Of long queues and emoji-nazi

Who doesn't hate long queues?

That's what I thought. But they don't always seem to be bad. I was running to catch a bus today and was relieved to see a long queue which made sure I had enough buffer time. There are other occasions wherein one likes their queues long. Say you are speaking about something interesting with a fellow "queuee" or you have a lengthy form to fill until you reach the window. 

-mini rant, exaggerated for flavour-

Seriously, I hate this smiley/emoji/emoticon (and some of the others, e.g. happy tears emoji). Especially because people seem to use it all too often.

Image credit: http://emojipedia.org/

I will sound conservative but what happened to the good old :) :p ;) ? Are they not good enough for you? World was much better back then.

OK, may be this is an irrational dislike. But I have some reasons that sound logical -

These faces look weird. They do. No one makes such faces in real life. I imagine the person sending such smiley making that face and it feels discomforting. The good old :) :p didn't force me to look at an uncanny face. (Incidentally, I don't find the Gmail emojis as uncanny as Whatsapp ones). And people use this crazy smiley in any conversation whether or not it reflects their state of mind. It's a cop out for people who don't know what to say and type in a string of emojis. Yes, a string! OK, so you want to use an emoji, fine, but why do you have to repeat them? What extra information is gained by seven crazy faces as compared to one is beyond me. 

Lastly, When you send a joke, do not send these weird faces at the end of it. It's like telling a joke and loudly laughing yourself, instead of waiting for the audience reaction (or a laughter track for people without a sense of humour). That's not what we paid for. What? What did you say? .. didn't I pay you to send me a joke, ... , oops, never mind then.

--

Ah well, I need to sit down and listen to some music.

Wankelmut - Rock'n'Roll Is Here To Stay 2 

No English word for Jugaad?

I have often heard people saying there is no equivalent English word for the Hindi Jugaad. Guess what, came across something today that seems to nearly fit the bill (even though it's a slang usage). There must be other words too, but this one sounds good.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=macgyvered

To use the seemingly useless trinkets and objects in your close vicinity together to accomplish an otherwise impossible task.  

The U.D. definition of the root is amusing.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Macgyver

Someone who can jump-start a truck with a cactus.

Pareidolia

Was this manhole cover happier when people didn't walk over it?

Hypocrisy and Meta

So I read this answer on Quora about how someone was selling a child for Rs. 500 on OLX website. (it's more like selling child services, but keep that aside for a moment).

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-things-that-make-Indians-sad/answer/Jithinraj-K-Rajan

Some people have commented that the person who posted the ad should be jailed.

I suppose the same people wouldn't do a thing when they see a child working at a roadside dhaba.

OLX promptly took down the ad after a social media hue and cry. But I think it only sweeps the issue under the carpet. I think people feeling good about "how they forced OLX to take the ad down" are celebrating a pseudo-victory. Perhaps the ad should have remained there, reminding people of the reality.

-

Then there are people who blog about others' hypocrisy on child labour without doing anything about it.

Freedom and Independence

Today is 15th August. The day India won her freedom and independence. If you ask Google English to Hindi translator, both independence and freedom are translated as स्वतंत्रता. Is there a difference between these two concepts?

Can one be free despite being dependent?

Can one be independent despite not being free?

On a personal level, answer to the first question seems to be yes. One may get freedom to do X, *because* s/he is dependent on other people helping out in some other tasks.

What about being independent despite not having freedom? That seems impossible.

"hello" and second problem with time machines.

You are walking along the road, lost in thoughts, and suddenly some stranger (usually a security-man) says Hello/GoodMorning/GoodEvening. That was something unusual for me to get used to after coming here. 

My first reaction was to freak out, oh, Who is this guy! Why is he smiling at me! Is there something wrong with my clothes?

Later I managed to force a smile under such situations and learnt to quickly reciprocate the greeting. But one needs a good reaction time. Often these fellow greeters have a lot of time to plan their hello, whereas we, the victims, don't know which way the next hello might be coming from. 

Even now, sometimes I get startled by unexpected hellos and then sheepishly realize after walking forward that I haven't properly reciprocated. And then I wonder whether he's wondering if I'm rude or something. Shrug!

 ---
http://www.markhintonstewart.com/TheManFromEarthMusic.html

---

First problem with time travel is time travel itself, but the second problem is that of space travel.

Time travel writers seem to forget a crucial detail about journey back into time. They will show the time and place on their time machines, but they never mention the reference frame of co-ordinates.

Given that the earth is rotating around the sun and itself, the calculations about where in space the destination is, must be difficult to make. Besides, the solar system itself is moving in the universe at its own velocity. It's possible that the dinosaurs were at a particular x, y, z place in the space where we have never been to again in history. And without knowing what those x, y and z were, how can we build a time machine that will take us there?

