wouldn't think like that when cooling off by the A/C or soaking in the July sun, but when it comes to livable conditions, clemency is the exception. Hostility is the norm.
That is why I say we are so very fragile. And perhaps astronomically lucky to be here, walking around in that thin layer of breathable gases on a bit of space-dust that we call Earth. Surrounded literally everywhere by an incredibly inhospitable Universe. So remember that and try to be nice to everybody who shares this bit of luck with you.
So we are a bit of a wuss-out, for sure, when it comes to being a species. Who's tough? What animal on this planet do you think is better suited than us to tackle all this sucktitude the Universe is chucking at us?
Meet Mr. Tardigrade. Or more cutely known as the water bear. Believe me, this is the least scary picture I could find of him on the Internet.
That little guy--grows to about a millimeter--is tough. Super tough. If we were a tenth as tough as him, we would get our swag on and give the Universe the smackdown it so deserves. He is what is conversationally called an extremeophile ("loves extreme conditions"). Try using that in a conversation next time.
If you check out his eHarmony profile (or wikipedia entry), you would notice that he says:
1. Athletic build.
2. Agnostic.
3. Willing to live in almost absolute zero temperature to well above boiling point of water.
4. Can survive pressures six times higher than the deepest ocean trenches.
5. Can go for over 10 years without food or water (but loves a good mug of stout).
6. Can suck down hundreds time more radiation than would kill a human. (eat your heart out, Dr. Bruce Banner).
7. Smokes: Socially.
So there you have it. The original Quiet Man, the John Wayne of Nature. Beware his tiny fists.
And in the end on dreams we will depend
The Blue Angels is the US Navy's show-flying team. The video is incredible; what it takes to fly like that. The job has a 10% fatality rate. You have a better chance of surviving an average war.
I am teaching my five-year old to say "please" and "thank you". I don't want her being perceived as rude. The culture that surrounds her puts great stock in those words and we simply bend to the environment.
I grew up in a culture that did not say "please" or "thank you". There isn't a word for "please" in Bangla. The word for "thank you" is stiff and formal and I barely recall anyone using it in casual conversation. This doesn't mean that we were taught to be impolite or ungrateful. Politeness was expressed with tone and body language. Gratitude was implied and everybody understood this; nobody felt taken advantage of.
I remember hearing someone express this quite well, "When someone is very close to you, you consider that person to be a part of yourself. Do you thank yourself for doing something nice for yourself?"
This is also the case with the words "I love you." My parents had...have, the most wonderful and solid relationship I have ever seen. I have never heard my mother tell my father that she loved him because I guess she didn't have to. He knew.
Here's a little story. My mother was a ballsy woman who went against the wishes of her family to marry my father. This was not as easy it sounds, today. This was a different and unforgiving generation. She had to leave home, with no income, and trust that my father would do the right thing. Her family, including two brothers, were very traditional and put up every roadblock they could manage and she was but a wee young woman.
So one day, many many years later, my youngest sister was in a listening mood and asked my mother what that was like. "Tell me the gory details, Mom. What was it like? How did you manage it? Weren't you afraid?"
I will always remember my mother's reply. She said, "Yes, I was very afraid. But I loved your father more than I was scared of my father."
Ka-zing.
End of story.
I grew up in a culture that did not say "please" or "thank you". There isn't a word for "please" in Bangla. The word for "thank you" is stiff and formal and I barely recall anyone using it in casual conversation. This doesn't mean that we were taught to be impolite or ungrateful. Politeness was expressed with tone and body language. Gratitude was implied and everybody understood this; nobody felt taken advantage of.
I remember hearing someone express this quite well, "When someone is very close to you, you consider that person to be a part of yourself. Do you thank yourself for doing something nice for yourself?"
This is also the case with the words "I love you." My parents had...have, the most wonderful and solid relationship I have ever seen. I have never heard my mother tell my father that she loved him because I guess she didn't have to. He knew.
Here's a little story. My mother was a ballsy woman who went against the wishes of her family to marry my father. This was not as easy it sounds, today. This was a different and unforgiving generation. She had to leave home, with no income, and trust that my father would do the right thing. Her family, including two brothers, were very traditional and put up every roadblock they could manage and she was but a wee young woman.
