Are you Religious?

So heres the deal....

I happenstance fell upon this religion which is called Bokonism. I love it. To me this one sentence summarizes all I know about belief systems

"The foundation of Bokononism is that the religion, including its texts, is formed entirely of lies; however, if you believe and adhere to these lies, you will live a happy life."

Its really a cool concept and something I thought only I knew about until I stumbled upon this.
Apparently my idea was not mine...In fact somebody else even gave it a name!

Where all have I been this summer?

Well, Summer started off with a week and a half long trip to Tallahassee, Florida. Then after two weeks in DC, I left to Minneapolis, spent a week attending a conference in Minneapolis. Then took a two week break in DC. Then attended another week long conference in Durham. This was actually a small workshop with about 50 ppl attending almost every one of them WAY TOO SMART FOR ME TO comprehend what they were saying. It didnt actually help that they were all mathematicians and doing mathematics speak. One of them was actually a Fields medallist!!! The final trip for this summer was a week long trip San Diego to attend SIGGRAPH. This was of crse a wonderful opportunity to meet up with Renga and catch up on old times.....

Are you Liberal or Conservative?

Heres a toast to EXTREME SCIENCE....

What correlations might we find if only we were looking for it. The popular adage says that we need to ask Questions to get answers...But may be just maybe we are asking too many questions?

Are we?

Openings Available: Applications invited

Several positions for sounding boards are open including

1. Senior Sounding Board for Totally Unrelated thoughts that will be repeated several times.
2. Senior Sounding Board for Other unrelated thoughts
3. Sounding Board Technician to correct logical flaws in thought processes.

Requirements:
Patience.
Tolerance to radical ideas.
Interest in Politics, Science, Governance and the interplay between these and social issues.


The positions will be temporary and will be for a short-term project. Remuneration and other benefits may be discussed in person. Please contact only via email or comments section.

PS: The ideal candidate may be able to function efficiently and take up all three posts at the same time!

Update on ICCV

So. Its Official. After much thought I decided not to go to ICCV.

Official Reason: I have just begun working after a long hiayus from any constructive work. and its always good to get back to work. My frequent and many travel trips this summer have interfered significantly with my productivity and left me feeling to intellectually occupy myself atleast for the next three months with something.

Unofficial Reason: No Enthu :)

And yeah Kavitha..Thanks for ur comment. That helped me decide. Its always scary to have ppl admire you for something!. The moment that happens, its time to change...isnt it? Just kidding

Rediff Comments and Sterotyping

Today I was reading news on rediff and then I did the unthinkable. I decided to read the comments left by readers for this rediff report

Really unfortunate is the complete lack of any sort of insightful thinking...Even more depressing is to see the sort of communal pigeonholing and complete religious sterotyping and posturism that these ppl adopt and that too on a public domain footing. For a second I told myself I did a bad sampling....That I should read the comments for atleast a few posts rather than judge by this single report...I went ahead and read a few more and found that the lack of any understanding of the issues involved or even worse the lack of any real effort to undesratnd the issues involved struck me as plain dangerous.

I urge you all to read some comments on popular reports in rediff and surprise urself. Even assuming that the ppl commenting on rediff are not representative of the entire population, it still remains a scary thought that there are all these scores of people who think that it is alright and completely acceptable to carry such sterotyping in their heads and even go forward and confess their beliefs and given the opportunity would be happy to spread it too.

There should be an organized and informed attempt to somehow somewhere address this issue and I dont see it coming anywhere...

And whats more, I was totally shocked by this and turned over and lamented about this for a couple of minutes....His response
Silence for 30 seconds followed by "What are you doing for lunch?"

and thats what prompted this post !!!

Travel to Brazil

Oye Ppl, Theres this conference in Rio De Janeiro called ICCV.
I have a paper in the conference but havent yet decided whether I should go to the conference or not.

Pros: BRAZIL
Half the trip is funded...meaning accomodation will probably be paid by my advisor..I still have to pay airfare tho :(
I saw videos of Iguazu falls on Youtube....Its just amazing.
I have looked up some amazing strenuous hikes in brazil...

Cons: I have taken tooooo many breaks from work this summer and as you all are aware of I am also just trying to get out of my low motivation rut.
No hikers from my lab going to the conference and definitely would like to have company on some of those more strenuous hikes in Brazil.
Airfare !!!
Abi is definitely not gonna come -- Ya. She is stupid and adamant :)


I have gotta make my mind up in the next couple of days to a week utmost. Lets see what I do.

Sounding Board

I never really understood the importance of a sounding board. It seems that it is quite important that I be able to express my ideas freely and without inhibition to some other living being--- no matter how trivial/unimportant and arcane these idea/thoughts are.

The absence of a sounding board essentially means that these thoughts and ideas remain within the confines of your mind. And being locked up within they run amok freely. Now imagine that these ideas were all small little green beings---much like the martians in movies. Now I am quite productive when it comes to useless and arcane ideas (atleast 30 a day). Now imagine all these green martians running around within the confines of my mind....all day long!!!


I need to let these guys out.......


Maybe soon someone will find a program that can be used to download these thoughts (green martians) on to a Flash drive and then I can let them run around within the flash drive and everyone is happy. But until then, I do need a sounding board :)

Motivation

PPL,

I need motivation.......
I need to sit less on my ass.....
and I need to start getting some work done....

But by now i am so far behind I dont know where to start....
I know we've all been there before....
But I cant seem to remember how I got out of it last time around...

Oye, ppl with better memory....
Drop me an email.