Sometimes....

Things just work out awesome! First time a Charlie Weis offense held to 0 touchdowns. Worst season opening score for Notre Dame. And Choice runs for 196 fuckin yards... (And we have a sweet keg to enjoy all this over!) Talk about an awesome day. Sleeping is slightly scary though, since the drop from the highs of earlier today is almost depressing. Even if I am happy right now, it wont match the magical feelings of the morning, so relatively its gonna feel disappointing. But enough complaining, that was an AWESOME win. Oh, and running about like a fool in the campanile was pretty damn sweet too. Despite that creepy guy taking pictures of us shirtless...

Frustrated

I am very pissed. Alcohol used to make me happy, but now it only makes me sleepy. The one thing I used to be good at is now of no use to me. Talk about frustrating!!!!

Wings, Keg and High Def...

College Football season is upon us! For 8 months I have waited, and waited, and waited. Finally it is here. The greatest spectacle in the world of sport. A combination of athleticism, media glitz and glamor, cheerleaders, parties, alcohol, mascots, traditions, rivalries, drunken fans, upsets, blowouts, cinderella stories and bar fights makes college football an unbelievable experience. And fortunately for me, GT is neck deep in the world of college football. It has pretty much cemented its place in the history of the sport by the unbelievable 222-0 win over Cumberland in 1916 well described by Wikipedia as the "Most Lopsided Game in College Football History". A great image on that wikipedia page is the scoreboard which lacked facilities for a 3 digit score, so a 2 is tacked on at the end looking rather awkward. Having already earned 4 National Championships in its history, every true Yellow Jacket starts each season with the fervent hope that we will add another one to that list.

Anyways, let me not ramble into our chances this year (which I think are pretty sweet, but I think that way every year). The first thing that some of you may have noticed is my constant usage of the term football. Now, in India, the country I call home, football is the sport where you use your "foot" to kick a "ball" into a goal, as it is for pretty much any individual not born and brought up in the USA. Unfortunately, americans decided that a sport where the kick is only used about 15 times in 60 minutes should be called football. And the sport where people use kicks about 100 times a minute, for 90 minutes, should be referred to by the meaningless nom-de-plume, Soccer. And I am being party to this desecration. Travesty!, you cry out loud. Yet, I confer upon the sport involving the pigskin the honor of the name "football" because it is easily the best damn sport in the world. No other sport involves the levels of athleticism, raw strength, talent and strategizing all at the same time. And I do not mean this in jest or sarcasm. I am being brutally honest.

First of all, the amount of tactical and strategic thinking required in the game is unparalleled in the world of sport. What appears on TV to be a barbaric and almost silly collision of human beings, is actually an amazingly choreographed dance from either team, the simultaneous existence of which on the same field may lead to crushing victory for one side, or a deadening deadlock between the two. The amount of planning, practice and effort that goes into each play is remarkable. Months of training are spent simply remembering the myriad of plays that the coach may have planned for the season.

Nowhere else will you see 300 pound men run as fast or turn as fluidly as on a football field. It is amazing to see the things men, who look like their legs should not be able to carry their weight, can do when put onto that football field. Oh, and people often quip (like I did) how Rugby players are real men, since they dont need padding. Well, rugby players do not accelerate and collide into other 300 pounders within 10 feet of them every couple of minutes. And even more unbelievable are the tackles made by 200 pound safeties who stop men twice their size running at full speed.

You may agree, or disagree with my belief that football is the best sport, period, however, there is no way i will budge an inch on it being the best spectator sport in the world. No other sport allows spectators to speculate, and strategize as much as football does. In fact, bars run games, where people try and predict the "next play" allowing the patron to pretty much play coach. And while the plotting appeals to our mind and other higher senses, it also satisfies our baser feelings with the sight of men tackling the crap out of each other.

So yeah, in 3 short years, I have become a football convert. I have just described the sport here, but when you add all the peripheral stuff that makes college football so special (most of them need to be experienced to be understood) you will probably agree with me in totality.

Marklar...Marklar...

Disclaimer: The following post is Adult only...

I was, until yesterday, registered for an "Introduction to Film" class. It looked really fascinating, and my experiences in just 2 hours of class were absolutely mind-bending. Immediately after each class, the world around me looked different, and like nothing I had ever seen before. Unfortunately, due to certain time constraints I had to drop it. I will definitely be taking it as soon as the next semester gets here, though.

Anyways, one of the more interesting things that came up during the class was writing. While discussing the qualities of cinema as an indexial medium, writing and language was mentioned as an example of a symbolic medium. In other words, any word that we speak, or write, in most cases has no direct relationship with whatever it refers to, but rather, is a reference society has collectively agreed on. In our past "Fire" could have been named "Water", and we would still be calling Watermen when we knocked a candle over that set our house on water. While this is something I had implicitly recognized before, discussing it in class made me think more deeply about it. And I began relating it with my favorite pet peeves, censorship and taboo words.