So one day, many many years later, my youngest sister was in a listening mood and asked my mother what that was like. "Tell me the gory details, Mom. What was it like? How did you manage it? Weren't you afraid?"
I will always remember my mother's reply. She said, "Yes, I was very afraid. But I loved your father more than I was scared of my father."
Ka-zing.
End of story.
Even very clever guys can be very wrong about things until hindsight catches up to them.
[Aside: This, by the way, is a great source of comfort to guys like me, who are not so clever. It allows us to go, "Nyah". Schadenfreude.]
Ptolemy was an ancient astronomer. And a geographer. And a mathematician. And a poet. He was smart. He was one of the smartest men of his time. Many who came later stood on his shoulders.
He also believed that the sun and the planets went around the earth.
Today we call this the geocentric theory and laugh at it. Those days, they simply called it the truth.
To those bearded astronomers of yore, Earth was the Kanye West of planets. Standing in the middle, refusing to give up the mike, while the others planets hovered.
But, like I said, hindsight catches up. The first glitch that had people scratching their heads is the retrograde motion of the planets that supposedly revolved around the earth.
What is retrograde motion? OK, so grab a friend. And ask her to start walking around you in a circle. Tell her it is for science. As long as she keeps walking, she will always appear (to you) to be going in the same direction.
The same thing should happen to, say, Jupiter, If Jupiter revolves around Earth, then Jupiter should always appear--to someone on earth--to move in one single direction. Like any well-behaved planet should. But strangely enough to the ancient astronomers, Jupiter sometimes seemed to back up suddenly and start moving in the opposite direction in the night sky. This is retrograde motion.
And they couldn't explain it. The theory didn't fit.
Did Jupiter, like, suddenly go, "Oh wait, I think I left the gas on." and start scooting backwards? Well, planets are pretty darn big and look like a determined lot who don't change their minds often. So there had to be another explanation.
So quick, grab your friend again. Explain to her that, yes, the medications are still working and this is still a science experiment, and then both you and her starting walking around the kitchen table in the same direction.
A few steps into the lap, look over at your friend. She will appear to be moving in the same direction as you, as agreed. Now let's say that you are slightly faster than your friend. Eventually, you will "lap" her. At the moment that you pass her, she will appear to be moving backwards. This is retrograde motion.
That kitchen table is, of course, the sun. And Earth and Jupiter both revolve around the sun. Earth goes around the sun quicker, because of the smaller orbit. Jupiter loses this "race" sometimes and gets lapped and appears to move backwards.
The heliocentric theory explained retrograde motion. The geocentric theory was ditched.
This is science. Clever men proposing clever ideas that other clever men overturn.
Fact: Ptolemy's geocentric theory was dominant for 1400 years. You read that right. One and a half centuries before it got a proper burial, when Nicolaus Copernicus proposed the heliocentric theory.
Tamaso ma Jyotir gamayo (From darkness, lead us to light)
Asad ma Sad gamayo (From ignorance, lead us to truth)
[Aside: This, by the way, is a great source of comfort to guys like me, who are not so clever. It allows us to go, "Nyah". Schadenfreude.]
Ptolemy was an ancient astronomer. And a geographer. And a mathematician. And a poet. He was smart. He was one of the smartest men of his time. Many who came later stood on his shoulders.
He also believed that the sun and the planets went around the earth.
Today we call this the geocentric theory and laugh at it. Those days, they simply called it the truth.
To those bearded astronomers of yore, Earth was the Kanye West of planets. Standing in the middle, refusing to give up the mike, while the others planets hovered.
But, like I said, hindsight catches up. The first glitch that had people scratching their heads is the retrograde motion of the planets that supposedly revolved around the earth.
What is retrograde motion? OK, so grab a friend. And ask her to start walking around you in a circle. Tell her it is for science. As long as she keeps walking, she will always appear (to you) to be going in the same direction.
