Linguistic overture

Two difficult words with the same letters but very different consequences for our world, today. How a flip can make something so dangerous?

S AC RED
S CA RED

Twitter curious

Apparently when someone tweeted a gmail address, I checked out whether GMAIL is on twitter.
Lo and behold - YES!
Where on twitter - Here
Soon I visited the profile only to see this and twitter offered me "actions" to block "gmail".

Well, the gaffes of technology ...

Linguistic overture - 7

State - Taste = '\0' (Null character) which means for me (stating without having a sense of taste is meaningless)
I am just curious or plain "wanton"

The Hindu's Literary review is a treasure trove to discover your likes and dislikes for a host of books. Some of them in today's issue -

"I have long subscribed to the idea that one of the novel’s primary tasks is to produce a map of the contemporary. By one definition, then, the province of the novel is what you read in your newspaper each morning or watch on your television at night. The novelist’s task is to explore how the news enters people’s lives and indeed becomes a part of daily life." - Amitava Kumar in his piece on Aravind Adiga's 'The White Tiger' (This is great)

"These are women who live a humdrum existence, mainly jobless, surrounded by children, a world so common that I sometimes think it does not deserve to be written about." - Rumina Sethi in her book review "In the country of deceit" (Now this sounds really apathetic, isn't great literature about what is everyday and common, like the above quote. I felt offended.)

"

A falling petal

Strikes one floating on a pond,

And they both sink.

" - quoted by Ravi Vyas in his article on classics revisited (This is spellbinding. Poetry is a real dense form of communication and often very tough for me to even get near to it, forget comprehension. But this enthralling, WOW)

So for me THLR is a treasure trove. For many who really do like it, here are date wise listed archives

A sign of things to come

" but we really don't care about OS's the way we used to. I switch back and forth between my Vista and OSX boxes with ease. Why? Because everything I do now is in the cloud so all I need is a Web browser. Hint: starting a web browser up on both OS's isn't that much different between the two. After getting my browser started I really don't care about the cool desktop search or the improved wifi features (at least not that much). It's not like the early 1980s where there was deep pain in using these systems and each update brought a TON of new stuff.."

This is from Robert Scoble. Although I am not that well informed/aware of the cloud computing business and all, but pretty much of my activities today are centered around my browser. So more power to such things.
What I do understand is -

1. The OS will become a "low involvement purchase".
2. Browser will be the cynosure of activities.
3. Apps will become indifferent to the underlying OS.
   

An issue with design

We are being exposed to a lots of good looking and useful applications these days. Top of my list that have really broadened what I know today are - Friendfeed and Twitter. But the problem still remains, the disconnect between semantics and application design. Sample this -

A business veteran of 30 years of experience has been wiped out. But the feature of "liking" an article says below that "someone liked this". I know that the person who liked it was referring to the article. But for god's sake someone has been wiped out, and the application says - "someone liked it".
As I see it there is a disconnect between the application side (the content) and the human side (emotion). This is pretty much disconcerting for me at least. Semantics is therefore about two things - the application, the human.

PS - The person who found this article "intriguing" is a great guy.

Grammar 101.2

Today I was looking for books to populate my new bookshelf after shifting to a new home. I found it really curious and oddly intriguing. In terms of the job, it is a sheer pleasure (remember I am not saying SHEAR, imagine the consequence otherwise). In my own queer way I was searching for books are reflect something about me, something about my journey through these books. However, given that I have about 100 odd books, which pretty much seems like a tyro's library, I gave up pretty soon.

What did I do? Revel in my own collection wondering "aah - I do have this book, oh - I have this book as well, now I don't have to buy it again". So I had the likes of Francis Fukuyama, "A Portrait of the Artist as a young man", "Vedic religion", Primo Levi, Andre Gide, "Tin Drum", "Remains of the Day".
Out of the dark comes this book by Lynne Truss titled "Eats, Shoots and Leaves!". What is it about? Well, for those who are familiar with the term "grammar nazi", it is about punctuation. So I am back to my own favourite topic - finding gaffes in english usage around me. Perfectly captured here by the author -

"If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of pulse ...."
"... it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar to the stages of bereavement."

