Tuesday, December 27, 2005

The Rig Veda

The Rig Veda is a perfect example of a hologram. The Rig Veda is divided into 10 Mandalas, each of which has 192 suktas. Each sukta is further divided into 24 sandhis, each sandhi into 24 padas, and each pada into 24 richas or verses. This circular structure is an indication of the intricately interlocked structure of the Veda.

The first letter of the Rig Veda is A. A is considered to the the primordial sound from which all other sounds (and frequencies) are generated. A therefore indicates everything that is present in the universe. The first syllable Ak is a combination of A - everything, and k - nothing. The k sound is a constrictive sound and it ends the presence of all sounds, and is considered nothing. Thus Ak is everything and nothing, which is the entire universe. The first word is Agnim. Agni is the God of Fire in Hinduism, and is supposed to be the representative of everything in the universe. Agni is also the messenger between man and God.

Thus, the first letter, the first syllable, and the first word all contain the same information. This concept is further expanded over the first sukta of the first Mandala, and so on; making the Rig Veda a perfect example of a hologram. It is said that no human brain can think of such an intricate structure of verses, and is supposed to be devine knowledge that can only be realised.

Monday, December 19, 2005

More links

All links in this section have been obtained from here.

A fitting reply to the con-men from Nigeria. I tried my own technique once, I emailed them back saying I had some money of my own to transfer, and wondered if they could help me with it. They never got back to me, and I think they had enough transfers on their hands anyway without having to worry about more.

Another quiz, a quickie this time! (All ye dirty minds, thy shalt frieth in hell for a long time!) I got classified as - hold on to your hats - a centrist. Does that mean I am doing nothing better than sitting on the fence? Or does that mean I'm trying to strike a balance between a blind rush to a completely liberal society and a need to retain our traditional values by being conservative? Tricky issue this. I think its the second, more of this in a later blog.

Finally, I cannot believe people actually read and comment on this blog. Is it because people actually believe there are some profound insights to life in those posts? Or is it because people just love to read a parody on the blogs that can be best described as (Kane's words) current affairs blogs? Either way, I don't get it.

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Addition on Dec 19, 7:00 pm

Here is an idea that one would initially tend to dismiss as too simplistic. But the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that it might just work.

PlanetRead is an organization that has decided to introduce same language subtitling for Hindi shows in India. For those who are in USA, this is the same as closed captioning you get on TV, except that it is in Hindi. This way, PlanetRead hopes that the people who watch these shows will read the subtitles, and thus improve their reading abilities.

The reason why I think this will work is that it does not require the target audience to do anything out of their way to read. They just have to continue doing what they do, and read the text that appears on the screen. This idea is not going to make scholars out of the entire workforce, but, over time, is sure to improve the reading abilities of these people.

To read more about this idea, see this link on the official Google blog.

As usual, comments welcome.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

What religion are you?

Check out this link. It tells you which religion your views are closely matched to. My score as a Hindu was 96% and as a Buddhist, 88%. I cannot verify the accuracy of the results, but it will be interesting to see how everyone scores. Why don't you take the test and leave a comment? And if people are really in the mood for it, we can discuss the results too! Just kidding. Not.

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Chelsea on the cheap here.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

A light (sic) post

Going the exact opposite way, here is a not-so-recent conversation I had with my roommate, Mridul Balaraman.

(Note: I here is me, and M is Mridul)

I: How many springs does a basketball have?
M: A basketball doesnt have springs in it.
I: Sure it does, how else does the ball bounce?
M: That's because it has air in it.
I: This room has air, how come it ain't bouncin' around?
M: That's because it's stuck to the ground!
I: I can pin this ball to the ground, and my hands bounce off it!
M: The room has doors and windows that the ball doesn't.
I: If I make a tear in this ball, my hand still bounces off it!

Mridul then went off about elasticity and rigidity to prove that I was wrong. I countered by claiming that a spring is a form of elasticity as well.

Without going off into scientific principles, and by simply making some dumb (but seemingly logical) arguments, how far can you take this debate? Anyone brave enough to further an argument?

Edit:
Lines 1 to 5 in the conversation were obtained from something that came on the TV (dont remember what), and the rest was made up by me and Mridul.