What is Evil?

Just finished reading 'The Immortals of Meluha' by Amish Tripathi. It's an interesting read, blending mythology and fiction like I've never seen before, except may be in 'The Great Indian Novel' by Shashi Tharoor. It's a new genre of sorts.

But that's besides the point. I was intrigued by the concept introduced in the book by Tripathi, that evil is a relative term. What one person or community thinks is evil or bad is probably just a different way of doing things, which they aren't comfortable with. A good example would be, capitalism and communism. The capitalist world considers the communist as backward and bad as a way of living with highly restricted freedoms. The communist world have their own views of how capitalism is bad, leads to tremendous social inequality and stuff. There have been wars, many of them, over these differences and their incorrect interpretations. Why? Just because they don't believe in each other's opinions and feel that the other's influence may increase if they don't stop them. I'm probably over simplifying this, but it can't be completely denied.

Evil, if you look at it this way is then a difference of perspectives. Of course there are exceptions like pure badwill. But then it's just circumstances and perspectives causing distortion of 'what is right' at such an immense level that entire civilizations are blinded.

Evil is relative, just like everything else in this universe, conditions apply.



I await the next two parts of the 'immortals' trilogy, to see where the author takes the definition of evil to.

PS: This post was written on a phone with a brilliant predictive keyboard, SwiftKey.

The White Tiger - w/o spoilers

Read it somewhere in the papers that its a good book, and while looking for pirated books on the footpaths of Pune(yes I still buy pirated books) I saw the cover, it said "Man Booker Prize Winner for 2008". A quick look gave me a feeling this book should be more than good, so I went ahead and bought the original.

I'm already in the middle of some 2-3 books but I couldn't keep this down. Not a single page is such that you would read through the lines. I finished half of it in my flight back to SFO, considering I doze off most of the time this was some achievement.

Its a story about how a poor fellow, living a destitute life breaks the shell and makes it big. The story narrated in first person devises the character of this guy. A character which is not good, not bad. A gray character in its real sense. Aravind Adiga, the author, brings out the "two" Indias as he says, the dark-still-lagging-behind and the upwardly-achieving, through the life experiences of this central character. And its amazing how he manages to reveal the stark differences. The thick-black-ruthless humor through the entire narrative was first of its kind for me, enjoyed it a lot.

If you are looking to get out of "reader's block" or otherwise, highly recommended. Get free of the Rooster Coup!

A day in the life of an Aquarian

That old joke about clock-in, take a break, greet coworkers, go to lunch, read the mail, take a break, phone friends and family, cancel a meeting and clock-out is a perfect description of the typical Aquarian work day.

- excerpt from Born on a Rotten Day by Hazel Dixon-Cooper

Need I say anything more :P . Stumbled across this book in the library. Interesting take on astrology.

Digital Fortress

Finished back-to-back reading Dan Brown's novels. Deception point, and now Digital Fortress. Digital fortress is an interesting book.

Though I would say it is last in the list if I try to rank 4 of his well-known books. It is based on a so-called "unbreakable encryption algorithm" and what follows when somebody holds to ransom a government agency using that algorithm.

The book is vague in its technical details...though it tries hands at a lot of "geeky" things and even things that would be in research as of now. But as is said incomplete knowledge is dangerous....it works all the time against the 'story" presented, and the story loses its hold on the reader. Particularly, i felt it widely inappropriate to entertain myself with the technical details i knew were incorrect or atleast incorrectly stated. But that may be just because of the fact that i have some background in this context.

The plots and twists are were primitive, if the standards Dan Brown sets for himself in his other works are considered. The reader can guess what is to happen next in some of the sequences and that makes him/her skip few pages of conversations between the characters where the plot evolves.

But if the reader is a lay-man which the majority audience is, i am sure this book can provide far better entertainment than it provides to someone like me. All said, its a good book for some timepass, but it fails to make any serious impressions.

Category: [ _Review_ ]

Expectations...