The same thing should happen to, say, Jupiter, If Jupiter revolves around Earth, then Jupiter should always appear--to someone on earth--to move in one single direction. Like any well-behaved planet should. But strangely enough to the ancient astronomers, Jupiter sometimes seemed to back up suddenly and start moving in the opposite direction in the night sky. This is retrograde motion.
And they couldn't explain it. The theory didn't fit.
Did Jupiter, like, suddenly go, "Oh wait, I think I left the gas on." and start scooting backwards? Well, planets are pretty darn big and look like a determined lot who don't change their minds often. So there had to be another explanation.
So quick, grab your friend again. Explain to her that, yes, the medications are still working and this is still a science experiment, and then both you and her starting walking around the kitchen table in the same direction.
A few steps into the lap, look over at your friend. She will appear to be moving in the same direction as you, as agreed. Now let's say that you are slightly faster than your friend. Eventually, you will "lap" her. At the moment that you pass her, she will appear to be moving backwards. This is retrograde motion.
That kitchen table is, of course, the sun. And Earth and Jupiter both revolve around the sun. Earth goes around the sun quicker, because of the smaller orbit. Jupiter loses this "race" sometimes and gets lapped and appears to move backwards.
The heliocentric theory explained retrograde motion. The geocentric theory was ditched.
This is science. Clever men proposing clever ideas that other clever men overturn.
Fact: Ptolemy's geocentric theory was dominant for 1400 years. You read that right. One and a half centuries before it got a proper burial, when Nicolaus Copernicus proposed the heliocentric theory.
Tamaso ma Jyotir gamayo (From darkness, lead us to light)
Asad ma Sad gamayo (From ignorance, lead us to truth)
So let's say you have invented something wacky and wondrous. Obviously you have smarts. But what else do you need before the money and fame starts rolling in?
You may have heard in marketing circles that the customer is always right. If you've invented something truly disruptive, throw that sentiment out the window. Henry Ford said, "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."
"You live until the last person who remembers you dies."
I came across that line a couple of days ago. I like that. It makes sense. That line makes people like Newton, Jenner, and Turing damn near immortal. If you have ever wondered what afterlife is, that sentence above sums it up neatly.
I plan to write something on this blog every week. Mostly, it will be some bit of knowledge I've picked up. I hope to make it interesting.
There are lines that you carry with you from childhood to dotage. Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach fits that bill for me. There is beauty in that despair. And there is a ringing appeal to love, charity and humanity in that struggle. At least that is how I see it. Pretty much sums up the human condition.
Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Every victory has a taste that's bittersweet
A three-chord symphony crashes into space
The moon is hanging upside down
I don't know why I'm still on the case
It's a ravenous town
And you still refuse to be traced
Seems to me such a waste
And every victory has a taste that's bittersweet
And it's your face I'm looking for, on every street.On Every Street, Dire Straits
Wind by the Fireside - NWN
So as you shiver in the cold and the dark
look into the fire and see in its spark -
my eye
watching over you.
As you walk in the wind's whistling claws,
listen past the howling of the wolf's
jaws.
my song
comes to you.
And when you're lost in the trackless snow,
look up high where the eagles go.
My star
shines for you.
In deep, dark mine or on crumbling peak
hear the words of love I speak.
My thoughts
are with you.
You are not forsaken.
You are not forgotten.
The North cannot swallow you.
The snows cannot bury you.
I will come for you.
Faerun will grow warmer,
and the gods will smile
but oh, my love, guard yourself well -
all this may not happen for a long, long
while.
So as you shiver in the cold and the dark
look into the fire and see in its spark -
my eye
watching over you.
As you walk in the wind's whistling claws,
listen past the howling of the wolf's
jaws.
my song
comes to you.
And when you're lost in the trackless snow,
look up high where the eagles go.
My star
shines for you.
In deep, dark mine or on crumbling peak
hear the words of love I speak.
My thoughts
are with you.
You are not forsaken.
You are not forgotten.
The North cannot swallow you.
The snows cannot bury you.
I will come for you.
Faerun will grow warmer,
and the gods will smile
but oh, my love, guard yourself well -
all this may not happen for a long, long
while.