One of the most frustrating things is how we have completely accepted censorship (of speech) as a normal part of our lives. Words in movies, TV are all censored. You watch Friends, and they never ONCE use the word "Fuck". Can you even keep track of the number of times you used the word in the last 24 hours? It is completely ridiculous because of how hypocritical it is. The one argument that can be made is the tired "What about the children argument!". Now dont get me wrong, sometimes it is a valid argument, but it is used so much nowadays (especially in the US) that its effectiveness has been watered down. However, this is one of the few cases where its use does indeed seem legit. Until now, I did not question this, but after the class I got thinking. If a word is nothing more than a symbol, then it is not the word itself that we are afraid of, because if that was the case, then we would have prevented the use of the word fuck on screen even if it meant "to cry" for example. However, that is an absurd assertion, so I will discard the possibility that the word itself is special. That leaves me with what the word refers to. And the word refers to the action of "making love". So by shielding children from the word "fuck" we are protecting them from the concept of inserting a penis into a vagina. Fair enough.

Or is it? Having sex, and more specifically, fucking is arguably one of man's most primal needs. In fact, it is THE process that leads to life. Whether or not a creator god exists, it cannot be denied that there is only one natural process that leads to human creation. And that process is defined by the word fuck. So by hiding the word fuck from children we are screening them from the most powerful natural process in the world; the one that is the reason that there is any complex life on this planet (some far simpler organisms can reproduce asexually but sexual reproduction is essential for the "rapid" evolution that has led to the existence of complex organisms). Why do we want to insulate children from one of man's most basic needs? An individual needs food and air to survive, and similarly a species needs its members to copulate to survive making sex as basic as those essential elements. Yet, when I use the symbol f***, no one mistakes that for "food". Can it really be that bad for a child to be aware of such a basic part of human existence? Or is it simply our unnatural and manufactured disgust for sex that leads to the belief that exposing children to sexuality on screen is a bad thing?

Another thing that really annoys me is the usage of "f***" or other censorship tactics such as that. Really, what is the point? Everyone knows what is being mentioned. Anyone who knows what is being mentioned probably also knows the meaning of the thing that is being mentioned. So what purpose do those little asterisks serve? Coming back to the whole "language is symbolic" premise, we have basically replaced fuck with f*** and just like how water would mean fire if that is what our ancestors had decided, f*** is wholly and completely equivalent to fuck. The only difference I can see is that someone who uses the former is implying that he/she is too cultured/polite to use a coarse word such as fuck. That, to me is ridiculously disingenuous because the writer is trying to have it both ways. They are using the word fuck, and adding all the force and/or imagery that the word provides to their writings, while at the same time claiming that they did not use the word fuck to add force/imagery to their writings, because they are above using it. Yet, they are using it!

And we accept it silently. Honestly, any writer who uses those little asterisks does not deserve an audience, because he thinks we are fools to fall for his "i will use it, but fool you into believing that i did not" trick. Reminds me of the story of the Sardar who when asked if the last number on the 1 rupee note's serial number was 1 or 0, replied 1. When asked if he wanted to change his answer with the further information that the correct answer was odd, the sardar immediately changed his answer to 0. I am not that sardar, and I will not read anyone who wishes to treat me so.

So, did I really need that disclaimer in the beginning?

Nowadays...

Woke up way too early again. Thats what a night of good drinking (and by good I mean it the old fashioned way...where you drink until you drop) does to me. Forces me to sleep early, and then robs me of my sleep waking me up around 4 AM. The proverbial asshole who dangles the candy in front of the baby, and just as the baby is about to grab it, pops it into his own mouth. Annoying to say the least.

In this half unconscious and fully unhappy state of mine, I flicked on the light switch, and in the few milliseconds that the bulb took to turn on, a pulse of joy surged through my body. Time slowed and I was flooded with a feeling that can only be compared to meeting the love of your live for the first time. In that instant a small part of the secret of life was revealed to me. The joy and privilege of being human in today's day and age.

