Random rants

This post is a disconnected pot-pourri of random thoughts I've jotted down over a period of time.

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Thus, sword in hand, he mounted his majestic black Arabian and charged, eyes-aflame with defiance, with nary a care into the heat of a battle already lost. It was a sight that tore at the hearts of his brethren and yet he rode alone – none possessed the strength of conviction to throw away their lives as he had done. He had always walked alone, up in the clouds for he was an idealist.

A madman questions that which no one else does. A wise man answers those questions.

Let them see, and let them burn with anguish over their faults for it is they who long to become me but seek to lessen their sense of inadequacy by watching me fail! But I shall not fail, I shall not falter! For I seek not to prove them wrong but only to prove myself right.

What is politeness but respect feigned?

I am not strife. I am the eye of the storm – the calm at the heart of the chaos.

In order to feel alive, one must recognize that which separates the state of being alive from the state of not being. And the best place from which to see that is the thin line that separates the two states – skydive today!

Let him cast the first stone, who is ready to be shot.

A paradox is but a truth not yet understood.

Scientists now suggest that the passage of time is merely a quirk of human perception. Time itself does not flow. So, even though the clock suggests otherwise, I’m not really late to work.

Of all things breakable, silence is the only one that can never be broken quietly.

In the past, I’ve been wrongly accused of getting into fights. It was always someone else that started the fight. I merely ended it.

I do not spend much time pondering water under the bridge. I can not swim, so what’s the point!

To those who remark on my being “out of shape”, I say this – ROUND IS A SHAPE!

Existence is the only truth. All else is perception.

What I would love more than anything, is to comprehend infinity and nothingness.

Once I fell, a lifetime ago. And for a long time, I lay where I fell, unable to overcome the inertia, until I nearly became part of the very earth I lay upon. But I’ve risen now and I walk tall. I know that I will fall again, but I also know this – that I will get back up every single time.

Why not? That’s more reason than I’ll ever need.

I do not believe in destiny. It is an idea born of the folly of men unable to comprehend the enormity of the universe and the triviality of their own existence.

Life does not need a pre-ordained purpose to be sweet.

In nothing I trust. At least not until I’ve seen the data.

I’m not a Bohemian by choice. I am merely unable to accept anything not based upon sound reason but sadly that’s most things conventional.

People need to realize that money means nothing. And they need to write off my debts.

I seek to look upon the world with the wonder of a child and see it with the wisdom of an old man.

Have you heard of the seven deadly words? These are words that are censored from television and radio broadcasts. I ask you, is this not the silliest thing. If we really valued the innocence of children, we would stop doing such things as lying to one another and making war upon our brothers. Instead this censorship of mere words is pure sham.

jubilé argenté

What is the reason for the existence of this blog? While walking home one particularly delightful evening enjoying the sunset and contemplating whatever a man of my infinite frivolousness would contemplate, I made an arbitrary decision that my writing skills, feeble and rusty as they had become, did not deserve to die a slow, silent death in the darkness. Thus was born into existence an idea that has since become Macnife speaks… crap.

By the time I’d dusted my pen and started writing my very first post, I realized that a blog would serve as more than just a writing workbook. It would provide me with a medium for much-needed periodic release of the junk that accumulates in my mind but more importantly, it would afford me a certain unique freedom – I could just dump my thoughts out there instead of writing them down in notebooks that I invariably lost track of, as I had previously done. While I would be able, through my blog, to share my ideas freely with anyone with the inclination and time to spare, the fulfillment I gained from writing would not be contingent to the existence of such beings. It was a win-win situation for me.

I started blogging with earnest vigor but at the back of my mind was always the apprehension that my inertia would overcome all other concerns after a few posts and my blog would be consigned, as was many an interest in the past, to a dark dusty corner of my mind that I refer to as the desert of dreams that could have been, never to be disturbed again. Thankfully, that has not come to pass, at least not yet. 25 posts in 6 months and a score of days… that is consistence uncharacteristic of me and I’m quite pleased with myself.