PS. There may be something wrong with the logic above. 

[random]

Chris Addision's Honorary Graduand speech

First advice was amusing and guiltily reassuring. Last advice was surprising, that too, coming from a comedian.


γ

.aural pleasure.

  
~
     

Why (sometimes) you shouldn't read IMDB discussions on movies

I take pride in my taste in movies (and a zillion other things, but forget that). The other day, I decided to watch Dan in Real Life simply after listening to this beautiful track Modern Nature by Sondre Lerche (and two positive reviews).

Towards the end it's a kind of feel good movie. Good in parts. Much better than average garbage. 

Then, I went back to IMDB site and read the discussion threads. People were quite mean and pointed out various flaws in the movie (some of which, on second thoughts, I agreed with). As a result, I felt I enjoyed the movie less, retrospectively. Since then I have decided not to read IMDB discussion threads unless the movie has a high (8+) rating. For 8+ movies, the discussions are more knowledgeable, bring out the hidden nuances, make you appreciate the movie more. For such movies, generally people have both positive and negative things to talk about. Even then, it is better to first have one's own opinion, before listening to others. Otherwise we'll become like this.

So, what's your MBTI type?

On someone's Quora profile, I read about this test that tries to tell your personality type. I had heard this kind of stuff before but never tried it. If you have seen some usual psychological questionnaires in magazines, they are of the type "If most of your answers were A then you are adjective1, adjective2, adjective3", "If most of your answers were B, then you are .." so on. Even if we assume for a second that these tests truthfully assess you (and this is a big IF) they suck so much that their creators haven't even bothered randomizing the choices. (I think) After going through first few questions, the reader understands the pattern and from that point onwards they try to (probably not fully consciously) conform to their previous choices. For example, if someone selects choice A for first three questions, if they are in doubt about the fourth question, they are likely to choose an option that is consistent with their previous choices, irrespective of what they actually feel. So, the readers trick their minds trying to paint a consistent picture, rather than fractured bits of truth.

Coming to this particular personality assessment test, look at some of the yes/no answer statements. While some questions have relatively straightforward answers, others don't. For example,

You feel involved when watching TV soaps. Yes/No?

Firstly, let's put all the serials, series, and soap operas into one bucket. Since everyone's tastes are different, most people will find themselves more involved in at least one series (different for each person). If most people answer Yes to this question, how is this supposed to give insight into their personality? 

You are more interested in a general idea than in the details of its realization. Yes/No?

Well, sometimes I am and sometimes am not. Depends on how critical the situation is.

It's difficult to get you excited. Yes/No? 

This is an amusing question. It's difficult to get you excited by what or whom? There could be a myriad number of situations, how am I supposed to answer this? Also excited means what? It could vary from mild to mania. I suppose this and most of such confusing questions could be answered by comparing ourselves with those around us. If these people get more excited than you (about things in general), then you are difficult to get excited.

You know how to put every minute of your time to good purpose. Yes/No?

This is such a pretentious question. Every minute? Hardly a few people on earth would be able to truthfully answer this as Yes. (And would they take this test?). Ok, I get it, we shouldn't take this literally. Still. The situation changes from day to day. There are uptimes and downtimes.

Anyway, despite such confusion, I somehow managed to finish the test. INTJ.

On an unrelated note, I will leave you with this video :)

The men who made us fat [Documentary Recommendation]

A very good 3 part documentary series  on the "obesity crisis", better than "Supersize Me" in terms of information content. Most interesting part was how the food industry influenced decision making bodies and ignored warnings of academic scholars.

I didn't know that the obesity problem had reached an epidemic level in the US and UK. Quite alarming.

9/10

Not taking this sitting down ..

  After reading a lot about disadvantages of sitting for longer periods of time, and hating the disgusted feeling of sitting for hours (even with short breaks in between), I  finally decided to stand while coding. Not full time, sweet spot for me seems about 4-5 hours. (Relevant reading). 

Today marks 30th day since I started doing it.

Setup:

I have two setups, one at home another at office. My home desk has two flat top surfaces at different heights (I'm unfamiliar with the parts-of-table terminology) as shown in this side profile - 

Monitor is on the topmost surface (red) and keyboard goes on a cardboard box on the lower black surface.
 
Office desk is somewhat different, it doesn't have a top surface so I just used old boxes to raise the height of the monitor. Monitor height is such that even if I sit in the chair the height is just about right so I don't have to adjust monitor (apart from changing the facing angle).

