the lithiumhead

I am not really sure what is the point of teaching history in school to young kids - is it because we want them to learn from their (and others) mistakes or are we teaching them effective ways of messing things up? Take the British policy of Divide and Conquer - we now recognize that as a tactic by the British to create disharmony in India and benefit from it at the expense of so many lives the after effects of which still leeches at Pakistan and India's soul. What do we want the kids to learn? that divide and conquer is a bad thing and must be resisted at all costs to prevent disunity or that it is really effective policy that hampers the growth of countries for multiple lifetimes?  What is the face we are presenting to the younger generation: Life is too short for regrets or is Life too long for having no regrets. - thoughts swimming in my head this morning after reading Justice Katju's case for reunification: http://justicekatju.blogspot.in/2012/12/a-case-for-reunifica...

You know I suspect that we will know the purpose of our existence when we are on brink of achieving the purpose. Maybe our purpose is to destroy the universe - to take entropy to its max value. Imagine a scenario of those final moments as we try helplessly to restrain the ultimate terrorist scientist from pressing the big read button. He himself realises (of course after pressing the button and watching the explosion wavefront approach him) "dammmmnn! Instead of screwing the case for everyone, i actually achieved it for all of us... Faaaaaakkkk....."

The seed of true happiness takes root only in a soil tempered by pain and difficulty. And once it does take root, it can only be nourished by one's ultimate duty towards oneself - being true to oneself.

How do you woo someone? Offer them lift to office everyday? That would be so unhealthy. Won't you rather instead walk with her to office everyday. Do part of her office work for her? And then cry about it all your life if you do end up with her! So being "caring" doesn't cut it. Friends are caring, family is caring. Caring is just a temporary band aid. A single instance of difficulty soothed by a superficial act. Of course being funny helps. The girl finding you funny usually mean that you share some past intellectual interests. But soon you will run out of stories to tell her and she will get fucking bored of you. Unless, you have an endless supply of stories. So what is this this business of "finding your soul mate"? Must be something to do with completing each others sentences and deriving pleasure from doing the same things in similar ways - "Oh! once a month on a weekend we go on this log drive, bust into some elderly couple's home...

Here is how to get Vibram FiveFingers in India: Requirements: A friend in USA or elsewhere abroad. 6000 INR in your account and an international credit card. 2 to 6 Months of patience. So one of the obvious most inexpensive ways (i.e. saving shipping charges and custom duty) of getting stuff from abroad is to get one of your friends/relative to buy it there (or you can order it online and get it sent to their residence) and then get it for you in their luggage when they come visit India. But if their India visit is not scheduled in the near future, there is an alternative method you can use. Here is what I did to get my Vibram FiveFingers: Wait one of the American festival days around which discounts are offered on a few selected items only. I ordered Men's Bikila  around Labor's day at 40% discount (at 54 USD instead of the usual 90 USD). Get the item shipped to your friend's place in USA/Canada using your international credit card. I got it shippe...

Somewhere around 10th grade we all enter this big examination hall. And get handed this blank sheet of paper with a single line printed on the top: Do as directed: Discover yourself. Write an essay on it. ..and we spent the rest of our life trying to hit the moving target that makes "us" us - ever closing in but never quite there. Supplements get acquired, pages get filled up... Some finish up fast, pack up and leave. Some fill-up the pages with multi-colored inks, highlighting the rungs that mattered most. Some staple onto the pages, souvenirs from their lives - coasters, used bandages, train tickets, the razor blade with which they cut themselves. Yet others keep filling up pages after pages and yet feel as if they haven't written anything of substance. Some end their essay with a one line summary like "To my friends: my work is done. Why wait?" As the exam progresses, all kinds of patterns emerge. The ugliness of the rat race (who will come up...

Some songs need growing on you before you can like them and snuggle up to them. Imagine a new bud growing out of your brain, expanding it, in a new direction. The new music is like a new Sun with a new power spectrum shifted in frequency away from all the other Suns you have been exposed to already. You have to grow a new bud, and let the DNA of the cells in this new bud mutate, so that it can invent and synthesize a new chlorophyll like molecule to absorb the nourishment that this new Sun has to offer.  Here is a song that required some getting used to, before I got addicted to it. And here is another song that simultaneously simulated the power spectrums of many different Suns I had already known and then some; I got drawn to it immediately:

A comment I wrote up for Pragya's  http://tara-think.blogspot.in/2012/09/infinity.html  which ended up being a blog post on its own!: Before I say anything - and I have a damn! lot to say on the topic at hand - a quick jump to your poem " Perfection " and back, it had been quite sometime since I last read it :) First up are our dearies Einstein and Newton. Newton (standing on earth) said that the apple falls in a straight line towards the earth. Einstein imagined himself to rise up above "outside" the earth and saw that the apply was not actually moving in a straight line, it was moving along a curved line but sinde space-time itself was curved by the earth's gravity, so it appears straight. Newton stepped back and saw "the apple" fall to the ground. Einstein stepped back even further and saw the apple and the earth together in the frame. Similarly Maxwell unified electricity with magnetism - he up with those 4 equations with "ulta del...