They say that with time comes maturity.
Not very long ago, I used to get into these rousing Internet fights. I know, I know, I was a Macho Internet Guy. It would usually be someone attacking an idea I liked or someone attacking someone who liked an idea I liked and there I would go again--sound and fury would abound. And these would be long drawn out affairs, ending only when one party got tired of coming up with creative ideas to get intimate with the other party's mother.
Nowadays, when I see something that would have irked me no end in the past and started a prolonged flame war, I cluck to myself gently and move on.
They say that with time comes maturity.
Fuck that.
Just because you are older does not mean that the milk of human kindness is suddenly sloshing around inside of you; I am still the cunt I was.
Just because you are older does not mean that the number of other cunts that crawl the planet has dwindled in number. So what gives? Why this inner peace?
They say with time comes maturity. This is not true. That is not why you stop. You stop because with time comes the realization that you have less time.
Not very long ago, I used to get into these rousing Internet fights. I know, I know, I was a Macho Internet Guy. It would usually be someone attacking an idea I liked or someone attacking someone who liked an idea I liked and there I would go again--sound and fury would abound. And these would be long drawn out affairs, ending only when one party got tired of coming up with creative ideas to get intimate with the other party's mother.
Nowadays, when I see something that would have irked me no end in the past and started a prolonged flame war, I cluck to myself gently and move on.
They say that with time comes maturity.
Fuck that.
Just because you are older does not mean that the milk of human kindness is suddenly sloshing around inside of you; I am still the cunt I was.
Just because you are older does not mean that the number of other cunts that crawl the planet has dwindled in number. So what gives? Why this inner peace?
They say with time comes maturity. This is not true. That is not why you stop. You stop because with time comes the realization that you have less time.
Try to tell someone this once in your life before it's too late.
The link.
(Click on the link and play the video, jackass.)
The link.
(Click on the link and play the video, jackass.)
Tears in Rain
I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate... All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
The lessons that life dispenses can be slightly counter-intuitive. One such lesson is that many otherwise very good things can be valueless, when they are given too freely.
Laughter is one such thing. People who laugh readily would seem to be desirable to be around. In reality, they are idiots who are annoying as heck. Situation: An evening in a bar with a lady. You say something witty. She laughs. You are pleased as punch. I'm so clever, you think. A few minutes later, you say something completely moronic and humorless that only an idiot would find funny. She laughs. QED.
Friendship fits the bill too. People with a zillion good friends might seem, well, friendly, but they are also undiscerning cretins. I personally can't stand them. Their friendship is completely valueless because it is given so charitably. Not because they are faking it. They are not. But no matter how sincerely given, it is still valueless.
Personally, I like reserved people. Not shy. Shy is different. I like reserved people because they respect themselves, their time, their feelings, and their thoughts. Being reserved usually means they are reserving it, whatever "it" is, for the right someone or the right something. That is something worth winning.
Laughter is one such thing. People who laugh readily would seem to be desirable to be around. In reality, they are idiots who are annoying as heck. Situation: An evening in a bar with a lady. You say something witty. She laughs. You are pleased as punch. I'm so clever, you think. A few minutes later, you say something completely moronic and humorless that only an idiot would find funny. She laughs. QED.
Friendship fits the bill too. People with a zillion good friends might seem, well, friendly, but they are also undiscerning cretins. I personally can't stand them. Their friendship is completely valueless because it is given so charitably. Not because they are faking it. They are not. But no matter how sincerely given, it is still valueless.
Personally, I like reserved people. Not shy. Shy is different. I like reserved people because they respect themselves, their time, their feelings, and their thoughts. Being reserved usually means they are reserving it, whatever "it" is, for the right someone or the right something. That is something worth winning.
Dadagiri, Indian-ishtyle
This seems old, but someone forwarded this link to me and it was surprisingly painful to watch: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4972020/how_can_she_slap/
The facts of the case seem to be this: There is or was a show called Dadagiri on some no-name Indian cable channel. This show is the Indian version of Fear Factor, with a dash of Jerry Springer thrown in. (One might even say, a soupçon of Jerry Springer thrown in. I am tempted to use use classy words here, because this is a very classy show.)
