What makes me happy?

A tag from Pingu.

Sunny skies with just a few white clouds.

Good coffee.

My mom opening the door to let me into the house.

Dark chocolate.

A glass of cold water on a hot summer day.

The smell of fresh cut grass.

The sound of waves.

Stepping out for an ice cream during a snow storm.

Good comic books/cartoons/anime/movie.

Sitting down to a hot self-cooked meal (especially when it's something exotic).

Spending an entire day on my couch looking at cloudy skies listening to jazz or mood rock.

Orange popsicles.

Watching the sun set while sitting on a hill top with my feet dangling over the edge.

Writing, sketching, making model airplanes.

Saturday mornings.

Re: Yeh thi khabrein aaj tak, intezaar khijiye kal tak

This is in response to "Yeh thi khabrein aaj tak, intezaar khijiye kal tak" on Pingu's blog.

I think 'journalists' and news anchors these days come off an assembly line managed by a bunch of egotistic cretins in some B-school (wonder if the B indicates the grade of the institution in question). They are all the same - all confirming to the same LOW standards, all with the same illusions of grandeur. Poseurs and losers!

All they have accomplished is the perversion of the once-revered fourth estate into an abomination in the service of greed, deceit and authoritarianism. They rant and rave incessantly about trivia, leaving real stories to rot away from the public eye. They trivialize and sensationalize events that do matter, until the public is sickened. But worst of all they spread fear (without reason) and help undermine democracy (whatever's left of it).

William Randolph Hurst once said "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war.” At least he knew what real journalism was and so he could tell hype from news - even when he was the one creating the hype. In contrast, today's losers swallow every bit of their own circus acts and actually believe they are jornalists. How PATHETIC!! Hardly any politician today is worthy of being called a statesman just as hardly any news reporter/anchor today is worthy of being called a journalist.

Pardon my strong language in this post but I have nothing but contempt for their kind and even that is more than they deserve.

Human life

Disclaimer: This is by no means an attempt to answer the question of life, the universe and everything. That answer has already been published - it is 42. What we have here is merely a discussion of one man's perception and how it has changed.

But I am only human…” Countless are the times I have used these words to justify my mistakes, my faults to myself and to others. After all, our flaws are the very things that make us human – at least that’s what I thought. But I see now, how that single notion was the defining factor of my perceptions, my actions, my very existence. I was too lazy to change, I knew it and yet I was too lazy to accept to myself the wrong in that. The result was a young man with a very myopic vision, bereft of direction.

Add to that, the fact that I saw myself more through the eyes of others than through my own – I was looking at myself from the outside when I should have been looking outward at the world from within. I concerned myself more with who I was perceived to be than with who I really was. Even when I was being a rebel and a non-conformist, I was trying to be different instead of being myself. The result was constant turmoil within – a tug of war between the person I was/am and the person I was trying to be. As a result, I often did things that caused me much hurt, not to mention the pain inflicted upon to those dearest to me – I was by no means blind to the truth, yet I was somehow powerless to stop myself.

And then suddenly I realized one day that I’d changed and that the world had changed for me. There was a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that had always been missing from my life before. There had been no epiphany, no lifting of veils, but my life had practically turned itself upside down (rather it had finally up righted itself) – I’d found once again the lost joy of childhood; it was as though I’d come full circle. And when I thought about it, I realized how simple it had been – I’d finally learned to detach my perception from that of others. This had opened my eyes to the truth that happiness is not merely the byproduct of the pursuit and attainment of ones goals but that happiness is itself the goal and everything else but byproducts. I’m sure that every 3 year old knows that. Yet as surely as we grow bigger with age, we lose all the wisdom of childhood.

All my rage, hate and cynicism had been mere symptoms of my lack of perception. With the realization that the pursuit of happiness is really the very purpose of life (at least to me it is) came recognition of the things that give me joy. I live to satisfy my curiosity – to try and solve the mysteries that are so abundant in nature. The moment when the solution to a problem begins to take form in my mind, the moment an idea is born, that moment is what I live for. The pure joy that it gives me leaves no room for any pain or sadness. And it is at such a moment that it hit me – humanity is not in the flaws, it is in the recognition of flaws and in transcending them, even if only for the most fleeting of moments.

I realize finally that my life is really all about "my" "life". Don’t get me wrong. I do not suffer from illusions of grandeur. I recognize fully how trivial my existence is in the context of the universe. In fact, it is my belief that the existence of any individual has no purpose (in the context of the universe). But that does not bother me; I revel in it – life doesn’t need a pre-ordained purpose to be sweet. Life is whatever one makes of it; purpose is whatever one wishes it to be. And to me, the purpose to learn, to experience, to enjoy.

It's here... finally!

After much delay, mostly due to my own tardiness, it's finally here - Macnife's Nano-reef Blog. Although it's still in a very rudimentary state, I promise lots of photos and info real soon!

Rot

What becomes of a man after death? So many of us desperately seek the answer to that question. But I, Rengasayee Veeraraghavan, graduate student, know the answer. Yes. What becomes of a man after death? He becomes a statistic. Pathetic as it may sound, it is the truth. No matter what he may have accomplished in life, no matter what the manner of his death - he just becomes a statistic, for death is the great equalizer.