If you have read any of my previous posts, you may feel compelled to ask me what I think I have accomplished to feel so smug about - aside from speeding up the inexorable increase of the entropy of the universe and adding to the endless loads of crap that burden the Internet. Well, my intentions never reached beyond merely giving my thoughts form that their existence may be less ephemeral. It was also never my intention to choose my ideas for meaningful content from the point of view of the average reader. My goal was merely to write, which I have thus far accomplished and myself-willing, shall continue to do so. This blog is among several things, all of them rather recent, that represent the departure of my life from its previously consistent pattern - coulda, shoulda, woulda, didn't - and for that I am glad indeed!

PS. I do not know any French beyond the few words I've picked up from restaurant menus. The title was a translation from English, achieved through a most judicious use of the Altavista Babelfish program.

Food for thought

Those who know me know my passion for food. To me food is sustenance for the soul* as much as it is for the body. Food is a sensation, an experience, fine art… yet it is, on a much more basic level, a necessity.

There are very few things that one can experience on so many levels as food. On the one hand, one eats to merely stave off hunger, as sustenance for the body. Yet, even at that level it can be a pleasure. Not much can compare to the pleasure of eating even a piece of stale, dry bread when one is on the verge of collapsing from hunger. At the other end of the spectrum is eating for the sheer experience. A finely prepared dish, even served in the most miniscule of portions, can inspire a sublime pleasure such as one feels when beholding a scene of breathtaking beauty or when listening to a melody divine.

Oft forgotten is the fact that food pleases more than just the palate. In fact, it is one of the few pleasures that can be experienced through every one of the senses… the sight of an artfully garnished pastry, the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, the texture of a fresh strawberry, the delightful sound of a cookie cracking… each of these sensations inspires as much pleasure if not more than the actual taste of those foods upon one’s tongue. If anything, Pavlov showed this to be true, at some level, even of dogs.

This idea that food is a necessary pleasure forms the basis of my approach to both cooking and eating. Cooking to me is like composing music. One must blend the notes in just the right fashion, arrange them in just the right sequence in order to achieve aesthetic perfection. And just as with music, the variety in food is infinite. There is the simple shepherd’s melody played on a pipe and there is the fresh apple. There is Beethoven and there is crème brulèe. There is grunge metal and flaming hot szechuan cuisine. There is enough variety in food to more than match any other form of art for its diversity in intensity, complexity and every other attribute there is. Thus, I think of ingredients akin to elements of music – while vanilla may be compared to the soft sounds of the piano, chocolate may be compared to a cello’s soulful tones and a red chilly to the soaring notes of a guitar solo. A good dish, like a good piece of music, is one that achieves harmony between these diverse elements.

And as with music, my preference in food is rather catholic** with but one caveat – I shalt not kill***, i.e. I am vegetarian. Aside from that I’ll try anything – boiled seaweed, raw mushrooms, bitter gourd, habaneros – and there are very few things I do not like. The only things I hate are monotony, monotony and monotony. In this respect I am fortunate to have a mother whose culinary wizardry, any cordon bleu chef would be proud to possess. Add to that the wonderfully diverse culinary atmosphere of Madras and you realize that I grew up in a gourmet’s paradise.

It worried me in no small measure that I would be leaving all that behind when I moved to Salt Lake City. But the move here opened up new avenues for me to explore than it closed. And my constant need for culinary experimentation has resulted in numerous joyous hours spent in the kitchen and some very interesting results. Results that I have mostly enjoyed, speaking of which, I’m off to concoct my next plat du jour. Bon appetit!

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* - No, I am NOT referring to that immortal thingy that transcends death and time that supposedly is the essence of a living being. I believe in no such thing. In fact, I will believe nothing until I see the data! I use the word ‘soul’ simply to refer to a certain aesthetic sense, a higher sense than one’s survival instinct.