In this blog post, I am going to collect links which shed light on various biology questions that have crossed my mind. Does a blood transfusion change your DNA? Answer: No, because "red" blood cells don't have DNA http://ask.yahoo.com/20050506.html I think cells in our body are Eukaryotes  (cells which contain complex structures enclosed within membranes) but since red blood cell don't contain DNA, could they be  Prokaryotes (cells which lack a cell nucleus (karyon), or any other membrane-bound organelles.) ? Answer:  Every single cell inside our body is eukaryotic. Red blood cells lose their nucleus during maturation. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081115101935AASywZK

Whenever I visit Anupam stationery (a store near andheri station), I end up being "taken aback" (in a good way) by all the new novelty products that they keep adding to their collection. The latest ones that I picked up were ball pens which looked like syringes!! My friends - Deeksha and her sister Vidya - are doctors and it seemed befitting that they write their prescriptions with such pens!! So I gifted them these :P Deeksha draws comics which she has titled "Perpetually Taken Aback Person" which she hosts online here:  http://www.p-taps.com/

The bell curve is an inevitability in all aspects of life. Expect to be near the center in most aspects & at fag-ends/top-cream in few.

A question for Garnier: What were you thinking when you made the packaging for the following two products so very very identical? Its been so irritating the past few couple of times when I bought one thinking it was the other. Mental really!! I have thick skin. I need an "abrasive" scrubbing face wash. And I totally hate it when I end up buying the feebly liquid only face wash... ughhh!! Whose idea was this packaging anyway? I seriously want to slap that person - not for coming up with this idea; everyone makes mistakes, but for letting the packaging continue for SO MANY FUCKING MONTHS!!! Garnier PureActive Blackheads uprooting scrub (This is what I WANT) Garnier PureActive Pore unclogging wash (This is what I end up Buying!)

So either you are on the board of directors.. or you are bored of directors. Windows mutex implementation has a function: WaitForSingleObject() . I guess, subconsciously, the code you are working on ends up mimicking your current state in real life...

Mutation and Natural Selection facilitate Evolution. Sex accelerates it. Death implements it stepwise. Consider any species in their wild habitat. A male mates with another female, has sex, produces an offspring.  Mutation  causes offspring to be physically strong and better suited to the environment.  Natural Selection  allows it to outlive other individuals of the same species. As the offspring spawns, mating with multiple individuals of the opposite  sex , it passes on the favored genes to its children. The good gene spreads through the whole population only when other individuals WITHOUT that gene have  died  out - i.e. died naturally, killed by predator/competitor, accident, calamity etc. Consider the modern day human population. We have outgrown evolution. We have become too populous for evolution to take its natural course. So many people are born with so many beneficial mutations. (Richar...

The human body, consisting of about 10 trillion cells, carries about ten times as many microorganisms in the intestines wow! so there are 100 trillion entities within the entity that I know as "me". 10 times more than the parts that are only "me". In fact they are ME! A healthy adult has about 2kg of these bacteria in the gut. All these bacteria live in a highly organised micro-world with certain species predominating and controlling others. Knowing this puts so many things into a new perspective: The way to a man's heart is through his stomach Damn right!, that's where most of "me" live! Talk to the hand I would rather that you talk to my gut, that's where all my veto power is concentrated! A man is known by the company he keeps Should be "community" instead of "company" We are what we eat Happy Realization! No, seriously! Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live. Only place f...

You feel the blood pulsing through your veins; your heart pounding against your breast. You break out in a cold sweat; your arms shivering. You feel tears rolling down your cheeks; your voice quivering. You feel the warm dilute mucus running out your nose; you sniffle, feel out of breath. Liquid and Music I feel you. I am happy. You aren't breaking. You are breaking free.

Flash memory chips are like vast penitentiaries of double insulated prison cells. But instead of morons, the cells hold electrons.

Sachdeva, Upasna Thu, May 3, 2012 at 1:54 PM To: Anurag Chugh  Who knows why we live and what we are really meant to do. I mean how many people do you think really know what they want to do and do exactly that. But may be not as a whole, but in parts we usually know what we want in at each moment. And when we know what we want we feel alive. That is the only time we feel alive. Cuz when you know what you want you either get it or you don’t. and in both cases you feel the elation and pain which makes one feel human. The entire purpose of life is to feel human and breakable. Isn’t it? Anurag Chugh Thu, May 3, 2012 at 2:17 PM To: "Sachdeva, Upasna" The entire purpose of life is to survive long enough to reproduce before becoming food for something else. Rest all is just stories we tell ourselves to satisfy our urge to seek a higher meaning. During the past few days I have formed an opinion about the age old question "What is the meaning of...

Screaming through the air, tearing through the ether, they blast through everything in their path -  almost everything. If they fail to achieve what they were born for, more are sent from whence they came. Sometimes flying free, Sometimes scrambling through guided channels, reincarnating repeatedly, changing form, jumping worlds. They arrive at their destination. A few pixels re modulate in the top right corner of your screen. "You were poked by Anurag Chugh poke back | remove poke"

Asphalt and Coal Tar are two distinct substance which are used construction of tarmac roads. Asphalt is used as a binder and coal tar is used as a sealant . And so if you are wearing new shoes (whose soles haven't had yet got coated with fine dust particles and hence become desensitized to sticky substances) and step on an area which has just been resurfaced, you are sure to get this dangerously sticky mixture of asphalt and tar and crushed rock aggregates embedded in crevices of your shoes' tread pattern. Of course newly laid roads are required to be dusted with certain powder to make them not stick to tires and shoes.. but being India... sigh! Anyway, so I got them shits stuck to my shoes .. what was I supposed to do? A cobbler outside my office (and google search: team-bhp ), told me that it was possible to remove the guck from my shoes using kerosene... but again, being India, its difficult to get your hands on any kerosene if you aren't classified as being...