The show takes four college kids and puts them up against three different kinds of bullies. If you survive all three, you get a pile of cash for your trouble. First, a big hairy guy gives them physical challenges. Then a nerdy type asks them geeky questions. Then a harpy in S&M gear, complete with whips and chains, steps in and as far as I can tell, her main job is to insult the contestants. So far, uh...so good?
In this episode, however, things don't go as planned.
After the first two challenges, the harpy, who is called Esha and is most certainly a pre-op transvestite, steps up and starts bad-mouthing the contestants. So far, all is going according to plan. But this is where things take a wrong turn. One of the contestants, who's clearly had enough of this unbelievably crappy mud-fight pretending to be a TV show, gets uppity and starts talking back. This, of course, is a serious deviation from the script and confuses the tranny very much. So he/she does the only logical thing under the circumstances.
She slaps the contestant.
Talk about going above and beyond the call of duty.
The contestant, clearly turned on by so much attention being heaped on him, slaps back viciously.
And then all hell breaks loose. The host of the show kicks things off by slamming into the contestant with some really classy suggestions involving contestant's mother and sister. The entire TV crew, and possibly half the guests at the show join in, manfully kicking the poor contestant who is now lying on the floor, bleating, "But how can she slap me?"
All in all, TV at its classiest. I am not quite sure whether to laugh or cry, so I cried a little.
Not to get philosophical here or draw parallels (I will anyway otherwise where is the fun), but my guess is that this incident on this TV show is simply a microcosm of what really happens in India. The hosts of that TV show are a metaphor for the powerful and well-connected. The contestant who got slapped is a stand-in for the unfortunate commoner who gets variously beaten up, robbed, raped, or killed by the powerful and well-connected with impunity. And the TV crew are the paid goons who do the dirty work of the powerful and well-connected when the commoner dares to react somehow.
And the law is a permanent absentee, as usual. In any civilized country, the show would have been off the air and the producer bankrupted with a lawsuit, but in India, my guess would be that life, for the producer and the show, has gone on.
Unless, of course, the whole thing was staged for effect and publicity, and has been secretly "leaked" to social media. In which case, how very clever of them!
But I do not think this is staged. I think this really happened, and this is indeed how the power equations work in India, as seen through the prism of a lousy unoriginal TV show.
So do you want to know how one gets powerful and well-connected in India? Well, I'll tell you anyway. Here is my observation from spending two decades in the country, during at least two important stages in my life, as a teenager and a young adult.
First off, you don't rock the boat.
Ever.
When you are younger, this means being a good little boy or girl and always listening to your parents. You eat what they tell you to eat, fuck who they tell you to fuck, and worship what they tell you to worship. This actually makes a lot of sense if the strategy is to get powerful and well-connected quickly, because after all, this is exactly what *your* parents did when *they* were younger and it worked out quite well for them. The alternative means taking risks, and risks carry the possibility of failure.
...I think there is a reason Indians don't eat cows. It could be construed as cannibalism.
As you grow older, one tack that people follow in *other* countries where rule of law and merit and stuff like that has any meaning, is that they work hard at something. Alas, this has some chance of succeeding in India, but not much. Ever wonder why the really bright people emigrate from India and suddenly seem to make it big in foreign countries? It is not an accident that this happens.
There are far quicker ways to make something of oneself in India. One way is to latch on to a scam of some sort. Scams are quite profitable and given the freewheeling nature of the land, quite risk-free in India. Sure, once in a while, you get too greedy and some journo or the other picks up on the story, but you know, journos can be bought. Or killed.
A second plan is to find another daddy-figure and since you've sorta outgrown your own daddy (a genuine Indian never outgrows their daddy and mommy, but let's not split hairs here), start sucking his cock instead.
This can be generalized into the following statement that must be followed in India if you have any chance of being counted among the successful and powerful: Never, ever, speak truth to power.
In civilized countries built on a meritocracy, speaking truth to power gets you admiration from all kinds of quarters. At worst, you get fired and find a new job. At best, you get promoted for your insight and guts. In India, that power that you are speaking truth to, destroys you.
