Time-warped Timeless Bollywood Lines!

I had originally posted the following as a comment elsewhere:

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1.

"Yeh duniya, yeh mehfil tere kaam ki nahin" ... [dhishkaaon]

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2.

"Tere liye bandook nahin, mere haath hi kaafi hain, machhar"! [dhishum] oops... [fataaak] - splattered erstwhile human, but now mosquito blood on the wall.

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3.

"Main is baar tumhaare bachche ki maan banane waali hoon; dobara mat puchhana ki mera number kab aayega."

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4.

"I love you, Anita. I love you, too, Sunita. Pyaar baantane se badhataa hai."

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5.

"Yeh sab uparwaale ki daen hai; haan, par kuchh-kuchh bachche baajuwaale ki bhi daen hain."

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6.

Tortured lady: "Tumhare saamane haath jodakar main dayaa ki bheekh maangati hoon"

Confused tyrant: "Dayaa ki kyon, khud ki bheekh maango na!"

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7.

Sister: "Bhaiyya mere, raakhi ke bandhan ko nibhaaaaanaa!"

Brother: "Jaa, tu bhi kya yaad rakhegi, tu Rahul ke bandhan ko nibhaa" :P

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8.

NRI MIL: "(1)Janamjali, kalmuhi, (2)kulta, (2)kulakshani. Teri maan ne tere paida hote hi tera galaa kyon nahin ghot diya!"

DIL (in American accent): "Yo, mom! You rock! Thanks for calling me sweet as (1)jam-n-jelly and (2)kewl!"

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9.

Doctor upon merely examining patient's pulse: "Badhaai ho Mrs. Sharma, aapki bahu maan banane waali hai."

Mrs. Sharma: "Sirf isake baal lambe (click) hain toh kya huaa? Yeh meri bahu nahin, mera betaa hai!" :P :P :P

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10.

Excavator: "Anarth ho gaya!"

Archeologist: "Is mein nayee baat kya hai, tumhaaraa kaam hi toh hai unearth karanaa."

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11.

Jiska is duniya mein koi nahin hota, usakaa facebook hota hai.

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12.

Demon: "Is ghalati ki sazaa moth hai, moth"

"Thank you!" - Starved lizard.

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13.

Bindass girl: "Tere ghar mein maan-behen nahin hai kya?"

Stupid boy: "Hain par, aap jitani khubsoorat nahin hain"

Bindass girl: "Toh yeh le fair-n-lovely; goraa-pun laaye sirf do dinon mein."

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14.

Senti mom: "Tumhein maine apna pet kaat-kaat kar badaa kiya hai"

Even more senti son: "Boohoo! Aapne apne Tommy oops... Tummy ko kaat diya?"

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15.

Freshly disturbed 'abalaa naari': "Yeh sunane se pehale main andhee kyon nahin ho gayee. Yeh dekhane se pehale mere kaan phat kyon nahin gaye! Hey Dharti maan, mujhe apni god mein samaa lo!"

Dharti maan (in a mechanical voice): "Aap qataar mein khadi hain!"

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Now, don't ask me which movies these lines are from! Suffice to say that, that these lines were ever spoken proves the concept of parallel universes, some of which you do not have VIP-passes for! :P ;)

Error of Judgment and Judgment of Errors

-1-

The "prototypical" Bindass dude!
Image taken from: 'What I am': UTV Bindass' new campaign speaks through voice of youth (click) at Campaign India Online.

Can you see the disordered person?

The dude trying to pass off as a doctor? No?

Oh, and before it so happens that the dude actually happens to be a doctor and not some wannabe punk, which it seems could be the case, and I have to suffer the blushes, let me tell I have no issue with how a doctor is being portrayed. What is funny, though about the entire photo is that, our prototypical dude seems to be trying too hard to appear bindass making him hardly look interested in treatment of the patient in the background, but ironically, the very same patient has played her part too well in looking moribund! So much so that she might die in a flash. Flash, as in, camera's flash!

Full video at YouTube

Anyway, the disorder I am talking of is "conformism". Yes! Our dude suffers from it. It is a form of conformism - not even disguised well enough. In the video, his attitude reeks of "in your face"-confrontation (when there is no apparent need), and what his actual responsibility is, i.e., taking care of the patient hardly seems to be on his mind. This is that attitude that makes people conform to the image of a nonconformist (click). What an irony! Nonconformists also have prototypes!

Well, it is not a case that I have come across these portrayals of nonconformists for the first time. I came across the above photo and video after some "research"! I happened to travel in BEST buses in Mumbai after quite some time. And there was this hoarding that I had happened to see:

Just because I'm bindass doesn't mean I do drugs
Image taken from: UTV Bindass - great new ads! (click) at mumbaikar.com.

