Did you know?

Rama-Chandra is the seventh avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu. Although born a prince on Earth in ancient times, the power of Vishnu flows through Rama, something which his blue skin tone suggests. In the Indian epic Ramayana, Rama vanquished the demon king Ravana for abducting Rama's consort Sita.

He met Wonder Woman after Cronus, a Titan of Myth, and his progeny the Hecatonchires and Cyclopes ransacked Olympus and attempted to destroy the Hindu gods. The Hecatonchire known as Oblivion trapped Rama and Wonder Woman in a dream realm where the two were united in wedded bliss. The false memories of this illusion were shattered when Diana defeated Oblivion, but Rama supposedly remained infatuated.

A certain attraction between Rama and Wonder Woman was evident, but nothing ultimately came of it since the character was not used by subsequent writers.

(from: Wikipedia)

I have always been a big fan of super-heros of all shapes and sizes but unfortunately I never got to read Wonder Woman series. I regret it now. May be if I knew, Rama-chandra, the super-hero, I might have had more faith in him. :)


(from: Artwork from the interior of Wonder Woman vol.2 #151. Art by Matthew Clark.)

Hmmm...

Doctors practice.

Doctors practice on us.

Doctors practice medicine on us.

No wonder I feel like a lab rat.

For all my well-wishers...

...who don't stop poking their noses in my business and keep reverting to the most offensive question one can ask a Ph.D. student:

"How long will it take you to finish?" (These days it also has a tone of sarcasm added to it, that somehow should implicate me of being either lazy or dumb or both)

I am currently in following stage. As soon as I figure out the so-called central theme, I will start writing my thesis...

(from: Ph.D. Comics.com)

Dow roller coaster

...in literal sense. The clip shows what it would feel like to ride a roller coaster whose track charts the Dow Jones industrial average from October 2007 to March 2009. (from economix)

ME

Apparently, if you have a google account, you can search for yourself on the web. Thankfully my profile is not yet eligible to be featured in Google search results. It's such a relief. Want to know your profile try this out.

Disgusted

I am speechless. I don't even know where to start. Sinful desires (and then they are pro-life)? Sin of homosexuality? Church is preaching tolerance? They actually think that people are not tolerant about their views?. How many pastors or christian have been murdered, beaten to death, forced to commit suicide so far? Watch this one to know how many they compelled by their "intolerance":



I am simply disgusted. So disgusted that I can't express it in words. If that's what believing in God means: I hate God.

P.S.: I am so glad I grew up in India. Or maybe I was simply lucky enough to go to a school that had no bullies as in western world. Honestly who teaches kids that young to bully? This is to Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover who would have been 12 today, had it not been for constant bullying. In his memory, today National Day of Silence was observed (and hence today's post). Hope this isn't just another unnoticed gesture.

Being Sick..

..makes one more vulnerable. Or may be it's just me.

I have been stuck in my house, or rather my bed for past one week. And I somehow expect everyone around me to pick up the phone and call to see how am I doing? Or may be I am sick because I am craving attention. Or may be I am simply bored of being stuck in my room.


Worse part? I have been snapping on friends who do dare call and inquire about my health. Or may be I take their attention for granted and want more from everyone else.

Or just may be, I have too much time in hand and hence I am over-indulging myself. May be that's what makes me vulnerable.

Hmm...seems I need to do something to keep myself busy. Or I will drive my psychiatrist (namely me) crazy.

Crisis time

Imagine it's early in the morning. You are in your cozy bed, dreaming about the time before recession. You have a job, you own a house, a plasma TV, a Ford Mustang, an iPhone and of course latest Hasselblad (Okay, the last one only happens in my dream). I mean, you are dreaming an American dream (minus good looking spouse). And right then the alarm clock goes off. You twist and turn and try to snooze the clock but can't. The clock doesn't have snooze or off button. The only way for making it stop screaming is by feeding/depositing some money in it. It's not fantasy. This clock is designed to do exactly that. The idea behind it: save money.

And what if I say this isn't the worse. This clock here is designed to donate money to a charity you hate every time you hit the snooze button. Me thinks, this can be a very good test for strength of your convictions, political or otherwise. Like, how anti- anti-LGBTs are you (the two anti-s are intentional. And here two negatives do make a plus unlike American English)? Or how much you hate Republicans? and so on..

I am not sure how many clocks each of these clock-types ever sold, that is, if any. I don't think I will be a willing buyer. I love my sleep and don't want to put a price on it. How about you?

What's in a name?

God I love America. Where else can you find lawmakers who asked Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”. Really. Her own words were:

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

What? Didn't you know that America is center of universe? Where have you been? Now go and change your name to single syllable words so that Americans can 'deal with them'. Oh wait, aren't most Asian names already single syllables? Lets change them to single alphabet names. Hope that might make it easier for them to deal with.