Watch the clip again, folks. I'm telling you, there is a big lesson in there. Even bigger than Esha the Tranny's rigged tits.
The facts of the case seem to be this: There is or was a show called Dadagiri on some no-name Indian cable channel. This show is the Indian version of Fear Factor, with a dash of Jerry Springer thrown in. (One might even say, a soupçon of Jerry Springer thrown in. I am tempted to use use classy words here, because this is a very classy show.)
The show takes four college kids and puts them up against three different kinds of bullies. If you survive all three, you get a pile of cash for your trouble. First, a big hairy guy gives them physical challenges. Then a nerdy type asks them geeky questions. Then a harpy in S&M gear, complete with whips and chains, steps in and as far as I can tell, her main job is to insult the contestants. So far, uh...so good?
In this episode, however, things don't go as planned.
After the first two challenges, the harpy, who is called Esha and is most certainly a pre-op transvestite, steps up and starts bad-mouthing the contestants. So far, all is going according to plan. But this is where things take a wrong turn. One of the contestants, who's clearly had enough of this unbelievably crappy mud-fight pretending to be a TV show, gets uppity and starts talking back. This, of course, is a serious deviation from the script and confuses the tranny very much. So he/she does the only logical thing under the circumstances.
She slaps the contestant.
Talk about going above and beyond the call of duty.
The contestant, clearly turned on by so much attention being heaped on him, slaps back viciously.
And then all hell breaks loose. The host of the show kicks things off by slamming into the contestant with some really classy suggestions involving contestant's mother and sister. The entire TV crew, and possibly half the guests at the show join in, manfully kicking the poor contestant who is now lying on the floor, bleating, "But how can she slap me?"
All in all, TV at its classiest. I am not quite sure whether to laugh or cry, so I cried a little.
Not to get philosophical here or draw parallels (I will anyway otherwise where is the fun), but my guess is that this incident on this TV show is simply a microcosm of what really happens in India. The hosts of that TV show are a metaphor for the powerful and well-connected. The contestant who got slapped is a stand-in for the unfortunate commoner who gets variously beaten up, robbed, raped, or killed by the powerful and well-connected with impunity. And the TV crew are the paid goons who do the dirty work of the powerful and well-connected when the commoner dares to react somehow.
And the law is a permanent absentee, as usual. In any civilized country, the show would have been off the air and the producer bankrupted with a lawsuit, but in India, my guess would be that life, for the producer and the show, has gone on.
Unless, of course, the whole thing was staged for effect and publicity, and has been secretly "leaked" to social media. In which case, how very clever of them!
But I do not think this is staged. I think this really happened, and this is indeed how the power equations work in India, as seen through the prism of a lousy unoriginal TV show.
So do you want to know how one gets powerful and well-connected in India? Well, I'll tell you anyway. Here is my observation from spending two decades in the country, during at least two important stages in my life, as a teenager and a young adult.
First off, you don't rock the boat.
Ever.
When you are younger, this means being a good little boy or girl and always listening to your parents. You eat what they tell you to eat, fuck who they tell you to fuck, and worship what they tell you to worship. This actually makes a lot of sense if the strategy is to get powerful and well-connected quickly, because after all, this is exactly what *your* parents did when *they* were younger and it worked out quite well for them. The alternative means taking risks, and risks carry the possibility of failure.
...I think there is a reason Indians don't eat cows. It could be construed as cannibalism.
As you grow older, one tack that people follow in *other* countries where rule of law and merit and stuff like that has any meaning, is that they work hard at something. Alas, this has some chance of succeeding in India, but not much. Ever wonder why the really bright people emigrate from India and suddenly seem to make it big in foreign countries? It is not an accident that this happens.
There are far quicker ways to make something of oneself in India. One way is to latch on to a scam of some sort. Scams are quite profitable and given the freewheeling nature of the land, quite risk-free in India. Sure, once in a while, you get too greedy and some journo or the other picks up on the story, but you know, journos can be bought. Or killed.