My first response was a zero decibel "Yeeeeeks"! I mean what is our dude even trying to prove? Oh, as the video dismisses the very idea of "trying to prove" something, it follows that I am asking the wrong question. My train of thought went thus:

If someone can undergo a whole lot of pain to get extensively tattooed and intensively pierced only taking after some other certified "bindass" celebrity, which I don't know they do to what end, then certainly their threshold to experiment with drugs must be low. The thing about narcotic drugs is not that they are illegal, but they can result in self-harm. If someone could be a rebel without a cause to only not conform, the same impetus lies behind trying narcotic drugs and other substances that are not approved of by the society, like alcohol and nicotine. Likewise, an impetus exists to indulge in acts that are perceived to be despicable. So, though such a prototypical dude may not necessarily end up doing all of those things, the impetus to conform to an image of nonconformist, exists. So well, the proportion of such prototypical dudes who take to narcotic drugs or to smoking or excessive drinking must be higher than in those who do not try to conform to the image of a rebel. Is this supported by statistics?...

As I was thinking on these lines, trying to play out both sides of the argument in my mind, I saw another hoarding...

Just because I'm bindass doesn't mean I sleep around
Image taken from: UTV Bindass - great new ads! (click) at mumbaikar.com.

Okay, point taken! But which made me think how have the makers of the ad assumed to "sleep around" to be inherently immoral or reprehensible? Are they not rather reinforcing a taboo? No! I am not trying to argue out which is better - fidelity or sleeping around, but still, I expect better sense of ethical propriety off people pushing at the boundaries of contemporary societal standards!

By the way, the video I had linked above has this girl shaking away seductively, either: to her own ignorance that her dance is seductive, or maybe her dance is, you know as they say, *a celebration of life emanating from deep within*, something I am incapable of understanding. And I have no problems with it. However, attempting to seduce is again a kind of conformation! It involves doing exactly those things that the one you want to seduce wants you to do! But what is surprising is that the basic idea being conveyed is that - it is alright to be seductive, but not alright to have sex. What an exercise in redundancy! The real expression of freedom would have been, had the girl said - "I'm not interested in you, dude 'cuz... (fill in with some "bindass" reason)! But no what she ultimately manages to say is just that I have a right to seduce you and not have sex, 'cuz having sex is bad! And who decided "sleeping around is bad"? Of course, not the society but our bindass gang. And then I saw yet another board...

Just because I'm bindass doesn't mean I don't believe in God
Image taken from: UTV Bindass - great new ads! (click) at mumbaikar.com.

I was just praying (to the nonexistent God), when the hell would these ads stop coming at every corner the bus turns? I can tell you, there are just too, too, toooooooo many of these ads. They just don't cease peeping from one hoarding or the other. Yes, my mistake that I happened to look at them, and think about them, and now, that I happen to be bugging you reader blogging about them, but please try to understand: these ads are bright, gaudy and BIG! And well, I realized the reason is this (click):

The channel is spending Rs 3 crore on the campaign, spread across TV, outdoor, print and below-the-line (BTL) activities. It is concentrating on outdoor sites in cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Bengaluru. It has also taken up space in dailies such as The Times of India for print ads.

But, but, but...

Can we look at those ads, again? Please!

= =

Or in other words:

I do drugs = I sleep around = I don't believe in God

This is so not acceptable! This is the worst form of religious discrimination possible. In India, every form of courtesy and reverse discrimination is reserved for the minority. Smaller the community, weaker it is; more vulnerable it is to bullying by larger communities. We, atheists are the undisputed champs at being the vulnerable. Now do not ask me what religion do I follow to be considered a "religious" minority! Just like how "zero" is a number (a fact invented by Indians), we atheists worship "No God". And our God is bigger than yours, and mind you, it's "all naturals" - without using any pills for enhancement! :P Unlike your God, it has two words instead of just one. But now that I have established how proud I am of my religion let us get back to the point. Can you imagine the degree of discrimination used against us by the government! So much so that, everyone has to have a religion! Have you noticed, there are no options like "atheist" or "nontheist" in official forms? Basically, to not believe in the existence of a God is legally not possible in India (click)! Unless and until one converts to a specific religion, the religion of parents is automatically stuck to the child. And it remains stuck throughout life, and even thereafter because even their child will contract the same religion!

Anyway, was I too disturbed to see it splashed in a huge media campaign that atheists are (immoral) like those doing drugs or sleeping around?