Changes felt:

• General feeling of wellness/feeling more energetic (could be placebo effect) 
• Better concentration for longer periods
• Less occasional back pain

My recommendation: Try it! 

Here's this week's fav track (also check out other tracks in the same album)

Knowing you have waited enough

Until recently I liked to believe that I have a pretty good estimation of how much time has elapsed between two incidents.

backdrop

I have two options for morning commute to work, metro or bus. Fortunately, both the stations/stops are near each other. Buses usually come at random times while there is ~6 minute gap between two metros. If a metro is going to arrive after > 2 minutes (it has an electronic clock that shows time until arrival), I go to a point midway between metro station and bus stop and wait for the bus. I wait until I think there is 1 minute left for the train to arrive and then I head back to metro station and catch the train. Since I'm confident about my internal clock I don't bother to look at the mobile for time.

Unfortunately, a few times I missed the train. What I thought to be say 3 minutes was actually 4 minutes and so on. How did I lose track of time watching the traffic? Why did my mental calculation go wrong?

theory

Apparently, our brain keeps track of time by the number events registered on the memory[1]. If there are a lot of events happening we think a lot of time has passed (hence the expression longest day of my life.

So I reckon that watching the uninteresting traffic flow my mind registered very few events and I (i.e. my brain) underestimated the amount of minutes passed.

cure

The cure I use is to willfully force myself to add a bit extra time to the mental clock. I don't try to change how my mental clock works but I modify the estimates in between. So when I think it's two minutes, I add an extra minute and proceed accordingly. So far, it seems to be working; although at times this zealous time adding leads to reaching train station a bit earlier.

[1] I heard it on a podcast and was trying to get a definitive research paper source for the study. Unfortunately, couldn't find it after 20 minutes of googling. There are a lot of different theories of how brain keeps track of time. May be I will write about it at a later date.

-- I will leave you with this beautiful track called Salsa Sitar Shuffle

Google Drive & Maps - Display problems, weird multiple symbols displayed

I had the same problem as this person http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/2_2J-z82tvk 

This is probably caused by one of the chrome extensions. Maps and docs work fine in Incognito mode.

short but sweet

Listen to this heart-warming tune by Ben Parker

Theme From 'How Not To Live Your Life' from Ben Parker.

And below is a tune by Lemon Jelly used in the final episode of the Spaced series.

Ponderable quotes

The physical signs of leprosy are a hypopigmented patch and loss of sensation. Now in the so-called healthy society you can see a lot of injustice and poverty, yet you are not moved. You have lost your sensation, your feeling. The mind is so dull, the heart so unfeeling, thick-skinned like a hippopotamus - that's mental leprosy.

--- 

I want to be a man who goes around with a little oil can and when he sees a breakdown offers his help. To me, the man who does that is greater than any holy man in saffron-colored robes. The mechanic with the oilcan, that is my ideal in life.

- Baba Amte

Sources:

[1] From a book

[2] http://www.rmaf.org.ph/newrmaf/main/awardees/awardee/biography/266

Is God necessary for morality?

There is a very good debate between Prof. Shelly Kagan and Dr. William Lane Craig about "Is God necessary for morality?"

Find it here.

If I were to simplify the two sides, I'd draw parallels between the debate and different parenting styles (Parent == God). On one hand there are parents who tell their kids to behave in a specific way, follow certain rules; not because it is right (which it may or may not be; or it is right, because someone says so) but because the parent commands them so. Alternatively, the parent may reason with the child as to "why" certain things are morally objectionable (in the sense that they may face the consequences if others around behaved in the same way in future). Note the If here. There is no guarantee that immoral actions will be punished either directly or indirectly. It's just a matter of principle not to indulge in them.

It seems to me that for some kids strategy1 might work better ("do it because I say so") at least initially. Kids may fear the punishment by the parent. But in the long term, I think, strategy2 will help because it provides a proper justification, even though it is probabilistic. I agree that this analogy is not perfect in the sense that those arguing for God, say that s/he is omnipresent and omniscient and can punish you, even after you die.

Another parallel can be drawn with criminalizing non-voting in public elections. I think many people will agree that people should not be punished for not voting, but at the same time, it would be better if they voted. From the point of view of a "non" voter, his/her vote wouldn't change election results, which is mathematically true in most elections. But when viewed collectively, it will be disastrous for the democracy if everyone were apathetic towards elections.

I think each of us has an inbuilt conscience that helps us know what is right and what is wrong. So, in my opinion, belief in God is not necessary for morality. But it certainly helps us. In this case, the results matter more than the means.

Further discussion on this debate:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=1810
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/contemporary-moral-arguments