Look around yourself for a minute and imbibe the wonder emanating from every object around you. Each gadget from the chair you are sitting on, to the computer you are reading this on, exists because of the combined intelligence of generations of people. And how marvelous are the results of that intelligence! Its hard to fathom all that goes into making the simplest of things. A mechanical pencil for instance. It has a complicated system of interlocking mechanisms, where pushing a button in one direction causes the lead to drop just the right amount in another. The plastic needed to make its outer shell was literally developed by humans out of thin air. Nothing of the sort ever existed before man had a crack at it. He took what god made, and made it even better. Think about it...improving on the works of the ultimate being! Even the creation of the lead is a fascinating sample of human intelligence at its best. Primitive man discovered that he could use graphite to leave stains and modern man figured ways to fashion it into super thin pieces that make amazing writing instruments. He even managed to classify it by different characteristics such as diameter and hardness, and reproduces it with an astonishing degree of consistency.

So next time you are complaining about how sad and lonely you are, turn on the light and think about how lucky you are to witness this achievement. This Mona Lisa of epic proportions, in front of which even the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids at Giza quickly fade.

A Quick Observation

I was just reading a couple of posts from my old blog. The blog itself is not as polished as this one, but the quality of the writing is far far higher. The thoughts are similar, but that blog seems a much greater joy to read. It made me realize the importance of writing regularly in order to keep the writing level up there. And writing is an essential skill. Maybe that will motivate me to write far more posts than I did before.

I am being ambitious, and aiming for at least 5 posts a week.

Lets see how that works out! (Quite discouraging are my archives, which barely show any month with more than 1 post in it!!). On the other hand, I already have 3 in the last 2 days (although this really should not count..)

Music

I recently came across this page while looking for music recommendations. I am one of those people who hate listening to individual tracks, but would rather listen to the entire album. It allows me to experience the music in the exact manner that the artist would like me to. While this may not be the best way to get the most out of the music (listening to the best tracks from each album is obviously more efficient), it helps me appreciate each album as a work of art. Often, you find that the lingering sounds from the previous track change the way you perceive the current song completely.

Anyways, I downloaded the top 10 albums on the list and decided I would listen to all of them. Having already listened to all the Beatles albums on the list, I started with the album "Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys (#2). It took me a while to digest the music, but once I gave it enough listens, I just could not get enough of it. One day, being really bored, and with nothing to do, I dug up some background info on the album. Apparently, the Beatles released "Rubber Soul" (#5) in 1965, which inspired the Beach Boys to release "Pet Sounds" in 1966, which in turn inspired the Beatles to release "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (#1) in 1967.

Stop there for a second and imagine yourself as a teenager in the 60s. The hippie culture is sweeping America, which while you might not have appreciated, you cannot deny was fantastically anti-establishment. And what does a teenager like more than the smell of revolution in the morning? And then comes 1965 and you listen to rubber soul for the first time. It is amazinng, and you say that there will never be anything like it, ever again. And then the next year your predictions are proved hopelessly wrong when Pet Sounds come out. This time though, you are not going to be wrong in saying that this is as far as music will go, you think. You even place money on it. And then the Beatles come back and give a crushing blow to your pocket money savings as you lose the bet with the release of Sgt. Peppers. What a time to be a 15 year old! (Oh, and then 2 years later, HOLY SHIT, man walks on fucking moon, but that is slightly off-topic).

And then there is the maybe not so surprising fact that each of these masterpieces existed directly because of each other. There is something quite amazing, and I dare I say it, religious in the idea that one set of geniuses are pushing another bunch to continually advance the pinnacle of human achievement. I can almost feel the excitement that must have pulsing through civilization as every boundary was tested, and pressed as far as it could go. And it was something the entire world could share in. Music was not restricted to the Western world, but was available to every person on the planet, being one of the most universal mediums that has existed in history.

You would have thought that with such a fantastic platform to build upon, there was no place music could go but up. And for a while it did, as Pink Floyd in the 70's and many others then and after could testify. However, looking at the current music scene I cannot help but shed a tear or two. How many songs in the last five years can you point to and say you would actually be listening to it in 20 years? How many albums would you go and buy repeatedly every time it was released in a new format? Where is all the groundbreaking music that changes the way you live your life, and is a defining moment of the era? Why are artists not pushing each other to outdo themselves, as well as everyone else? The only competitive inspiring I see is "beefs" between different rap singers, who use their next album as an excuse to hurl f-bombs at people they hate. There is no respect for their peers, and why would there be any? Its not like anyone is creating anything worth respecting...

What has caused this decline? I think a big factor is the rise of the gangsta culture which places greater importance on the 'bling' on a person rather than the quality of their work. (Btw, isn't it ironic that these men who pretend to be so 'bad-ass' and 'manly' are such fans of gold and jewellery, historically, a feminine pursuit). At the same time, no small part is played by the record labels who have constantly looked out for artists whose music may be terrible, but can be packaged well, because in today's superficial world, it is the cover that sells. Witness the boy bands of the 90s, the teenage girl revolution of the late 90s (would Britney have a single song if she always looked like this?) and now gangsta rappers, whose CVs have nothing but a description of each time they have been shot. Additionally, music is now competing for talent with so many other pursuits, such as television and movies.