Actually, no. I know this kind of prejudice against atheists does exist, not just in India, but even elsewhere. And I have even tried to refute the validity of this preconceived notion that fear in a deity prevents one from indulging in unethical acts. Here (click)

It is no wonder that believers do not believe something to be moral because God commands it to be moral, but rather they make their God command what they already consider to be moral! Read this interesting abstract from a scientific study (click), which derives its data partly from neuroimaging:

People often reason egocentrically about others' beliefs, using their own beliefs as an inductive guide. Correlational, experimental, and neuroimaging evidence suggests that people may be even more egocentric when reasoning about a religious agent's beliefs (e.g., God). In both nationally representative and more local samples, people's own beliefs on important social and ethical issues were consistently correlated more strongly with estimates of God's beliefs than with estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 1-4). Manipulating people's beliefs similarly influenced estimates of God's beliefs but did not as consistently influence estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 5 and 6). A final neuroimaging study demonstrated a clear convergence in neural activity when reasoning about one's own beliefs and God's beliefs, but clear divergences when reasoning about another person's beliefs (Study 7). In particular, reasoning about God's beliefs activated areas associated with self-referential thinking more so than did reasoning about another person's beliefs. Believers commonly use inferences about God's beliefs as a moral compass, but that compass appears especially dependent on one's own existing beliefs.

More about related ideas and arguments can be read here - My Imaginary Friend (click).

But then, if anyway I have been clubbed together with "immoral" people, why not use this license to be licentious! ;) Ummm... drugs and sleeping around sounds fun. Prick-ing around is allowed, but no piercing around, okay? This is no immoral indoctrination, just a note to the self. :P

Well, that was my 2 pence-worth angst at 3 crore (30 million)-rupee-worth ad campaign. I am so happy to be not bindass, and this conformist with broken sense of morality, but at least intact skin! :P

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-2-

And then I had seen another hoarding, and the only thing that caught my attention in it was:

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.

The Architecture of the Indian Constituency

My first (zero decibel, again) response was - "What the fuck...", which of course amounts to nothing! "...How could someone with so bad an English design a hoarding meant for promotion to be read by so many people!". Then a conspiracy theory occurred to me, and I sincerely wish the theory to be true, which being: that it was a clever ploy to convince the "majority" that the Dalits have been so marginalized, that they cannot draft a single simple proper sentence in English! They need education. And they need it fast! Truly, reams of written word could not convince me about the need for reservations in educational institutes in India (click) the way that one sentence on the hoarding did. I do not know, which party's politicians' woeful condition of English the hoarding was attempting to advertise, but I suspect, it was the guy with the power of "ONE" (LS seat)! You know, that certain Republican Party of Certain Republic?

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-3-

Anyway to end this post, I leave you with an excellent piece of original research, telepathy or clairvoyance [Hey, I don't know more difficult English words than these :( ] or whatever you may call it (click) by a senior "journalist" Kuldip Nayyar (click):

The murder of police officer Hemant Karkare, who was probing the Malegaon blasts, was the doing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or Bajrang Dal.

And no, this statement does not appear on Wikipedia (which I have actually found to be quite reliable in being balanced), but the noted reliable and verifiable source, that is, Dawn (click), "Pakistan's oldest and most widely-read English-language newspaper".

Enough reasons to sigh in days to come. *Sigh*

Related blog post by G Saimukundhan: Guide to Dudehood (click).

Free will

I am republishing this post, as a form or blog-recycling - an idea I caught on from Wise Donkey's blog (click). Coincidentally, tomorrow happens to also be the anniversary of my blog, and the time this post was published for the first time. I have edited the post a bit. This was the first post I had actually published on this blog. :)

Following is a blog I had originally posted at yahoo 360:

I was replying to one of the offbeat queries on rxpgonline.com, and the reply turned out so long that I thought, better I convert it into a blog. But again, I am surprised that this world has been a crucible of such great minds at work (thinking being the work of a mind), that ultimately, however much I try, it is not possible to think a thought that has not been thought before! So, many of the opinions that I had developed on my own, I learned, are already established schools in philosophy!

I will not post the query because of reasons related to copyright issues, but the gist of it was "if we decide anything really on our own volition, or are we predetermined to make those decisions".

Here's my response:

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Let me refine what you have called thoughts and emotions. Fortunately, we as medicos are in better positions to understand that both thoughts and emotions arise out of neurotransmission across synapses through very complex neural networks. What is important here, though is not the complexity of networks, but that the process that gives rise to thoughts and emotions is as simplistic  and physical as action potential giving rise to or inhibiting action potential elsewhere (synaptic inhibition or facilitation).