Just read Deception Point by Dan Brown. He proves once and again that he writes is blockbuster material. I have read 3 out of the 4 known books he has published and believe me if i were a director i would have really liked making movies on his stories.

The most important part of his novels is the amazingly high intelligence and technical desciptions provided. I mean this guy can write in depth about the history of christianity, the dynamics of quantum physics, space science and even geology. He makes you feel that his characters are real PhDs not just degree holders that are a part of a story. I have never read novels earlier that are also a source of GK.

He has this tact to relate the fiction and hard fact. Like the NASA-White house thingie in Deception Point, and the European architecture and landmarks in Angels & Daemons. Now the fourth one remains to be read, Digital Fortress. I hope it will be as much entertaining.

I had taken up "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", with a lot of expectations. But i don't know...it doesn't appeal, the story is on the same page even after a some 50 pages.I heard similar views about "The Monk who sold his Ferrari"...supposedly it is the bestseller in Indian markets since some time now.

And believe me Angels & Daemons is better than The Da Vinci Code.

Category [ _Unfiled_ ]

DNA

Just done with reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the end of the Universe, both by Douglas Adams. Actually Hitchhiker's is a trilogy in 4 parts, which was later extended to 5. Douglas Neil Adams popularly known in his fan following as DNA has his own universe of humour...

DNA was the pioneer of the genre of science fiction comedy. And i hardly know anybody else who has the capacity to deal with this kind of fusion. His books were...sorry are immensely popular, he later adapted them for radio, then for tv for computer games & recently for cinema. I am awaiting the release of The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy (H2G2)...donno why it hasnt been released here till now.

His works are unique in style, in content, the wry humour and just about everything. The dialogues & quotations from the books have become immortal, theres even a fortune set of those for those interested. He has own fan club and has developed a cult following. The characters from the trilogy are amazingly popular, the confused Arthur Dent, the confident guy Ford Prefect, the over-confident intelligent-dumb guy Zaphod Beeblerox & the lovable, depressed robot Marvin. I would say Marvin's popularity is unrivalled in the history of robots...R2D2 doesnt even come close.

In a survey held recently somewhere...hmmm Slashdot i think, H2G2 topped the list of 20 books that were supposedly geek favs. I dont know why it was called geek's list when should have been 20 best science fiction novels list, theres nothing geeky about it.

I have taken a break before proceeding with the other 2 sequels...Life, the Universe & Everything and So Long, thanks for all the fish. Currently i have begun with the book i wanted to read since the past year or so, Zen & the Art of Motorcycle maintenance.

And if anybody has the 5th book in the H2G2 trilogy, Mostly Harmless, do let me know.

Category [ _Review_ ]

The Omnibus blog

I missed a thousand things that could have gone on this space.So let me touch everything...

Nowadays am on a roller coaster ride as far as watching movies goes. I am watching films, all genres of them, and most importantly at an enormous devouring rate. Watched National Treasure...its an ok doke.The plot cannot be said as inspired by The Da Vinci code, but a lot more than that. Though the good thing about the movie is that you dont get distracted from it at any time. Then came Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow. The entire picture is stylized, including its name to depict the science fiction types of the 70s n 80s. The artwork, FX are astounding, a lot of effort has gone onto it. However that effort does not reiterate in the storyline or storytelling, either.

Followed by this was Finding Neverland. Boy, what a film. Great story, the making of Peter Pan, great camera work & one of the most eye candy work can be seen in the way the director uses special effects, subtlely yet impressive. The scenes blend from fact to fiction n back seamlessly.A shot where the characters are in the midst of a ocean is really cool. The waves are shown of something like curved metal pieces moving up n down...truly amazing. Johnny Depp rules, be it this, Pirates, Hell,Sleepy Hollow or Chocolat.

Am reading two books...Carl Sagan's Cosmos, supposedly the #1 bestseller in science fiction history. Its about astronomy, humanity n a lot of rich language. The other is Richard Bach's One. Its philosophy a lot of it, inspirational, rolled into science fiction n implied introspection.The vastness of its context is breathtaking. Here too he keeps on mentioning that Jonathan Livingston Seagull is his "fireworks" book. It is surely my next read, another one waiting is a sci-fi by Arthur C Clarke.

