Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

Tom Stoppard

Category: General.
Posted by: senapati
3713 views
If you have no idea of the incident, you can go here
On ABC News
On CNN
I'm not professing any theories or consequences.

Here is the script to a scene from Richard Linklater's Waking Life

4 - Alienation

(Main character walking down the street with a man who is holding a can of gasoline).
"A self-destructive man feels completely alienated, utterly alone. He's an outsider to the human community. He thinks to himself, "I must be insane." What he fails to realize is that society has, just as he does, a vested interest in considerable losses and catastrophes. These wars, famines, floods and quakes meet well-defined needs. Man wants chaos. In fact, he's gotta have it. Depression, strife, riots, murder, all this dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state created out of death and destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things, painting them up as great human tragedies. But we all know the function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world, no. Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that be want us to be passive observers. And they haven't given us any other options outside the occasional, purely symbolic, participatory act of voting. You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left? I feel that the time has come to project my own inadequacies and dissatisfactions into the socio-political and scientific schemes, let my own lack of a voice be heard."
(He pours gasoline all over himself and lights himself on fire.)
Category: General.
Posted by: senapati
1250 views
We've been guilty of being lazy. Nothing unusual when you consider this to be a common vice of the world populace, but quite unsettling on our side. Moreover, I found out that our blog has over 1 (2, to be specific) bookmarks on delicious, and at least one confirmed follower. And the numbers just keep multiplying bicentennially!

We've been upto lots of things like surviving solely on bakery goods, fondling, griping, rioting and recusrively blaming each other for our futile endeavours. Some found the new wave of outdoor porn overwhelming. Some even took to studying. It becomes hard to dedicate time to sarcasm and technology sometimes - which we used to express to the extremely receptive netizens through our blog.

Personally, I was busy shifting base. New physical location seems to bring new human interactions (or the lack of those), which is a bit disturbing. What does that have to do with you? Well, the planet's epicentre-o-1337 just shifted by a few miles, thats what you should be updated with.

Need not worry, back now, back blogging. Keep the evil star away. Prosper.
Category: General.
Posted by: senapati
1813 views
Our good friend Saurabh Arora made a great blogging debut with his first post titled "Walking on Crutches": a condensed and emotive write.
His blog, "Me, A Blasphemy on Life", would welcome some critique.
Category: General.
Posted by: senapati
1182 views
Natwa Theatre Society, an ambitious group formed by some of the most dedicated theatre persons, is about to stage its third play, titled "Night Song". Their last play, "Ho Rahega Kuch Na Kuch", an adaptation of Marsha Norman's 'Night Mother' was awe-inspiring. So good that I feel diseased having missed their first play "Othello", which was supposedly even better.

You can find some help from their website. Arrogant on seeding quality, the website goes against their philosophy, though.

» Read More

Category: General.
Posted by: senapati
1479 views
Jingjing, the male virtual police officerChacha, the female virtual police officer

The NYTimes is carrying a long (10 page) article by Clive Thompson titled "Google's China Problem (and China's Google Problem)" on the censorship of speech in China and the way online culture is on the verge of breaking the mould. The recent tradeoff between the Chinese Government and google, allowing the search giant to peneterate the Chinese market in exchange of censorship of their results, acts the seed to the author's line of thought.
Quite a read!

(above: two cartoon mascots named JingJing and Chacha introduced by the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau to improve - or shoud I say, intimidate - the browsing experience. virtual policing now at your convenience!)

» Read More

Category: General.
Posted by: senapati
1007 views

  1. A random quote becomes a permanent stay on our homepage

  2. A CAPTCHA test for all the non-members wishing to comment/email. Those logged in need not bother :)

  3. The Member Profile page takes a pleasant form. All existing and conflicting scripts removed, and the member page script modified to match our perception of uniformity.

  4. Polls can now be added. Expect some interesting ones soon.

  5. All the Acronyms you type in will be magically expanded.



Some measures to vex the spambots and make this world a better place (TM) to come soon.
Category: General.
Posted by: senapati
935 views
This little factoid at Outlook India serves a reminder of the power of organised media and the curse that living in India has become.
It still remains unsure whether the sudden zeal among the media for cleansing the country of the corrupt and debauchees is fuelled by one's own heart or the TRPs. Technology has made advances, and alongside such endeavours, you'll also find a good dosage of filth, namely voyeur scandals and (ahem) home productions.

When Channel 7 aired its share of stealth entertainment, incidentally just after it was launched, people dismissed it as a publicity stunt. I'd say: Keep 'em coming! As long as it gets the politicians on toes and masses glued to the news, its all good. Suddenly, the role of a reporter seems to have taken a new turn.
Category: General.
Posted by: senapati
924 views

Oxford bookstore continued with their endeavour to encourage creative talent with their launch of an online writing competition, strangely titled "e-author version 4.0", last evening at the OUP Bookstore in Statesman House, Delhi.
For the first time around, there is a realistic chance of amateur writers to make a mark: it involves penning down short stories. The stage is big, so are the prizes.
Click on the link below for a front-row coverage of the launch.

» Read More

Category: General.
Posted by: blackrat
957 views


Going through the National Geographic News today, the most popular story was about a massive smack of jellyfish congregating along Japan's seacoast.

The link to the article in case you missed it.

The scientific name for the jellyfishes in question is stomolophus nomurai. pictures. These giants can grow to 2 meters in diameter and weigh upto 200 kgs. However their tentacles are not deadly relying instead on their sheer size to overwhelm prey, their tentacles deliver only a small shock.

Hunting for useless trivia (to brag about) i came across this acticle by CDNN. According to the article:-
The largest jellyfish ever found was a lion's mane, with a bell 2m (7ft) across, and tentacles extending more than 35m.

You can read more articles about the 'event' on Google News here.

In the extended field of this blog you can find a probable solution to this problem and some more photographs of these massive creatures.

» Read More

23/12: Kopimi

Category: General.
Posted by: blackrat
929 views
Well... what is Kopimi?

Kopimi as it turns out is sort of an antithesis to a license.
It works as your basic invitation to plagarize data. The only restriction being, redistribution cannot be done under the same name.

The Kopimi 'license' started out at Piratbryan as an attempt to reverse the desperation and heavyhandedness of monopolists. Remember the MPAA and RIAA dragging lil' timmy off to court for filesharing.

So far major proponents include The Pirate bay and an assortment of webloggers.