The feeling we get while we make a choice is that it is "I" who is deciding to do a particular thing, and not opt an alternative choice, and had I wanted, I "could" have made the other choice. The question is: do we really make choices that were not determined by past events? To make this question clear, I would have to give an example:

Think of someone breaking a frame in a game of pool. There are 10 balls that are struck with the cue ball, and immediately at the moment of impact all of them scatter away. To the untrained human eye, this is quite a chaotic event, but everyone would agree that with our modern technology, if the force, spin and direction of the cue ball, the masses of other balls, the properties of the reflecting walls, and the properties of the surface of the pool table would be known, we can definitely predict with amazing degree of accuracy where each ball on the table would end up after a finite amount of time. So in that sense the fate of each ball was predetermined by their mutual positions, the speed and direction with which the cue ball would impact them (force), the properties of the various surfaces and the time of impact. So, if the pool table were a closed system (where no external force could act), we would be the best astrologers! We could foretell everything that the pool balls would ever want to "know" about their future! And, add to it the fact that it is you who would be hitting at those cue balls. So in that sense, you are the one who is determining the fates of those balls. But, the way you are determining their fate is very "physical". If I were to tell you that try to change the course of the balls only by power of your mind (without actually touching them or using a physical force), and you would know that it would be impossible, unless  and of course you are a firm believer of psychokinesis (click).

Now let us shift the same pool table to within our brain, and think of all the vesicles holding neurotransmitter molecules as those balls. Our emotions, thoughts, memories, all are a result of which neurons "fire" at what time. So, if real free will were to exist, we should be able to "control" (unknowingly) the particular neurons so as to make them release a particular neurotransmitter at a particular point in time in a particular quantity. The issue is can we really do all that with our "will", which is nothing, but again, a result of activity of the same neurons containing the said neurotransmitters? Well, I am not sure of the answer. Though, going by the physics of it, the answer seems like "no". No, we cannot make the molecules of neurotransmitters behave the way we want them to. So, each time you are deciding between a yellow dress or a white one, and even if you decide after full five minutes of pondering that you want the yellow one, it could be only because the neuron that was to trigger your decision fired at that moment (after five minutes), because of pre-set conditions, and not because of your thought-processes. So, this sounds very gloomy, indeed, that everything we do is predetermined, and more importantly, out of our control. But, when I gave the example of pool balls, I was talking of classical physics, which holds true only at a very gross level. If somehow, instead of 10 pool balls, 10 neutrons (and not neurons) were to be placed in a frame, and then hit with a "cue neutron", we will not be able to predict the trajectories of any of the neutrons, forget all the ten neutrons together. There are too many issues. Firstly, quantum physics does not allow any particle to be absolutely still - it has to oscillate with what is called a finite amount of "zero point energy" (the minimum energy that a particle has to possess, which equals hv/2, h=Planck's constant, and v is the frequency of oscillation of the particle). Secondly, the the Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty, does not allow precise knowledge of positions of the particles and their momentum at the same time. But, what happens in real life is that the "amount of uncertainty" remains constant even with a large assembly of particles, but since the assemblies these particles become are so large that any uncertainty gets buffered by the practical and acceptable approximations of their momentum and position. So, the uncertainty principle somehow does not apply to the day-to-day "bulky" objects and situations. Hence our neurotransmitter molecules, and even more so, the vesicles that hold them, are on the borderline of being big and small enough to obey the uncertainty principle. Their courses and positions are somewhat predictable and yet, somehow unpredictable.

But, what is the implication of this knowledge of uncertainty principle to our discussion? What it implies is that at least the course of the neurotransmitter vesicles in our brains cannot be determined with complete accuracy, and hence, cannot be predicted. And, so the decisions that a person makes are not completely predictable. But, the issue of being "able" to alter the course of or effect the emptying of a particular vesicle in a particular neuron at a given time without a physical force though, remains as it is.

Of course, I know it is very difficult to even digest the possibility: that the emotions that we feel to be so real, or the feeling of "choosing", which is another name for freedom/liberty, could all be illusory. One of the possibilities of why we feel this illusion could be a specialized center in the brain that "witnesses" all the activities in the neurons. And these activities get registered as thoughts. We witness a live broadcast of our own thoughts (which are not exactly out of volition, but determined by the pre-set conditions), and we get a feeling that we are somehow effecting those thoughts, possibly because the time lag between the moment when a thought "arises" and it is "registered" could be very short.

So, I would recommend that one try while buying a dress, bargaining the price pointing out:

“It’s not me who wants to buy the dress, it’s just the neurons; I’m compelled by their preset conditions,. I cannot help it. So could you please give me a discount, at least if not give it away for free?” 

But, I would warn here that the shopkeeper’s response need not be that philosophical!!!

PS: A very pertinent discussion had also occurred at my other blog, here (click). Also, I request the reader to go through all the comments as they had been quite illuminating.

God's orders on how to keep children s(p)ick-and-span(k)!

"Salvati, 44, who owns a home remodeling business and sends free wooden paddles to parents across the country, said he's just doing what God asked him to do four years ago."

Now, believers of divine revelations, buy (click) that shit. Oops, I mean buy that paddle! ;) 'Cuz, God said so. :)

By the way, it is not Uncyclopedia that I am linking to. Can't really help it if God's sense of humor is, well, funny!

Miracle! Miracle!! Miracle on my blog!!!