** - I use the word catholic in the first sense of the word as listed below and in that sense alone. I have no affiliation with the Pope.

cath·o·lic / [kath-uh-lik, kath-lik]
–adjective
1. broad or wide-ranging in tastes, interests, or the like; having sympathies with all; broad-minded; liberal.
2. universal in extent; involving all; of interest to all.
3. pertaining to the whole Christian body or church.

*** - I shalt not kill, for the purpose of eating. By no means should you underestimate my lethality should you foul up my mood. ;)

Note:

1. This post has been a long time coming but somehow the words just wouldn’t flow until today.
2. As clichéd as the title is, I still like it.

Dull drivel

It's been a while since I've written anything. And I feel a driving need to do so now. I need the release... all this pent up energy needs to come out in a sustained slow burn or a dramatic supernova! Burn? Supernova? What the heck am I talking about? I haven't the foggiest but I have a feeling I'm going to like it.

For starters the past couple of weeks have been a bit of a blur. A quicksand like monotony that leaves one without enough energy to do anything to break it. Work has not been the problem... quite to the contrary it's what has kept me going. But what happens when I’m not working? Nothing! I feel heavy… a feeling that reminds me of a hot, humid tropical afternoon, the kind when it feels like the sky itself is weighing down upon your shoulders. Part of the problem is that my body clock has gone AWOL… I believe it is on vacation somewhere a few time zones away while I’m still here in SLC! Who in heaven’s name gave my body clock permission to leave me? Sure as hell wasn’t me. And how does it feel? It feels like I’ve been channel-surfing through my days and catching nothing but the same dumb ads on every channel! That’s a little messed up. But not nearly as messed up as insomnia! That, my friend, is a whole different ball game.

That’s right, insomnia! Imagine waking up drenched in sweat in the middle of the night only to realize that you’re not yet in bed and your eyes shut off no more than ten minutes ago. Imagine lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling until suddenly it’s no more than a few inches from your face. Imagine staring into the pages of a book until you start seeing ants run up and down the spaces between the words. Imagine looking at the clock one moment to see the hands at 1 am and to turn around and looking at it after a few minutes later to see the hands at 5:30am… you wonder where the hours went but you do remember every song you listened to. And when sleep does come at some ungodly hour, it brings no relief. Instead it brings dreams… visions of a gray world set to a background score that is something akin to the sounds made by a ceiling fan squeaking for some grease as it rotates at that odd pace that is neither slow nor fast but is annoying in the extreme. It makes you want to lash out and tear up everything in sight. Only, you can’t move… you can’t even shut your ears. Scary thought, huh?

If you still don’t understand what I’m talking about, picture getting stuck on a long bus ride next to a bigoted, narrow-minded, conservative know-it-all who acts so “nice” it makes you want to gag. Yes, you know the kind… the kind that can’t stop telling you how right they are and how wrong you are… in the politest terms of course. And all this after they’ve known you for all of 3 minutes. The conversation feels like something between a visit to the dentist to get a tooth pulled and sitting in a car without air-conditioning on a sultry summer afternoon, staring at the barren landscape as you wait for an endless cargo train to roll by at an annoyingly slow pace. By the time you get off that bus, you’ve lived a lifetime in purgatory… every neuron in your brain screams for a violent release. People like this remind me of the immense black cloud of mosquitoes that circles above your head just after the rains… they don’t attack you all at once but instead adopt a spirit-crushing pattern of random bites. If only you had a flamethrower.

Speaking of spirits being crushed, picture trying to accomplish the most trivial of tasks in a bureaucraZy – running from pillar to post until you fall to your knees screaming and weeping in defeat.

