From the archives

There was this leech...

So in a dark dense forest, on a pig's body there lived a leech. Over a period of time the leech got bigger and thicker by sucking the blood of the pig and started thinking as if he was a snake. One day the pig was bitten by a snake and died. A gang of Hyenas came and ate its' body. The leech got a chance and stuck to the Hyenas' body. The new blood gave him a fresh lease of life and strengthened his believes.

I am not sure what the motto of the story is, but surely is very funny.

Motorcyclists and the HOV lanes

Why are motorcycles allowed in the HOV lanes? Atleast I came up with some statistical data. For a car with four seats, if two are filled (with the occupancy rate of 50%) it is allowed in the HOV lanes. This drops further if the car has five (40%) or even lower for SUVs with 7 or 9 seating capacity. On comparison, a motorcycle will always have a minimum of 50% of the occupancy rate which is higher than any of the cars allowed. Which means, a motorcycle is infact a high occupancy vehicle. QED!

Ganguli is in. For whose good?

The ex-cricket captain Ganguli is back in the Indian team for a series against Pakistan. Good news I guess. I don't know if the decision was made due to the pressure from the BCCI executive board or not. But I am glad Ganguli was given this chance. I also thank Sachin Tendulkar for backing him up. But Ganguli! do you know what it means to you? It means that you have to go back a little and shed a lot of the arrogance you showed recently. Its upto you to either take this opportunity and come out gold or make this the last series of your international career. I like winners but I like fighters even better. I know you are both, now don't prove me wrong.

Darwin and the controversy of the law of nature

Everyone is familiar with the Darwin's theory - "The species which survived were not necessarily the most intelligent, but the most adaptable". The word intelligence is debatable here but thats not the scope of this blog. The question is do you really want to live like a cockroach just because it is highly adaptable? The question is do you spend all your efforts to change things which needs to be changed or just change yourself to be part of it? Darwin's theory is correct and is the rule of the nature, but sorry I disagree in adopting it.

Bat for Ganguli

So once again Saurav was dropped out of the test team. The reasons were cited the same "looking for the future". It is so dis-heartening to see when people wrap their hidden agenda inside the all good reasons they can come up with. The team India is more important than a single player Or, the performance was not upto the mark or, even if he is getting older and we have to look for the future. The problem is that we lack the intuitiveness in giving a respectable exit to our players. Ganguli did play sensibly in the second test against the lankans. He played a knock when it was required to stay longer and build partnerships. Bringing in Jaffer in place of Ganguli instead of Gautam Gambhir is ridiculous. If performance is one criteria why you don't replace a player who scored just five runs in four innings? Saurav did suffer from the nostalgia, arrogance and stiffness but he also gave himself a chance to adapt to the new team. He is doing good. He doesn't deserve the humiliation meted to him. And please don't use contradictions and get away with it just because you have the power to do so.

Missing blog and the matrix of thoughts

The year was 1999 and the blogs were non-existent. The incubator of thoughts were still few news groups. There was one more available internally with in Sun where I wrote a blog(?) about how to take the Windows heads on. Forgot the words but the essence was "don't compete with Linux now and let it make the inroads first. Then present Solaris as the better kid from the world of Unix". The email (blog?) disappeared with in two days of the appearance. Seven years down the line Sun's approach is exactly the same. The evolution of the thought took seven years though. So what am I saying? My thoughts were the secret of Sun's success? Somebody hid those thoughts under the wraps and implemented it? I had the recipe to bring the name of Solaris to every household? Or, there was another contrarian mind who thought a like? Or is it the mystery I like to keep in my own world which entices me to feel like a legend? The matrix which I won't solve.

Welcome India in ITER

India is going to join an international effort towards producing controlled nuclear fusion. A welcome decision ofcourse. Controlled nuclear fusion is something which the whole world has been struggling to achieve for past so many decades. I have a longing relationship with this technology - my first job. India has two Tokamaks which tries to create plasma in a helical tube - Aditya (India's first Tokamak) and [S]teady [S]tate [T]okamak-1 which utilizes all the goodies of super conductors, Lasers, RF etc. The catch is not to produce the plasma (even your tubelight has it) but to sustain it. SST-1 was a big leap over the old Aditya but not close enough to sustain the plasma over a considerable period of time. When I was working in the Institute (Aditya was operational and we were working on SST-1) we always looked upto ITER which happens to be an international effort (EU + US + Japan). It was our dream and the mission to get SST (1&2) operational and effective. I now see it happening.

Trump made a wrong statement

So today Donald Trump said in today's 12/01 The Apprentice that he likes Microsoft as it works. No Sir it doesn't! If you think you can sustain your empire look beyond Microsoft.