A miracle has happened on my blog!

An over twenty five, yes, 25, yes, yes, yes, XXV years old message (click) from the Lord has suddenly emerged on my blog. Yes, the very same Lord who does not exist!

I always knew I was special; I was the chosen one.

Go! Spreadeth the wo... Oops! Spread the word!

Ebullient rhetoric is NOT journalism!!!

_pseudo|^secularism

The Monkey who sold his Fur, and became an entrepreneur <--- [rhyme alert]!

I stumbled upon a very detailed transcript of interview of Madhu Koda (click), the just 38 year-old, multi-millionaire entrepreneur, who has added unheard of dimensions to the art of portfolio management.

Those of you (unlike me), who have had some experience at wealth-generation, would know that one needs to first have a sufficiently bulky portfolio to have to manage it through innovative techniques!

But do not worry, as you get to learn from the man himself who had begun from a financial scratch, and worked himself up to a position, from where he can afford to scratch out his financial itch as and when he wants. Be mesmerized as he discusses his successful business strategies, and future plans for his 10 year-old business venture standing firmly at Rs. 4000 crore, and not at all staggering.

Since risk incurred is always proportionate to market premium, no doubt, some of you must have experienced trepidation at investing your vital noncapital assets, e.g., time expended in early days of your startup (poetically also known as 'youthful days') in risk-fraught activities. But again, Mr. Koda comes to your rescue, as he teaches a few of his imminently successful risk mitigation techniques.

Needless to say, such an inspiring and helpful manual to individual wealth-generation cannot be made available to the general public.

It is at a very *secret* place on the World Wide Web.

Basically, here (click). ;)

As the profits would be sourced in actual market events (which Mr. Koda enthusiastically explains), rather than mere speculations of future money flow, the TV interview had been aptly named as

Non Derivatives Trade Ventures' Profit

As you would learn from the interview transcript, democracy and greater autonomy in portfolio mismanagement of nation's GDP by entrepreneurs like Mr. Koda need to be promoted in a big way, if you are to employ same techniques as him and derive benefit from them, you have to promote democracy.

In my previous post, I had proposed a novel technique to do so. But if you find it tedious, you could simply take a look at the top of this page's left sidebar. ;)

Hope, you will not disappoint the well wisher in yours truly.

A divorce... that could not last.

They had been married ever since they could remember--more than 20 years now. They did not even remember if it was out of love, or was it arranged. They were so young, it was called an infant marriage! It was thaaaat long.

They always viewed things from different perspectives, yet somehow always managed to focus on where their views overlapped.

Wherever one went, the other had to go. They even woke up together. And no doubt, slept together. But, sleeping together never brought any excitement. :( They had grown sick of the other. Totally sick.

You go your way. I'll go mine.

[Angrily, without a thought] As you wish. And don't you dare follow me. Huh!

So for the first time ever, they went their own separate ways and darted in opposite directions. But they felt intensely dizzy (click). They could not stand it, they had to unite. They realized, their fate to stay together was sealed, not by something flimsy as love, but PPRF!

<--*-->

Okay sorry folks for this crap, which I am sure even medicos would find crappy!

It is on simple eyes that mammals possess. Meaning, they always manage to look at the same object of focus, but from different angles. Yet, the brain fuses the two images into one. PPRF is one of centers involved in controlling horizontal eye movements.

Eyes show many types of involuntary and voluntary movements for proper functioning.

Saccades are jerky movements generated mainly in response to changes in visual field (what the brain 'sees'), e.g., a moving target or sudden appearance of something new in the field--a fly falling in your soup! ;) They bring the 'pursued' object just about to the center of visual focus.

Smooth pursuit movements perform the same function as saccades, but are better coordinated, with constant adjustments in direction and velocity of eye movements based on feedback from muscles moving the eyes as well as the images formed by the retinae.

The fast phase of a nystagmus is brain's attempt to keep eyes still with regard to axis of the head when eyes get 'distracted' (the slow phase of nystagmus), say following head movement, saccades or sudden pursuit movements. So nystagmus could be normal, but occurs whenever eyes try to simultaneously look at different things! ;)

Extraordinarily Ordinary Post: stretching a 'dabba' phone to its limits!

This might be an ordinary-looking post, and the more ordinary it looks, the more extraordinary, in fact it is!

I use a simple Java-based phone (click) for web access to e.g., publish many blog-posts and comment on blogs.

Today however, I wanted to try Mail2blogger (click), a Blogger-service which enables users to simply email a blog-post to a specific address to get it published.

The whole affair is very simple till this point! But my complications begin now! Not a single browser on my phone fully supports Java script or flash (I hope I am getting the terminology right!) required to effect Rich text formatting (RTF) (click) to make characters, bold-faced or italicized, for example. So, the emails I send render only in plain text. Not just that, even submitting clickable links (click, what else!) would not be possible! The only email accounts I had been using were of Yahoo! and Gmail. Previously Yahoo! used to support viewing HTML source while editing, but that feature probably stands discontinued.