Now why have you been picturing all this depressing and disturbing imagery? Why, for my entertainment of course! All that I’m saying is that you don’t know dull until you can tell apart 256 shades of gray. Now that I have transferred my entire load to you, my dear reader, I shall retire to bed. Oh sweet joy, my body clock has skipped back a couple of time zones. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Science: the human aspect

Science... we have all been taught it in some form and in some measure. Indeed, we have all jumped through those hoops – Newton's laws of motion, the Lomonosov-Lavoisier law of conservation of mass, Darwin's theory of natural selection. But these are merely the most basic of concepts, and hence inherently simple. Are they really?

It is true that some of these concepts form the very foundations of our knowledge while others have been replaced by newer thinking. But what do we, who are so privileged to be born into such a wealth of knowledge, know of the men on whose shoulders we stand?

Behind every concept, every fact we learn, stands a man or woman who had the temerity to question that which no one else did, the eye to see that which no one else did, the clarity of thought to understand that which befuddled their peers and the steel of will to stand up to the arrogance, such as can only stem from ignorance.

Before we can even begin to comprehend the magnitude of their achievements, we must question the very nature of their work. To say that those men and women sought to learn the truth, to expand knowledge, we must first ask ourselves what we mean by “knowledge”. What does it mean to “know”?

Fact is something we know is true... or is it? It is an idea we arrive at by interpreting observations that we make... answers we attain for the questions we ask. But the “facts” that we ascertain are limited by our own shortcomings – in the questions we are able to ask, in our powers of observation and above all in the insight we possess, with which we draw our conclusions.

Thus, we must understand that “fact” is not that which we are able to prove the correctness of but rather that which we are unable to prove the incorrectness of. An accepted scientific theory is merely an idea that can not be proven incorrect by the existing level of understanding.

People in the middle ages “knew” that the earth was flat just as we know today that matter is composed of atoms. By not being taught of the nature of knowledge, we are prone to foolishly laugh at our predecessors for what we perceive as their follies. But we ourselves would be the fools to do so. What we must realize is that each invention, each discovery was made by someone who challenged not merely the beliefs but the very “knowledge” of their times. Such are not men of an everyday sort.

These were men who experienced the world in all its brilliant detail. They looked upon it with the wonder of a child. They refused to allow themselves to become numb to the little things, caught up in the maelstrom of mundane issues that compose the average person’s life. And when they saw something that intrigued them, they questioned the nature of it and pursued the answers to those questions with relentless vigor.

Asking questions is merely the first step of a long journey. To answer them, one must make observations about the subject of one’s inquiry. This, simple as it may seem, is a problem, the solution to which is often the product of considerable brilliance, ingenuity and patience. To make an observation, one must isolate that which one wishes to observe – isolate it from the tangle that seems to be the unifying character of reality itself. Once that is accomplished, the event under study must be transduced into one that is perceptible to our limited senses. These twin problems were solved by the great men of science through the design of experiments. Therefore we must devote as much attention to the experiments that resulted in great findings as we do to the findings themselves.

Observations alone do little to push back the boundaries of knowledge. They must be churned in the mills of powerful minds, unfettered by prejudice, before they may be forged into insights into the very workings of reality itself.

And all too often such discoveries fly in the face of years of dogma, which does little to endear their proponents to the upholders of convention. True, every new idea must be tempered by criticism to weed out the kinks but that often becomes the pretext under which new ideas and the men behind them are condemned and ostracized. The abuse that one is subjected to for voicing new ideas ranges from being decried as a fool by society in the mildest cases to being stoned to death as some great thinkers were. It is a testament to the courage and the strength of will of these great men that their ideas survived the persecutions that sometimes they themselves did not.

Not only is it gravely wrong to speak of their work without speaking of them but it is foolish to ignore the many lessons we may learn from their lives. It is therefore my opinion that science must be taught in its entirety with due consideration to the human element that underlies it – not just as disembodied facts and figures. After all, history is not made by kings alone!

Outfoxed

I watched Outfoxed today. It's a documentary made in 2004 about Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Network and its utter lack of neutrality. It is an unconscionable travesty that they advertise themselves with the slogan 'fair and balanced' - nothing could be further from the truth! They are nothing short of lackeys of right-wing political interests who unabashedly toe the party line and trample the truth into the ground. Have they no respect for democracy, fairness and the public interest? Is basic decency too much to demand of them?