It is always such fun to read about "mis-punctuation". Sample this (A panda comes to a hotel, eats a sandwich, fires two gunshots in the air, and leaves. When asked by the waiter, as to why, it says, refer the wildlife manual which mentions- )
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves"
Understand? Coming to the title, presenting today's gaffe over the web -

PS - What the two words really mean?

Fore·ward

The van; the front. [Obs.]

Fore·word

A preface or an introductory note, as for a book, especially by a person other than the author.

Well, what can I say am I a grammar nazi? Well, yes. Maybe, no. Ohh! All of this later!!

Grammar 101

Okay I cannot claim to be a "know-it-all" as far as grammar is concerned. But given minimal awareness I may not make such mistakes. This is live from a B-School (event frenzy in B-Schools going on these days)

"---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Events Coordinator <events@%$$%%.org>

Date: Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 3:15 AM
Subject: $%$%$ presents Paragana 2008 :Launch of Chrysalis and Engrave ,Business Plan Competitions
To: events@%$$%%.org

Hi All,
due to a server error the attachments could be delivered.
Kindly RESEND this mail to all your college students.
Apologize for any inconvenience caused.
"
Okay so due to a server error normally the attachments cannot be sent, but curiously it was sent in this case. D'accord
But it get curious-er (pardon me), they want the receipient college to apologize for the server error. LOL, LMAO, ROFLOL and suchlike.

(so much for event organization pressure)

A complaint

I just have one complaint against the "book" - It does not capture the transformation of its own author as a character without, while doing the same within. Or perhaps this could be an idea that could be explored in the same book.

Linguistic overture

It's very puzzling, for me atleast, to see two words describing the same action, having different connotations but the same letters just rearranged.
I need not explain, but see the difference between - Veto and Vote

Linguistic overture

Touch taken to hurting proportions loses a "t" and become ouch.

Technology as an enabler - chuck that

This happened to me just now -

So when I am commenting on an article I am reading on LiveMint, which had some problems in linking. Apparently the third page of the article has been wrongly linked to another article by Vir Sanghvi on Rolling Stones while I was reading an article on data mining. I try to point out that, and I get this error (INVALID written next to my first name).

So today's discovery- I have an invalid first name. Thank you Amma, Appa for giving me an invalid name. Ayyo!!!

Linguistic overture

Matter - Meter = Eat

The bus and the child

I am sitting in my dreary bus ride back to home from my place of work which is so far that I could come from Bombay to Bangalore in that time. Fortunately the bus is unusually empty, meaning the average visible range is greater than 2 metres; which for me is a blessing. Don't confuse the bus being empty to having empty seats, all I am saying is that the seats are full, and there are very few people standing.
So I do what I like to do, just see what is happening around me and we reach a bus stop en route. Not so suddenly, but I see a pair of eyes that board the bus. A pair of young eyes, if you might. A pair eyes that are so wide as if they want to take everything around them in a single swoop. A pair of eyes that have the glitter of a young child who wants to know what is happening around, saying silently "I want to be there, I want to be here, I want to be everywhere". I presume that they still are not familiar to the idea of selective perception (blaming it on evolution) or become so apathetic to what happens around us (blaming it on age).
What I do notice in them is the thirst and vivaciousness which have long dried away from my eyes, the zeal to absorb every little detail around me with equal zest and without no bias.
Has age caught up with me or have I become too much selectively perceptive? It just goes on the reinforce what I have long believed to be true and now it is approaching the proportions of being declared as an axiom that "whatever be my age, the day the child inside me dies; that day I will believe that my age has finally caught up with me".

So back to the bus, the child (with these eyes) initially scans her environment, seeming so excited about everything enveloping her, the bus, the metal pillar in between her and the empty seat, the TV hoisted above her head, the sounds around her, the whistling of the conductor, the horns of desperate people in motorised vehicles, the blur of lights in the front, the incessant braking by the driver and the people. She feels wobbly being in a place which looks beyond her control and feels puzzled and excited by the gush of all these intrusions. Finally a hand comes from behind and they are safely anchored to an empty seat ending the intrusions and she settles comfortably into the world she knows best and is comfortable with, the world created by her mother who is travelling with her.

!! I/He/She just want to be 34 !!

They ALL WANT TO be

34

I tried playing badminton resolutely for 4 hours a day and for a month and finally on one fine day someone said "you have lost infinitesimally". I felt "how mean can people be?"
She tried being in a GM, although "genetically modified" would have been a better preference. But it left her high and dry. Zapped, tongues unleashed looking for something that had a zing.She cried "what a waste of time?"
He tried catching the "11 number ki bus, the faster version". However his perfection got in the way because he could not do it just like that.