I use three mobile browsers--two versions (4.2 and 5.0 beta) of Opera mini (click), and Bolt (click) of late. Opera gives away the identity of my device as a phone, and thus Yahoo! by default allows me access only to their mobile service called Yahoo! Go, which does not support RTF. Whereas, Bolt supports the web-version of Yahoo! Mail, but not RTF! :(

So I had to find an email service allowing me to input plain text with HTML markup, and yet rendering it in RTF. I found my savior in Rediff! :)

Also, I'd downloaded the .xml file of this template to upload it for another experimental blog (click) I just started. Also for the first time, I used blog-import and export features.

So finally, this post would be simultaneously published at the other blog also without my actually accessing Blogger--all from an ordinary phone! I just hope both the posts turn out ordinary enough!

Insanity Person(alit)ified!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Screaming for Public Welfare

Science thrives on imagination, and imagination knows no boundaries. No wonder, boundaries of sanity may also be breached in the process.

I had conducted a really famous experiment, which had received widespread media coverage:

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Gorillas Pave Way for a Healthy Human Society

Silly-con Valley
9th May, 2009

A team of researchers headed by Ketan Panchal at the Center for Promotion of Mental Derangement (CPMD) located at Silly-con Valley in Madland have found a link between screaming and increased lifespan. This interesting result comes after an intense research of 10 days.

The study design involved capturing a female gorilla in a cage, and prompting her to shriek (the primate version of human screaming) by male onlookers of her own species. This the onlookers accomplished by teasing and taunting her. The consequent unexpected outcome was that she had screamed her lungs out--not in the figurative sense, but anatomically. The forceful expulsion of air from the lungs that accompanied each act of shrieking was found to eject bits of lung tissue out through the mouth. This made the researchers aware of an entity called 'screaming one's lungs out-osis', and also of the veracity of a similar sounding popular saying.

But the greatest positive of the result was increased lifespan found in the onlooker gorillas. It was found after a followup of 20 years that all the 50 onlooker gorillas had lived 2 years more than their expected lifespan, which was found to be significant after statistical analysis. However, the female subject was found to have exhausted at the end of 10-day experiment, and had totally stopped vocalizing anything at all. Her lifespan was found to have shortened by 5 years below that expected for similarly matched female gorillas. But for want of larger sample size, no causal association between screaming and decreased lifespan of the screamer could be established.

These startling results, though found only in primates, have given hopes to and prompted debates between sociologists and economists alike as to what should be the appropriate number of human volunteers per thousand population to prolong the lives of their fellows.

Scientists are hopeful of reproducing the similarly encouraging results also in humans. But their current and greatest impediment is the unavailability of human subjects for screaming as very surprisingly, applications from volunteers for onlooking have far exceeded all expectations

The CPMD welcomes participation from consenting volunteers for screaming, preferably females in their early 20s who may mail their willingness to participate to the following email address. An audio file sample demonstrating their ability to scream will be much appreciated:

panchalkc@yahoo.co.in

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As is the case with any ground-breaking revolutionary scientific finding, even my research finding was met with lot of skepticism, so much so that some mediapersons were *rolling on the floor laughing* just like the male gorillas in the highly confidential pictures below, which I had to release to assail these doubts.

[Click on the above photographs for greater *clarity*] What I have included in the brackets in labels are the scientific proofs for the organisms being what they have been labeled as, and that they are not actually humans posing as Gorillas (not unlike ZooZoos) .

But unlike what most of you deludedly sane people would like to believe, I did receive a few--okay, to be statistically precise, ONE--positive responses for volunteering as a human screamer.

I am publishing the said email response below:

"yes yes yes, I volunteer. Please have me. Please please please :)"

For absolutely arbitrary reasons let us call this respondent "Ms. Human Guinea pig wannabe"

[I assure you, I had not received any response like the one you read above. You *really* think it's possible for someone to respond to such patently silly inhumane experiments?]

And thus went my response:

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Dear Ms. Human Guinea pig wannabe (of course, that's not how I'd addressed her. Remember, this was an *official* communication?),

The CPMD wishes to thank you for your interest in famed experiment--'Health benefits of screaming one's lungs outosis'.

After a thorough scrutiny of your application by our selection committee, we regret to inform that your candidature as a screaming volunteer was deemed as 'ineligible'.