As this blog has now turned more into a review magazine of sorts, let me add one more review to it. SuSE Linux. Great installer, something they call YaST, still to figure out its meaning,maybe Yet Another Suse Terminal:) Suse is way ahead of other distros when it comes to making a complete, rich os. Everything in SuSEland just works. Be it mp3, video or even Wine, the windows emulator. Though Linux is no longer in a position where it would need Wine, but it is a good application to have. The default look is ...very eye candy, nice glossy crystal icons ( for those who dont know crystal icons are a SuSE property), nice themes. Many features that RedHat seems to have plugged in these days in Fedora Cores, are there in SuSE since some time. The nice thing is that u get a feel of a complete os in SuSE, which somehow i feel is absent in Fedoras though Mandrake comes close, very.A detail i noticed is that the /boot comes with a symlink of initrd too, unlike all linices i have seen which have ones only for vmlinuz n system.map. Attention to detail, thats SuSE.

Category [ _Review_ ] [ _Linux_ ] [ _Film_ ]

Sun Signs

I am more than impressed with what Linda Goodman
says about people, relationships and the way they
are influenced by zodiac signs. I dont know about
others but i do have the habit of reading those 4
lines in the newspaper on Aquarius, yes thats me..
feel free to appreciate what & why of the aquarians
after you read Linda Goodman's Sun Signs or Love
Signs.

She gives seemingly perfect recreations of possible
interactions between people of different zodiac signs.
You can just ponder on how far n off she must have
dwelled into peoples lives & perspectives before
preparing so convincing statements of hers. The best
part is that she is just not an astrologer, shes a
great writer too. To explain the different aspects
of behaviour she uses prose & poetry interleaved. And
its all Lewis Caroll's Alice of Wonderland that the
excerpts are from.


For aquarius she says...

In the rains when the woods are green
We will tell u wht we mean
In the summer when the days are long
Perhaps u'll understand our song...

( and Lewis Caroll happens to be an Aquarian )
Interestingly this was also the punchline on the
t-shirt we made for our BE project group, titled
d3daemons.

The things she says about Geminis, Virgos, Sagis &
the crabby cancerians are so damn very true. I find
that it is easier to deal with people once u have an
idea of how they will react to anything & everything,
& that is the whole point behind this endeavour.

Category [ _Review_ ]

Update: The World of Arthur C. Clarke

Morgan Freeman is supposedly making a movie on
Rendezvous on Rama, the movie was put on slate
in 2001 and is planned for a 2006 release...!

http://www.countingdown.com/movies/546768

Thats really amazing, n very justifiable for a story
of that stature.

Category [ _Film_ ]

The World of Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C Clarke is undoubtedly the czar of science fiction.
His creations have not only been milestones in literature
they have also inspired many seemingly impossible
breakthroughs in science fiction. The most candid example
being that of satellite communication. He had predicted use
of satellites and wireless technology for mass use long before
people thought of concieving it.

Few years back i had read a what u can call as a state of art
work of his.A novel called Rendezvous with Rama, the novel
which won three greatest awards in Science Fiction literature
in the same year.(Theres only one more person that i know with
such great achievements, Helen Hunt, she won Academy, Emmy
n Golden Globe in the same year !). The concept presented in the
novel is...so believable, u start thinking this shall really happen one
day. Its human creativity n imagination taken to its zenith.

The story has been continued in 3 sequels...phew...but am gonna
read all those some day. One things for sure, making a movie on it
is next to impossible considering the restraints of time n more
importantly the understanding of mediocre audience. May be someday
when the mass mentality changes somebody will make a movie on
it...somebody...me !!!

"Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which
the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred
billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. Now this is an interesting
number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred
billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has
ever lived, in this universe, there shines a star."
(from Clarke's foreword in 2001, A Space Odyssey, 1968)

Category [ _Review_ ]