A second plan is to find another daddy-figure and since you've sorta outgrown your own daddy (a genuine Indian never outgrows their daddy and mommy, but let's not split hairs here), start sucking his cock instead.
This can be generalized into the following statement that must be followed in India if you have any chance of being counted among the successful and powerful: Never, ever, speak truth to power.
In civilized countries built on a meritocracy, speaking truth to power gets you admiration from all kinds of quarters. At worst, you get fired and find a new job. At best, you get promoted for your insight and guts. In India, that power that you are speaking truth to, destroys you.
Watch the clip again, folks. I'm telling you, there is a big lesson in there. Even bigger than Esha the Tranny's rigged tits.
Tai-chi vs Rea-li-ty
In the twilight zone between science and religion, there sits a rainbow
band of pseudo-scientific disciplines that I, personally, categorize
under the general heading of "woo".
Mind-reading and mediums, tarot cards and voodoo, ghosthunting and demonology, homeopathy and phrenology, astrology and numerology, reiki and fengshui. Woo goes by many names. People spend tons of time and money on these things with very little returns beyond the placebo effect. And this is OK; I am a free-marketeer by principle and people are perfectly at discretion to spend their hard-earned money as they see fit.
Even though the word "science" appears in the description, there is of course nothing remotely scientific about these things and not one has a snowball's chance in hell of surviving scientific scrutiny. (Unfortunately for them, they actually make testable claims.)
There might very well be mysterious beings and forces outside our current understanding. We cannot be sure that there are not. But what you can be damn sure of is that the folks on TV running shows with names like "Ghosthunters" and making googly-eyes at the ceiling under a night-vision camera are transparent con-men who realize they would get paid far less if they got a real job.
Unless you start depending on this sort of thing exclusively, most of this stuff is harmless most of the time apart from making you a little poorer. But the problems start cropping up when the bullshitters actually start believing in their own bullshit. This happens on rare occasions because most successful peddlers of pseudo-science are smart savvy marketing types; they very well understand that a brush against cold hard reality will turn off the money-tap very quickly and therefore try to avoid this at all costs. People like Uri Geller found this out the hard way. But on the rare occasions when this happens, it is priceless to watch. Here is a little example of that in this video below. I am embarrassed to admit that I have never laughed so hard at an old man getting beaten up. But the unfortunate fact is that this is pretty much what happens when mystical shamanic bullshit meets the cold hard reality of a fist to the face.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Mind-reading and mediums, tarot cards and voodoo, ghosthunting and demonology, homeopathy and phrenology, astrology and numerology, reiki and fengshui. Woo goes by many names. People spend tons of time and money on these things with very little returns beyond the placebo effect. And this is OK; I am a free-marketeer by principle and people are perfectly at discretion to spend their hard-earned money as they see fit.
Even though the word "science" appears in the description, there is of course nothing remotely scientific about these things and not one has a snowball's chance in hell of surviving scientific scrutiny. (Unfortunately for them, they actually make testable claims.)
There might very well be mysterious beings and forces outside our current understanding. We cannot be sure that there are not. But what you can be damn sure of is that the folks on TV running shows with names like "Ghosthunters" and making googly-eyes at the ceiling under a night-vision camera are transparent con-men who realize they would get paid far less if they got a real job.
Unless you start depending on this sort of thing exclusively, most of this stuff is harmless most of the time apart from making you a little poorer. But the problems start cropping up when the bullshitters actually start believing in their own bullshit. This happens on rare occasions because most successful peddlers of pseudo-science are smart savvy marketing types; they very well understand that a brush against cold hard reality will turn off the money-tap very quickly and therefore try to avoid this at all costs. People like Uri Geller found this out the hard way. But on the rare occasions when this happens, it is priceless to watch. Here is a little example of that in this video below. I am embarrassed to admit that I have never laughed so hard at an old man getting beaten up. But the unfortunate fact is that this is pretty much what happens when mystical shamanic bullshit meets the cold hard reality of a fist to the face.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
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The Cutest Human
Yeah, I am biased, but this is my daughter when she was seven or eight. Cute as a bug. This came up in a memories spotlight in Google Photos...