Keeping with the principles of accountability and transparency, the Center cites following reasons for the aforementioned rejection of your application:

1. The tone of your application. Our selection committee apart from experts in other fields, consists of lexico-psychologists, who are adept at gauging the mental health status from a person's choice of words. We are afraid their opinion of your application renders you unsuitable for our study. The motto of our institute is promotion of mental derangement. The excessive amount of enthusiasm as measured by our experts using the latest instruments, implied that there was no margin for further mental derangement in your case. And as you might reckon, including you in the study, thus, would defeat the Center's primary purpose, viz., promoting mental derangement.

2. The pitch of your voice in the audio sample received along with your application. The pitch of human voice consists largely of two components, loudness and frequency. On attempting to play the audio file you had sent, two audio output devices (called speakers in everyday English) were found have developed perforations in their diaphragm. This, our experts in acoustics, fear was because of the frequency of your voice, which exceeded the upper human hearing limit of 20000 hertz, and was audible only to bats. The institute certainly does not align its interests with prolonging the lifespan of bats. The loudness (amplitude) of your voice was found to be 400 decibels. We wish to inform that a 160-decibel sound is sufficient to perforate the tympanic membrane (poke hole in the ear drum). Also, to the utter disbelief of seismologists (those studying earthquakes), your audio sample had managed to create shockwaves which had measured 4.2 on the seismograph. An earthquake of over 5.5 on the Richter scale can lead to large scale destruction.

3. The enthusiastic onlooking volunteers suffered irreversible mental and acoustic trauma. They were rendered incapable of further participation in this study, and in fact their period of stay in the hospital remains indeterminate.

We wish to involve you in our future endeavors for promotion of mental derangement, and will keep you updated on latest developments.

Yours sincerely,

KCP.

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Needless to say, the experiment is still open, and vounteers for screaming are solicited

Futuristic!

A few months back I was watching a documentary based on the book The Elegant Universe, and in one of the sections, the concept of a wormhole, which would basically enable one to move from one point in space time to another through connecting tunnels was being discussed. The simplest consequence of presence of such wormholes for the lesser humans who are not physicists would be the ability to travel from the two connected points without spending any time! This, if ever is to be a reality, would take very long, say at least two hundred years from now. The presenter of the program, Brian Greene, was apparently very excited about this possibility as he would be able to travel from his residence to his workplace (both in New York) in "no time" (quite literally!). Excited, yes he ought to be at such possibility. But two hundred years from now (at the earliest)? Not sure.

Though, the program was excellent in its analogies and gripping for how it dealt with widely disparate schools of physics, from classical, through, quantum physics and general relativistic physics to the theory that has been receiving mixed reactions at the possibility of being a "the Theory of Everything"-- the Strings Theory, which attempts to basically combine quantum physics (which deals with the forces acting at relatively short distances, i.e., subatomic level, viz., electric, magnetic and strong nuclear and weak nuclear forces) and general relativistic physics (which gives a very accurate description of the only force acting at long distances--the force of gravity).

Well those details are not the purpose of this post. What that fantasy of traveling in no time made me think was how in taking a futuristic view of the world around us, we tend to take a very limited view of the spheres in which the human life would change due to the development of new technologies. I feel, quite obviously, that it's not just technology based on physics and engineering would evolve radically. The human race would also have benefit of advances in medical sciences, neurology, nutrition, human psychology, communications, etc. All these technological advances cannot occur in isolation; they are bound to have some (at least) implications on the very essence our lives would hold for us. Issues like what purpose does life hold for us, what/who is admirable, the need for human intelligence, the extent of communication between humans, human aspirations, average lifespan, the type of prevalent medical disorders, the nature of day-to-day problems and conflicts would all have changed beyond recognition by that time.

The first question that came to my mind when Brian Greene made that statement about traveling through wormholes, was would we need to travel? Then, would we need to work? What would be the nature of that work? How many of us would really need to work?

Picture this: you get up in the morning, and pop a pill that has all the nutrients that you'd require for the day. You're seated in a chair, and an apparatus (let's call it Experience Simulator or Expulator) aims light beams at your brain that make you experience whatever you want to. This is the 126^th year of your life, and if the Expulator detects that you don't have adequate desire to live on, it will aim beam at some specific neurons that would fill your brain with the desire to live. It might also consult with some database to confirm if you're really required by the human race in any capacity in which you could contribute, or if in terms of cost-benefit ratio, if you'd still be desirable any longer to the human race! Or if your contract to live had expired! (More about this later, though)

All the infectious agents would have been eliminated, ageing would have been stalled or retarded to such a rate that there would be a real possibility for the majority of people to "get bored" of their lives. And needless to say, there would be no medical disorders.

No experience would require you to leave your chair--be it of playing in the ground, having your favorite food, some violent outlet just for the kicks of it, or one of those kinky fantasies. Nothing would be out of bounds. No doubt, everyone would be happy and content or whatever they'd want to feel at any given moment. One could also not argue that these "experiences" would be artificial as they'd be produced through the same mechanism by which we experience "reality" as we know it today(!), i.e., stimulation at the appropriate synapses.