There might still be light at the end of the tunnel though. With the rise of the internet, the record labels might just be pushed out of the equation. With sites like iTunes, and myspace giving artists direct access to massive audiences, good musicians might be able to reach the public without having their lights put out prematurely by record labels who did not find them "marketable enough". Also, with regular home computers being able to perform all the functions that one earlier needed a record studio for, the barriers to entry have been considerably lowered, allowing more people to enter the music game. (Consider this, for my cousin's wedding, I was able to do all sorts of cutting, and blending of tracks using Garageband on my mac that was earlier being done in a professional studio for Rs. 100 an hour). Hopefully, if the quantity of chaff is increased, there might just be more wheat that comes along with it.

Do you agree with me on the state of music? If not, why? If so, then do you share my optimism for the future? Shoot off in the comments...

Coming out of the closet

The title does not mean what you might think it means. If this recent survey is to be believed, it is even worse, since I now consider myself atheist.

Most people have a lot of preconceived notions regarding atheists. Unfortunately, most of them are completely false, and are a result of people not understanding what the word means, and what the philosophy implies. By definition, atheism is the lack of theism. Theism is further defined as the belief in "at least one god". So atheism is the lack of belief in at least one god. Nothing more, nothing less. An atheist does not necessarily believe that god does not exist but rather, the question that god exists does not even strike him, just like the question that the tooth fairy is real does not even strike most sane adults.

It is a sad fact of humanity that theism is indeed the default position and atheism is frowned upon. A very basic logical principle is that the burden of proof lies on the individual/group making an assertion, in this case the ones claiming god exists. However, in our twisted world, the burden of proof has been placed on the atheists to prove that god does not exist. A little thought will uncover at least a couple of the many reasons why it is impossible to prove this negative. The concept of god is pretty much the only one in which such a situation arises. A classic consequence of the "proving the assertion" policy is the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" which is the bedrock of every successful modern legal system. Further, a belief in god is not the default position because of the merits of such a theory, but rather because our ancestors conjured imaginary creatures to explain phenomena they did not understand, and then passed them down as fact.

One major misconception is that atheists lack morals. Most theists learn that they should be good because they will be punished by god if they aren't. So they find it hard to believe that someone could base their morality on anything else. The only reason I want to do good is because I feel good when being good. Morality is an innate part of me and almost every other human being, much like how we all feel pain on touching a hot object. More often than not, religion is designed and interpreted to fit humanity's current moralities. For example, the following passage from the bible which deals with raising children is completely ignored nowadays because it does not fit with our modern sense of right and wrong.

Deuteronomy 21: 18-21
18If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

19Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;

20And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.

21And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

So if morality is derived from religion/god, then what has caused christians to discard this section? The answer is quite obviously a value system that has arisen independent of their religious beliefs. Indian culture is also a fantastic example. Most of the "holy books", like the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata are widely acknowledged, even by most hindus, as books written by wise human beings to provide moral guidelines. While hindus call it part of their religion now, the people came up with it in the absence of any religion feeding them all these ideas. They were all original and came independent of any word from god. Instead, they were derived from the individual's experiences and study.

Normally, I dont care two hoots about religion and god. However, a quick look around us shows the disastrous effects these concepts are having on us and our planet. I am not even going to mention terrorism (except this one time), but only need to look back at our past for well documented atrocities. The church's suppression of Science and Scientific ideas in the middle ages is well documented. Unfortunately, such things are not confined to the past, as evidenced by the difficulties scientists are having in conducting stem cell research in first world nations like the US. Also, as discrimination against homosexual people, and calamities like this show, not only is religion impeding Science, but is destroying valuable lives in the process.

I do not have a problem with the basic practice of following a religion. I do not have a problem with belief in god by itself. I do, however, have a problem with irrationally placing faith in a higher power, or following rituals because "god says so" (where god is invariably a priest, parent, or someone on TV). Unfortunately, currently a belief in god is inherently irrational and following religion (being a person of faith) automatically condemns you to following a higher power with, at best, limited skepticism. Which is why I reject both.

Note: My ideas and philosophies have not really changed much since when I considered myself hindu. Fact is, I can still call myself one, but I do not since most people consider hinduism a religion, which it most certainly is not (or at least not a religion like Christianity, or Islam. But that is a topic for a different day). I do not want to have anything to do with religion, or have anyone even think I might be remotely religious. Which is why I have decided to shed the hindu label (which honestly, is completely meaningless to begin with) and adopt the atheism one (which in an ideal world, would not even exist).