Photo Show

Stanford Photography club has put up a photo show in Stanford's CoHo franchise. My submission:

Title: Economic Crisis

It's weird to see photograph taken by you hanging on the wall. Especially when you realize that few (ok at least one) of the photographers have their photos published as Time magazine's cover. Scary.

P.S.: 1. BTW, this shot was taken in Paris.
2. I love the photo printer in Photography department. It's simply amazing. One day I will remember it's name and one day (after that first day) I will buy it. :)

Orkut and babies...

My Orkut home page is currently filled with the Baby's pictures (babies of my friends, that is). And all of them are endorsed with the same type of comments : "aaawww","so cute", "he/she is a cutie pie", "sweet" and all the other variants of these comments. Seriously. From top to bottom, I have these updates from my friends and all of them are same. Worse: it has been so for past 2-3 months. My homepage doesn't change much except for babies. I have lost track of who has how many babies and what's their name. And honestly I am no longer interested.

Offcially I hate all those parents who put their baby's pictures as their profile picture. One of them went as far as changing her name to her baby's name. I am friend's with them and not their baby. It's great that they have one of those and their babies are most important thing in their life, but still they are not MY FRIEND.

Honestly, I am on verge of quitting Orkut. It has become more of a baby news page than a social network. Or may be I should change friends.

P.S.: Don't get me wrong. I love kids. My rambling is more about the loss of personal life of parents when they have one. Again I understand kids change a lot of things in the parent's life but why do the parents expect everyone around them to be as consumed by their kids?

Vindicated

Time and again I have said that I am better at expressing myself in writing than verbally. I am a non-confrontational person. It's hard for me to be assertive in normal conversation. Hence I have a lot of issues, and hence have this blog to vent it out.

Today I found someone else who did that for me. I am an agnostic on verge of atheism and have had a lot of discussions with so called "believers". Today I found all the arguments that I wanted to throw on their face but couldn't (I hate being non-confrontational). The piece is by Greta Christina on Atheism and Anger. Few of my favorite excerpts:

I'm angry that huge swaths of public policy in this country -- not just on same-sex marriage, but on abortion and stem-cell research and sex education in schools -- are being based, not on evidence of which policies do and don't work and what is and isn't true about the world, but on religious texts written hundreds or thousands of years ago, and on their own personal feelings about how those texts should be interpreted, with no supporting evidence whatsoever -- and no apparent concept of why any evidence should be needed.

I get angry when religious believers base their entire philosophy of life on what is, at best, a hunch; when they ignore or reject or rationalize any evidence that contradicts that hunch or calls it into question... and then accuse atheists of being close-minded and ignoring the obvious truth.

And I get angry when believers say that the entire unimaginable enormity of the universe was made solely and specifically for the human race -- when atheists, by contrast, say that humanity is a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, an infinitesimal eyeblink in the vastness of time and space -- and yet again, believers accuse atheists of being arrogant.

I get angry when believers treat the gaps in science and scientific knowledge as somehow proof of the existence of God. I get angry when, despite a thousands-of-years-old pattern of supernatural explanations being consistently and repeatedly replaced with natural ones, they still think every single unexplained phenomenon can be best explained by God. And I'm angry that, whenever a gap in our knowledge does get filled in, believers either try to suppress it (see above re: evolution in the schools), or else say, "Okay, that part of the world isn't supernatural... but what about this gap over here? Can you explain that, Mr. Smarty-Pants Scientist? You can't! It must be God!"

I get angry when religious believers insist that their interpretation of their religion and religious text is the right one, and that fellow believers with an opposite interpretation clearly have it wrong....How the hell do they know which parts of the Bible/ Torah/ Koran/ Bhagavad-Gita/ whatever God really meant, and which parts he didn't? And if they don't know, if they're just basing it on their own moral instincts and their own perceptions of the world, then on what basis are they thinking that God and their sacred texts have anything to do with it at all? What right do they have to act as if their opinion is the same as God's and he's totally backing them up on it?

So there. If you still have question read the whole piece..

Twit

I never liked twitter. Actually I never gave it a second thought until now. Watch..



Honestly, I do use Facebook twittering once in a while but having a whole site dedicated to that seems absurd to me. But then everyone have their own way of communicating. I choose to blog, they can choose to twitter..

P.S.: I do have a twitter account, I think. I don't think there is any social network or email provider on which I don't have an account. What to do, I am a grad student who likes to procrastinate.

Telecommunications

Here is the transcript (not exactly word-by-word but close) of my recent communications with a speech recognition software (they usually have problem understanding me.)

