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Showing posts from November, 2011

My Kinda Meditation

It seldom happens that while reading one of the numerous books that you will read in your life, you come across something profound that totally resonates with you. One of those moments happened to me while while reading  Mark Frauenfelder 's book " Made by Hand " ( Amazon | Flipkart ) . He is the editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine & co-founder of bOING bOING magazine. In his book he quotes few lines by a cartoonist called Seth from his article in The Walrus Magazine : But drawing and inking are different. They use different parts of the brain. I often find that when I’m drawing, only half my mind is on the work — watching proportions, balancing compositions, eliminating unnecessary details.  The other half is free to wander. Usually, it’s off in a reverie, visiting the past, picking over old hurts, or recalling that sense of being somewhere specific — at a lake during childhood, or in a nightclub years ago. These reveries are extremely important to the work, and the

TEDxGateway 2011 @ Mumbai

Here is a list of speakers who gave talks at the event today (2011-11-27). The event was held at NCPA - JBT, Mumbai. The list includes links to their websites: Anu Sridharan | Grass Roots Entrepreneur |  nextdrop.org Kranthi Kiran Vistakula | Innovator | CEO  Dhama Innovations - ClimaCon |  dhamainnovations.com Mallika Dutt | Human Rights Activist | CEO of Breakthrough |  breakthrough.tv Jo Johnson| Member of Parliament Orpington (UK Parliament constituency) |  jo-johnson.com Julia Silverman | Innovator - Soccer Ball Generator |  Uncharted Play, Inc. |  soccket.com Raghava KK | Artist |  raghavakk.com Prof. Ramesh Raskar | Innovator - MIT Media Lab | EyeNetra |  web.media.mit.edu/~raskar  |  eyenetra.com Illac Diaz | Grass Roots Entrepreneur | A Liter of Light |  isanglitrongliwanag.org Dr. M R Madhavan | Reformer - co-founder  PRS Legislative Research |  prsindia.org Narayanan Krishnan | Protecting the powerless - Madurai |  akshayatrust.org Ryan Lobo | Filmmaker and Ph

Spirituality vs. Science

To all Spiritualists: Guys and gals please stop misusing words like "Energy", "Evolution", "Universe", "Knowledge", "Elements" etc. in your literature/justifications. These words have specific and precise technical meanings in science and us scientists and engineers are not going to pay heed to anything you say until you stop manipulating the meanings of those words in whatever you are trying to say. Invent your own words to express the various concepts you have come up with. There are a lot of sweet sounding permutations and combinations of alphabets still left out for your use. To all Scientists: Stop looking for a precise definition of the word "Consciousness", "Mind", "Soul" etc. Let Spiritualists use them and define them. Stop encroaching on the words belonging to their domain. Do unto others like you want them to do to you.

Paintings on the Wall

Watched Class of '84 at Sophia College Auditorium today. Followed by a walk along Peddar road and dinner at Cafe Mondegar. Discovered this on the Juhu Aerodrome Walls today on the way back Seems to have been done today itself - Sunday, 13th November 2011 - by school kids. Some of these are really awesome. Proud of you Mumbai kiddos!!! (Was in an auto returning home when I first saw these, reached home, got my cousin to drive me back there and captured the pics with his Canon 550 - returned home at 2:00AM 14 November 2011 - was crazy enough to capture them fresh!!) Slide Show and link to all the 44 photos.

Life's Calculus

All emotions are beautiful. But what seems to make life less boring and more exciting are not the emotions themselves, but the rate of change of emotions. The impulse & step functions which cause sudden changes in emotions - "surprises" for example - are the best of them all; they spew harmonics all around and over!!!