Then I and he tried smoking which they said helps. I and he realised "in addition to want to being 34 now I and he have to want things not black".
Oh! Then I and she just said "those 32s will always live in perpetual fear of reaching 34s". Someone said "that's escapism". I and She realised "damn you will power".

But then we realised we are just the way we are, unlike a Sisyphus, we have stopped climbing and have stopped wanting. Whatever comes our way is something unasked for. So when someone repeats that infinitesimal argument, we just feel happy for being rewarded for a perception that is a result of not being with us for some period of time. We know because we have not done anything, yet for someone I/he/she felt marginally less than 36.
Oh! Did I tell you, I am 36, he is 38 and she is 35.
PS - Numbers greater than 30 denote waist sizes and number 11 denotes a figure of speech for walking.

Authors I don't know

Periodically I read something and find out that there are so many authors that I just -

1. Don't know about
2. Have heard the name and the works but never sampled them.

This is a list which I think would be aggregating from now on to index my ignorance. Today's list

1. David Foster Wallace - Suicide death on Sep 12, 2008, apparently very famous for Infinite Jest. A remembrance posted on Slate can be found here. Target #1
2. James Joyce - I know about Ulysses, never read it, but now in Marshall McLuhan's book "Understanding media" I keep coming back to Finnegan's Wake. Target #2

May God grant me the humility to understand that I cannot read all such great people in my finite life. Let me know if you people know about them.

AMEN.

Update 1 - David Wallace's short story "Incarnations of burned children" can be found here

Disease in a pseudo mathematical notation ...

Pseudo rant follows.
I've been reading Marshall McLuhan with avid curiosity for the past week. I cannot claim to understand every word that he writes, so much so in certain places he seems far beyond my intellectual capacity. Anyways there are truck loads of gems in the seminal book "Understanding Media" like -
"Medium is the message"
"Global Village"
"Media as an extension of the human body"
"Electric age as the mirroring of our own central nervous system"
"Mankind's history is the result of 'taking up the chin'"
I've been altered by his message forever. Coming to what I was thinking, let us denote disease as a pseudo mathematical function - D(O) where
D- Function representing the verb "to induce disease or any other kind of discomfort"
O - Object of the function namely an organism
The current approach in healthcare is simply this function "D" calling itself. In other words, the modern day approach towards healthcare is just D(D(O)) where -
The inner paranthesis denotes the attack of the disease on the organism
Outer paranthesis denotes the attack of disease on the disease itself or in order to cure a disease, the disease must be subjected to discomfiture. Phew, lots of disease in that statement.

Technology as an enabler - Rethink

My energies and time and everything else had been devoted to our nouvelle marketing blog - admark.wordpress.com and I feel like a real traitor writing about wordpress in blogger, anyways who cares.

Coming to what I wanted to rant about - is technology is really an enabler? In India? At a big software company?
The Scene - Induction program for new joinees at a big S/W company where I am interning.
HR Speak - Dear what is your second name?
Secondname Speak - Ma'm I dont have a second name. (That does happen, don't raise your eyebrows yet!)
HR Speak - OUR DATABASE cannot accept a name without a second name.
****
Me Speak - WHAT (for the database comment)? What technology is this? How can this happen at this company?
Me Speak - What kind of technology is this? I know they might use a combination of the first name and the last name as the primary key for their database, but the instant reaction was - WTF?
****
Secondname Speak (in his/her head) - Phew! Now I have to invent a second name?
Ya! Its okay to raise your eyebrows now.
Amen

Let's talk Harry!!

I am back and with me I bring along Harry and his cohorts.

Believe me Harry Potter is either a piece of Blytonian kitsch or a great adventure similar to the likes of the Hobbit in the Lord of the Rings. It is either this or that. Can I say either you love or hate him? Probably yes but I count those who say the series is okay among the supporters. Reports abound the fourth estate that Harry and his ensemble have instilled the fun of reading into kids. Again!! Do I think so, I am a vehement affirmative. Let me relate my story. I started reading when I was past 15, and started off with popular Sheldons and Ludlums and Archers. Slowly I graduated to literature and the likes of Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. But then Harry happened. The initial wave of exhilaration that started with “Philosopher’s stone” was enough to sustain the energy to wait, to be anxious and to be satisfied for the “Hallows” which came this year (2007) on July 21st in India, so to say.