"Welcome to XXXX. Let's get started. I need to ask you a few questions in order to get you to the right person. When you hear the reason that most closely matches to why you are calling you can speak that phrase any time.
To purchase an XXXX product say PURCHASE. If you need shipping status on existing order say ORDER, or if you need help with an existing product say TECHNICAL SUPPORT."

Technical Support.

"I am sorry I didn't get that. What would you like to do today?"

Tech-ni-cal Supp-ort. (that's me enunciating.)

"I am sorry I didn't get that. What would you like to do today?"

Tech-ni-cal Supp-ort. (that's me trying to be loud and clear.)

"I am sorry I didn't get that. Let's get started again. I need to ask you a few questions in order to get you to the right person. When you hear the reason that most closely matches to why you are calling you can speak that phrase any time.
To purchase an XXXX product say PURCHASE. If you need shipping status on existing order say ORDER, or if you need help with an existing product say TECHNICAL SUPPORT."

Technical Support. Technical Support. Technical Support. (at this point I am just trying any and all method to be understood by her.)

"I am sorry I didn't get that. What would you like to do today?"

Hmmm....let me think. I would like to go out and enjoy the beautiful day that we are having and take some nice pictures but guess what, I am stuck with you who refuses to understand me and make me feel like cave woman trying to communicate with a 21st century woman. Can you please connect to me a real person or give me the option of punching some numbers instead of having me scream repeatedly on phone. (At this point, I have gone very silent but this is the synopsis of what's going on in my mind.)

"I am sorry I didn't get that. What would you like to do today?"

I accept my defeat o almighty speech recognition software. Please let me go. What do you want from me? Please please, connect me to a real person. I promise I won't ever try to speak to you ever again.

"I am sorry I didn't get that. I will connect you to an agent. Please wait." (Notice the use of first 'please' by her in the entire conversation..)

Merci. Gracias. Thank you. Dhanyavad. Shukriya. Aabhar. Meharbaani. ...(that's me thanking in all the languages I know to say 'thank you' in).


And then someone asked me today , 'Why are you in such a foul mood?'

Today's Graffiti says...

(from: Graffiti)

Ghost and God

I was watching Discovery channel series 'A Haunting'. It's a TV series comprised of narrations and dramatic reenactments of paranormal encounters and experiences based on real experiences. This is the first time I saw the series. I usually don't watch anything related to paranormal but today I did. Anyway the series got me thinking.

Do I need to believe in God in order to believe in Ghost?

Let me explain. Ghost is supposed to be spirit of deceased who either have some unfinished business or some attachment on Earth that keeps them from moving on. But moving on to where? In order to explain that, don't I have to believe in God?

The only explanation that I can think is based on Bhagwad Gita that talks about recycling of souls without mentioning God. According to the Gita:

The body is temporary but the soul is eternal. When this body is finished the soul must continue to exist as it's eternal. And just as the soul is currently residing in this body, when this body is finished the soul will continue to exist by residing in another body. (From: Gitamtra.org)

So in this case I don't have to believe in God and still can believe in ghost, do I? Or is there something I am missing?

Crush

For past few weeks I have been watching Boston Legal (Ion Channel, Tuesday-Wednesday 7-10PM Pacific time) and I think I have a crush on Alan Shore. He is simply adorable. I agree that he can be a bit distasteful but I still like him. I like his brutal honesty and his craziness.

I wonder why I always have crush on fictitious characters. Why can't people like that be real!

On second thought...

Isn't God the reason for all the terrorism in world? Let's get rid of Him. :D

God's existence: New argument...

If God really existed, wouldn't He done something about the terrorism perpetuated in His name? If He is as good and as kind as all these religions propagate, would He have allowed all these atrocities made in His name?

Why Now?

Finally I found out why an average PhD student takes 6 years to finish a Ph.D. in Stanford while in some other universities it merely takes 3 years. Reason: Extended course work requirement demanded by the department. Well at least that's what was told in today's Geophysics Townhall meeting.

The faculty have recently decided to change the curriculum for PhD. They examine several peer institute and decided that they should focus more on research than the course-work. So now, the students are required to take 30 units of coursework only. More specifically, only 9 units of courses from outside department as opposed to 21 units of out-of-department courses we took. 21 units. In-department courses are much easier to work with. But out-of-department courses, specifically in Engineering school are close to nightmares.

This will reduce the time required to finish a PhD considerably though this wasn't the intent of the faculty. I finished 27 out of 30 unit requirement in my first year. And if that's all that would have been required, I would have finished my PhD in 3-4 years, at the most 5 years.

So one of nth-year (where n > 6 years) student who defended last week and happened to be in the audience, asked one question: 'Why Now?'

Honestly. WHY NOW?