One could question, would the Expulator be available to all?

I believe, any technology becomes widely accessible (in terms of both rate of production and the purchasing power owing to its affordable cost) a long time after its advent. This itself would ensure universal accessibility.

Okay, returning to the original question, would you require to travel? No, of course not! Think of all the reasons to travel:

1. To do work. With such advanced technology, you certainly won't require separate workplace to work at.
2. To meet someone. You could always switch on the Expulator, and meet that someone just sitting in the chair.
3. To visit a place. Now don't make me count what all your Expulator could do!

But I think I've left out so many significant issues. The human race could know by that time, what it means to be perfect. Perfect brains and perfect bodies would be order of the day or the century. Any aberration would simply be a manufacturing defect! Would we really require to work? What would be the incentive to work? Remember: though difficult it is to imagine it without having your very own Expulator, it could make you feel and experience any and everything that you'd like to experience. It would make you feel tired, sleepy; it could give you the same pleasure as discovering a new galaxy! Basically, it could make you feel that you work! My guess, is the incentive to work would be actually knowing something more. Developing better Expulators, synthesizing more and more experiences to enrich Expulator's database, continued fight against infectious agents, protecting the human race from real dangers, like comets, asteroids, aliens(!). But why would someone work, if the Expulator could simply make the right neurons of the reward center in your brain fire at will? Out of sense of duty? Would it become incumbent on a few to do some compulsory thinking as decided by some lottery system?

But the most important question that arises is what would be the incentive to live? I'm not sure, how horrifying it sounds to the reader--this piece of my fantasy is from a very sterile point of view. I, though, find the picture quite complete save the minor details like how electricity would be produced; how that nutritious pill would be produced; how ageing would be stalled; how the infectious agents would be eliminated (believe me, this is the most likely spoiler in my fantasy of a "perfect" future!), what would happen to other species? Would everyone have equal status in the human race as all would be perfect, and by extension, effectively identical? What would be the effect of knowing that all the experiences are simulated at will? That there's no external (to one's most personal aspirations for one's life) purpose to life, other than the continuation of the human race, which in turn would have or may not have any purpose depending upon how one views the role of human race in the affairs of the Universe, and if one feels that the Universe is "supposed" to be some way or the other.

Is there something missing in this picture that's rendering it incomplete? God, may I propose? The purpose of life could be known to God. What if God had a purpose that we don't know of? What if I/we end our lives, and it turns out to be one horrible mistake? So, why take chances and just not live on? As it is what's the harm of living, more so with the Expulator around?

The person who smokes knows that the "kick" they get out of smoking is nothing but nicotine doing its wonders. Does that make them quit? Ditto for cocaine, alcohol, or morphine. Does this sound similar to our Expulator? May be. I really don't know. Life, as I always say, indeed, is addictive.

It would be amusing to know what it would be like to "live" in such a world. And it also amuses me to realize I won't exist to verify it for myself!

PS: Surprisingly, I didn't require an Expulator for this piece of armchair philosophical fantasizing!

The True Prophecy

Unbeknownst to ye blithely ignorant peoples, exactly a year from this wretched day shall cometh a blessedeth day, whence a messiah (click, thee moron) shalt taketh birth amongst ye mortals.

He wilt looketh every part a mortal like ye. He wilt performeth miracles that ye wilt taketh for granted, just like the oxygen ye shalt breatheth that He only wouldst inventeth before takething birth.

Whatever the worldly name He chooseth to distracteth ye from diagnosing His greatness, He in the Heavens, shalt be known as The Bullosopher. He shalt pretendeth to not believeth in My Existence, and spreadeth the word against Me, for the supply of the ^uplifting wonder pill - Nirvangra^® has been kepteth scarce, but it is for ye to see through His distractething stratagems.

He shalt filleth the World^© with light and delight. But these gifts shall cometh only to those mortals, who deciphereth the cryptic messages enshrinedeth in His instruction manual that shalt be called Neglected Serendipity.

Thy Lord, in Hiser Infinite Wisdom^TM has seteth the Universe^© to self-destructeth in the Twenty Seventh year of the Bullosopher (click again, thee imbecile). Only thy Bullosopher can save ye.

And to keepeth Him engagedeth in his Noblest pursuits, ye shalt singeth a singular paean to his greatness - "To errrrrrrr is Human; to bullosophy is Bullosopherrrrrrrr".

Ye seeeth grammatical errors in The Message^TM? Shut up, thee mere mortal, for thy Lord only inventedeth the Grammar in Hiser Infinite Wisdom^TM. The bottomline beingeth, Thy Lord knoweth the Best.

There shalt not be nor there hath been any other communication from thy Lord. Any other communication shalt only be enticements sent by The Axis of Evil Impostors.

Arrghmen