For seasoned readers like me, what comes with the package of Harry Potter is very unique. It lets me, and people like me, to fulfil the voids left by “not” reading the Enid Blytons, The Erle Stanley Gardners, The Nancy Drews and The Famous Fives. It always feels like going back and regaling me to the wonder that is the creation J.K.Rowling. I often wonder what would be the reaction of an adult who is given an opportunity to read Enid Blyton for a fortnight. I know that “I am 23 years old and I am too old to read that now” would be the reaction. This is the challenge that Harry Potter poses to the “kid” among all of us.

But to say that Harry Potter is “child-lit” is to do a grave injustice to the evolution of the series. The silhouette of the characters has progressively become darker and darker. Atypical of “Child-Lit” Harry potter resembles many of the “special-power” men like Batman, Superman so on and so forth. All of them are orphans or have become situational orphans. The special power inside them is different and in fact differentiates them from the other lot. In this case Harry has the magic but the “power of love” is what differentiates him from the “others”. All our superheroes have troubled childhood and often find a paternal figure somewhere during the course of their growing up. The similarities don’t stop here. Somehow the superheroes and in our case, “Harry” are all socially aloof. Harry Potter and his cohorts are agents of therapy of older souls like me and countless others.

However Harry Potter is a linguist’s delight. For those of you who love the gift of language may take note at the first instance that the word “Harry” means to loot or to plunder. Isn’t that an anathema of name the protagonist like this? Phew!! It does not stop here. The entire story from book one to book 7 is littered with linguistic revelations like this. Let us take “Avada Kedavra” or the killing curse. Does the second word look familiar? Kedavra is derived from the word “Cadaver” which means a corpse. What about “Wingardium Leviosa”? Well this is the charm that causes objects to “Levitate”; I guess the connection is clear. Probably the best one is “Levicorpus”. It is an intelligent combination of levitation and corpus which means body. The list goes on with the ilk of “Oppugno”, “Expecto Patronum”, “Fiendfyre” and several such likes. The antagonist “Voldemort” is derived from the word “mort” meaning death. Harry ultimately steals his death from Voldemort by dying himself first. The book is a treasure trove of innocently named characters which when seen in a perspective turn out to be a real surprise. Perhaps in the rush of reading one might not note that “Kreacher” sounds same as “Creature”, a derogatory remark on the lowliness of the house elf. The endearing character “Molly Weasley” is an overprotective one, now does “mollycoddle” sound related. I guess I could go on and on.

Perhaps then Harry Potter is all about magic and it depends on the way you see it. The naming of characters, places and the spells draws from such varied sources that I cannot stop and wonder where I should stop. The esteemed reader of this eulogy will know that I am an aficionado of “Harry the-boy-who-lived Potter”.

"Small wonder that spell means both a story told, and a formula of power over living men." - J.R.R. Tolkien

Life like it was not

Some random observations on my existence follows in a list style.

1. Nowadays it is harder to decide whether to read a book or attend to my blog feeds. Well don't give me the structure, form and the plot based logic. It is failing and I am witnessing it destroying my reading capacity (books only).
2. Now I let the world know what I am doing, feeling now and real time. Thanks to twitter and the great minds that I am following on it.
   
3. It is both amazing and appalling to see the kinds of minds that exist on the web. The majority is still towards the amazing side.
4. Agencyfaqs throws up some interesting thoughts - SMS is more powerful than SPAM. What the fuck? So now I will get promotions to enlarge my "weeny" on my mobile phone.
   
5. Indian homes still have one TV set though the members of this family keep on changing their apparel, mobile phones and what not. Agencyfaqs informs that another TV could kill the family by letting everyone see his/her own channel when they want it. Perhaps its the time to further nuclearise the Indian nuclear family. So the TV manufacturers should say "We offer you a TV that you can own and see it without the hassles of "agreeing" to see what your family wants".
6. Cleaning the blog feeds, for those on the web constantly, has now qualified to be tagged as "doing a chore" like cleaning those windows after 6 months. Just that it happens once in a few days or weeks. Talk about everyone being an information voyeur.

Amen.
-Egghead