Let me present my case before you judge me a cynic. "Nothing is certain in life but death." When a man dies, it does indeed impact the living to varying degrees - people may grieve over his loss or they may celebrate his passing. But none of the emotions of the living have impact the dead. But the collective memory of humanity has a very short life span and eventually all that remains is a statistic dutifully written down somewhere, to last relatively much longer than the memory of the dead.

Our perceptions of the lives and deaths of other men depend on how far we are separated from then in space and time. Do any among us really grieve for our distant ancestors? How many of us even know much of the lives they led? And what of the multitudes dying every day in some corner of the world far removed from our miniscule awareness? What do we do when we learn of people killed by terrorists and imperialist nations in the Middle east, by starvation and disease in africa? In the worst case, we hardly bother to disguise our apathy - uttering a couple of inane words expressing emotion, openly feigned. The somewhat more sympathetic among us may contribute our two cents of spare change to some charity and move on with our lives. But what do we really know of the dead beyond the statistics? Do we know how many of the dead were doting parents or loving children? Do we even spare a thought for the bereaved? WHAT DO WE KNOW BEYOND STATISTICS?

But what of those individuals who dedicate their lives to helping their fellow men? The noble among us. I neither deny their existence nor do I discount the magnitude of their deeds. Indeed, so colossal have been the deeds of some, that we may think they have impacted humanity itself. But have they really? For instance, Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi are two such men - their ideas and actions have impacted the lives of countless human beings. When Lincoln abolished slavery in the United States of America, when Gandhi liberated India from the British yoke - no small feats - they changed the course of human history. They even implanted their ideas and values into the hearts of many.

Yet, the bigotry, hate, apathy and greed that tarnish humanity as a whole remain undiminished. Not even the most significant events in our history have been able to cause changes that aren't merely cosmetic. For example, slavery may have been abolished in the so-called civilized world but has that stopped men from exploiting their fellow men to serve their own personal greed? HARDLY! The lot of humanity has more or less remained constant through history. Just like life itself, human nature is an irrepressible force - it will always find a way. And it is the rotting core of humanity itself that deserves blame for the way the world is.

So how then do we save ourselves? We don't. It's too late for that. All we have to look forward to is our inevitable extinction. Until the moment of our end is upon is, we will continue to remain wrapped up in the cocoons of our pointless pursuits, blissfully ignorant of reality. The only consolation is that none of it would have mattered, even slightly, to the universe. In the words of George Carlin, "we started off as a species with much promise but now we're just circling the drain."

Let me leave you with these words from Albert Einstein - "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."

PS. Still think I'm being cynical? Just read the news.

Random rants 2

Our existence is all the more precious and sweeter for its fragility.

It is perversely funny that through the course of human history, more people have been killed in the name of God than for any other cause – testimony to our limitless ignorance.

Nobility necessitates, to varying degrees, acting counter to Darwinism – what remains to be seen is whether it is a fatal flaw or redeeming virtue.

Human perception is inherently relative, a fact we often forget. The only way we are able to perceive the absolute is through the absence of stimulus.

That all knowledge beyond that of one’s own existence is at some level or the other, based on arbitrary assumption(s) is a fact seldom recognized.

The principle of moderation is applicable to everything - everything but chocolate.

While one may think he knows himself from years of temperate existence, he can only be sure after having stared into oblivion from the very edge of the precipice.

Hedonism is for those too naïve to comprehend the nature of happiness.

Macnife's Reef Blog: Coming soon!

The past few weeks have been rather eventful for me and my two marine aquariums. I finally got my home tank set up the way I wanted and I've got most of items on my livestock wishlist... for now. The older office tank has also been through a series of minor changes, with a couple more being planned. Both tanks have pretty much stabilized and look very close to what I had in mind.

I've finally started seriously shooting pictures of my tanks and I figured it'd be fun to start a new blog to put up these pictures with some information about the organisms. As a rank newbie at reefkeeping, this will also be a good way for me to learn more.

At the very least, I can promise that at least the pictures will be interesting. So 'ang on to yer knickers folks!

Doodles

I just happened to pick up my pencil yesterday evening after approximately 3 days short of forever. A few hours of timeless fun later, I realized I wasn't too rusty after all. (to be understood as "I was never much better than I am now.") Anyway, here are the fruits of my fine evening.

I've never been good at drawing people. So when I decided to try it yesterday, I decided to be nice and make myself the first victim. Notice that I selected a picture where I was still recognizable without my face being visible.

The things I was good at sketching are animals/birds/body parts (biology stuff), macho machines (fighter aircraft, guns, tanks... you get the idea) and comic book characters. So I figured I'd try one of those and then take it a step further.

I sketched out this negative image of the Batman and then played around with it on Photoshop.

Some simle contrast manipulation and a little thresholding and lo and behold!

Boy, am I glad I picked up that pencil! This is another one of my erstwhile hobbies that I've decided to revive. And just to make sure I don't slip back into laziness, I'll put up a sketch or two on this blog from time to time.