Tayzwi

And so much time to do it.

Scott Aaronson's "rant" on naysayers of complexity theory got me pondering.

Over the last few months, my general scientific pondering has suffered at the hands of real work, startup life routine, system building, and a general state of being occupied by the trite. It's fascinating, but not inspiring. The days are exciting, but not ecstatic. The nights are cathartic, but not liberating.

I miss my aimless pondering days.

I was missing this life then.

So it goes.

Labels: computer science, life, startups

For a while now, I have observed this disturbing trend of using the words Porn and Masturbation (P&M) as suffixes in hyphen-separated-phrases to convey that the prefix is inferior, waste of time, pathetic, something to aspire against, etc. Cases in question: intellectual-masturbation, achievement-porn, etc.

I find two insulting underlying reasoning schools at work were. One: Just because something is _perceivably_ akin to P&M, it sucks. Two: P&M implicitly suck.

Well, that's it.

Labels: life, writing

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, “How did he do it? He must be a genius!”

Labels: computer science, research, theory

Color, Pathos, Neon, Blood, Helplessness, Orgasmic, Irredeemability, Red, Anguish, Nods, Honesty, As-is, Succumbing, Delirium, Insecurity, Psychedelia, Skin, Sigh, Bitter-as-coffee, Physical catharsis, Uncontrollable-lust, Random, Wanton, Appreciation-hierarchy, Feeling, Denim, Masochism, Yellow, Numb, Lonely, Cold, Vivid, Very vivid color.

Do not influence others. Especially subliminally. Especially with ideals which you have internalized after prolong profound pondering. That's what Nath Devlalikar does. He makes his life an experiment in ideology, and lives to live the tragic consequences. Walking out of Prithvi Theater, I felt an almost biological urge to wail out the anguish I felt for the fallen hero.

Vijay Tendulkar's Kanyadaan is the most hard-hitting play I have seen. Tragedy and irony have never come together so well. The motif of victim morphing to victimizer is brought in a brilliant fractal like way. Son-in-law torturing the daughter to victimize the 'other' society. Daughter comparing her ideological upbringing to a kind of crippling that she can never revert out of. The former acknowledged, the latter acted out brilliantly.

Adding to all the motifs and superb acting - is the strikingly powerful overarching theme itself. The inability to live a life the one preaches, and live it to completion, at whatever cost -- that's what hit me. I remain hit.

And so.....don't preach.

Labels: life, theater

If you have been waiting for a film for a while, watching it alone in a theater is probably most satisfying. For various reasons, but the most important being - I don't have to justify why the film is worth someone else's time. It would have been a very tough sell in There Will Be Blood's case.

I am not sure if it was Raja Sen's review on Rediff that tipped it for me, or the bulging veins on Daniel Day-Lewis's forehead in some best actor award nomination preview - I had to watch this one.

What's my verdict? I am not sure. Morally corrupt love has always perturbed me. Oxymoron?

There are moments in this film, or vignettes, if you will, that showcase this very corrupt kind of love that elevate it above your usual saga. Love for what you stand for, what goes through your veins, on one side - and on the other side, you have love for another person whom you have internalized as your extension.

ps: I walked out of the theater feeling somewhat like this.

Here's what Nabokov said at the end of his literature-appreciation course:

"In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys -- literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the adolescent purpose of learning to live, and not for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations. I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author -- the joys and difficulties of creation. We did not talk around books, about books; we went to the center of this or that masterpiece, to the live heart of the matter."

Is this true? When I heard about Lolita, or more so, its purported story's theme, I didn't know that the book was about something else. But I know now. What if I didn't? Or couldn't? Would I have dismissed the book as a cheap attempt at erotica that's not even there? Maybe.

The point is - When I write, I think of a certain type of reader who will get my allusions, and more importantly, whose appreciation hierarchy matches mine. The hope is to create something whose unravelling would thrill a reader - give that shiver of artistic satisfaction. I must also admit that, in retrospect, my posts from the past have given me more cringes than shivers.

Is that you? Not being able to believe that you could've written this? You should read some of the other stuff you've written.