For more info on Outfoxed, visit http://www.outfoxed.org/

This is a problem that is not peculiar to this one news network. Across the board, we are watching journalism subverted by sensationalism and propaganda. The fourth estate is one of the vital pillars on which democracy stands. Do not stand by and watch it ruined by shallow people. Please watch this documentary. It is a clarion call to all those who stand on the side of fairness and democracy.

Today, the internet is the biggest ray of hope for those who fight to preserve journalism. It costs nothing to disseminate ideas through this medium and it is possible for anybody and everybody to reach a wide audience. The power of money and political clout don't count for much in the cyber world. But all is not well here - there is another battle that looms just beyond the horizon, the one to preserve net neutrality.

For more info on net neutrality, visit the following websites:

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.html

Rage

Note: This post is NOT going to make for pleasurable reading, not by any stretch of the imagination. These are words that have refused to flow from my pen for a long time now. This dull wintry evening, for a reason I know nothing of, they have found their release, and I mine. And I am glad of it, for I carry my pen lighter now. Is this fact or fiction? Does it matter?

To those of you who do venture beyond this point, I ask this much of you. Do not judge me a negative person, upon reading the initial paragraphs. Read on to the end.

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Have you ever felt rage? I do not refer to the sort of anger that makes you want to hurl curses or even blows at someone. No sir! I speak of the primal rage that you feel coursing through your very veins - a feeling that makes you want to END whomsoever is the object of it... right then... right there... with your bare hands. When I speak of ending someone, I don't mean just killing him... you want to rub him out of existence... even from the memories of people... make it like he never existed... wipe the slate clean! That is the sort of rage that in no time drags you across that invisible line which separates the sane from the insane. Mistake it not for the silly madness that makes you crave ice cream on a snowy December evening. This is the sort of madness that takes prisoner your senses and sensibilities before you even know it. It is a rage that derives from deep-rooted hate - hate that slowly burns you up as it burns within you... the sort that leaves you nothing but a hollow husk, numb to all joy.

Forgiveness is divine... but alas, I'm no God! When someone wrongs you so badly as to make you comprehend the true nature of hate, they have killed your innocence - they have killed a part of you. Forgiveness is not an option. However, vengeance doesn't accomplish much either. True, it does grant you an immediate satisfaction but, all too soon you are left with a void that is impossible to fill. What's worse is that the hate and rage make you oblivious to pain - both your own and that of the ones you love - but just long enough to let you commit acts that leave you with the ever-lasting bitterness of regret.

I have felt that hate, that rage and yet I have managed to pull myself out of that downward spiral. So what you may ask was my solution? Amnesia... dumb bleeding amnesia... not the clinical kind, but the self-induced variety that is brought on by sheer force of will. It takes a lot to hold on to your senses while your body shakes from the force of your anger. But in the end, it's worth it to rediscover your lost smile. His life is not worth living, he who can not recall the sound of his own laughter. I can and I do - and every time I do, I smile to myself, relieved - knowing that none of this may have ever come to pass.

I do not have it in me to forgive nor do I even wish to be able to do so. But I can be blissfully absent-minded when I choose to be. There are doors in my mind that have been locked, never to be opened again. The cobwebs of time have already begun to obscure them and soon they will be lost to oblivion. And I live my life now with a passion and vigor known only to one who has wished death. For, no possession is cherished so sweetly, as one lost and regained.

And I leave you now with words from Friedrich Nietzsche: "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

PS. I couldn't help myself this incongruously silly digression but all this perhaps explains why my favorite superhero is Batman - his life a hollow existence, defined by the very vengeance that drives him.

Thus spake Nietzsche

Here are a few quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche that I recently came across:

• Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
• The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
• A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
• Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
• Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's?
• It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.