Making Decisions

Ever since childhood, I've always had a difficult time deciding - for every pro, I'd counter with a con, for every positive there would be a negative, and I'd get fed up, switch sides, and it would happen all over again. 

I tried the list-the-pros-and-cons methods, but as you can guess, that was a brilliant exercise in creativity and self-justification and paper usage, but not much good as a decision-maker. 

Finally, I resorted to a technique I'd learned over 2 decades ago in class 6 maths. 

Weighed scores. 

And made a revolutionary discovery. 

Technique:

• List your choices down
• Assign attributes
• Assign weights to those attributes
• Score each attribute 
• Calculate the weighed scores
• Add up the weighed scores
• Sort by total score. 

Obviously, Google and Excel make this a lot easier. You can add on a lot of other stuff - looks (which I've realized tends to play a fairly significant veto role in decisions), brand name, etc - but ultimately, it boils down to how many attributes you identified, and if you got the information you needed for each one. 

The revolutionary bit, is that this not only lists down the decision, but also lists at the same time every possible justification you had for it, every possible choice you considered, what you felt was important, and how each compared to the others. Numerically. 

It also breaks down the task into clearly defined, simple, nibble-sized routine activity. Feature searches. Data entry. Formula building. Scoring. 

No big decisions, no brain-freezing infinite chaos of swirling possibilities. 

At any point, you can pause the decision-making by saving and come back exactly where you left off. 

It's... zen. There's no emotion struggling against logic, no tsunami hammering on an unprotected coastline. It's the order and quiet of a Japanese garden, a Roman irrigation system, currents through a semiconductor chip. It doesn't knock the emotion out of the decision, but instead channels it, into exactly where it is most appropriate and most useful - in assigning scores and weights. The rest, it's just maths. 

And if you don't like the end result, argue with the logic - and with a few quick changes, edit the scenario to match. It's not cheating, it's intuitive systemization. A large, complex system can go haywire with a small mistake; but that is clearly felt in the results, and can be traced to exactly why. 

There's no cognitive dissonance, no buyer's paradox. It presents you with a fait accompli, with an opportunity to change before you actually swipe the card. 

Heck, it even gives you a sorted, prioritized list of options!

And I've realized, it can be applied to any comparative decision. The only thing that limits yo, is the attributes - or possibilities - that you've considered. 

Under Surveillance

Just occurred to me, RPGs can make a fascinating psychoanalytical tool. It's a controlled environment, and every decision point has a clearly documented history by the time you reach it; and the choices are relatively straightforward. 

But set up an algorithm to track users' decisions - and in-game behavior - and you would see some very interesting patterns emerge. 

Sniping vs the Tank Rush. 

Resource management. 

Sheer organization and tidying up. 

How much he helps the NPCs. 

Procrastinating on the main questline for entertainment vs rushing in unprepared. 

All this is aside of the major good / bad decisions made... and somewhere, at Sony or Microsoft HQ, is a supercomputer that's adding up a player's psych-profile with every game he plays. Wonder how that info can be used? 

Dark matter is a shitload of Matrioshka Brains

The worst thing about the internet is how it shows you that Brilliant Idea you had this morning was had by somebody else, usually a year ago, published, and is sitting on some 1200+ comments now. 

That happened to me this morning. 

What the hell, I'm going to blog it anyway. 

A quick astrophysics primer - the way the observable universe is behaving - rates of expansion, light bending around mass, etc - seems to imply that there should be a lot more stuff out there. But we can't see it - it's not glowing stars, but it is exerting gravity. And there's a massive amount of it - almost a quarter of the universe. 

Now, dark matter is, at this point, theoretical. It's a concept created to explain all the missing matter that should have been there to account for the way the universe behaves, and for some reason isn't being visible. 

Here's an alternative. The matter is there, all right, all the stars, but we can't see them because they're inside Dyson spheres. 

There's a couple of immediate assumptions we can make from this. 

• One, we're not alone, and haven't been for a really, really long time. 
• Two, the Others have incomprehensibly massive energy requirements. 

A species, to build a Dyson sphere, needs to deconstruct, to wipe out their solar system, have access to cheap, powerful transportation within it, element transmutation capabilities... and no faster-than-light travel. In fact, if there are only Dyson spheres, it could mean that the spheres are the ultimate, last construction every species makes - or the species that makes it has colonized all the rest and wiped out any alternative constructs. 

Both are equally terrifying possibilities. 

Scenario One: 

Each Dyson sphere is an independent species. 

A Kardashev II civilization would build their own Sphere if they had nowhere else to go and had completely run out of room grow. A Sphere would allow population to expand into quadrillions and provide enough energy to sustain it. This would mean, though, that FTL is impossible and every species is forever trapped to its' own star, and will die with its star. 

Scenario Two:

A single species has multiple Dyson spheres, maybe all of them. 

A Kardashev III civilization would be able to reach other stars, and given their ability to build even a single sphere, would be easily able to wipe out any indigenous species and use their system. However, there's a problem; given the staggering, literally astronomical cost and effort involved in building a Dyson sphere, any spacefaring species would explore, locate, and colonize planets long before destroying them to build their habitats. So we should have found them - or much more likely, been found by them long before they got around to building the number of spheres they seem to have. 

So, either they are very, very ethical, quarantining planets with intelligent life, and only using the empty systems; but economics beats ethics every time. Let's not forget every intelligent species will one day want those same stars for their own spheres. 

Or, they don't need planets. 

Why wouldn't they need planets? 

If they're not organic. They don't need gravity, air, water, food. They don't need an ecosystem. 

They don't need this because they're not alive. 

Every Dyson sphere contains a Matrioshka Brain. 

Let's step back for a minute. 

FTL is, at least in our understanding, a physical impossibility. And reaching other stars without FTL (even at a significant fraction of it, keep in mind time to accelerate, decelerate, and avoid interstellar debris) will take a long, long, long time. Beyond geological time. 

• Generation starships won't work for anything less than the nearest stars. 
• AI probes carrying frozen zygotes (or even just genetic material), and Von Neumann nanotech factories would be faster but still too slow, and won't solve overcrowding at home, just colonization. 

However, we do know that a technological singularity is inevitable, and probably within our own lifetimes. An AI will not need the comforts of a planet as long as there's enough available energy to power it, and it can get this from any number of sources - the easiest being suns. 

A nanotech-equipped AI, once it had taken control of the origin planet's resources and removed the resident species - either peacefully by uploading their minds, or by simple extermination - would look at improving itself. Which means expanding computing power, which means expanding energy requirements. 

Exploration would take second priority, too high-risk, low-probability. 

It would build itself into a Matrioshka Brain, tapping into all available resources in the system. Once the sun has been captured and stabilized, it would look at expanding into other stars. 

Even if FTL travel isn't possible, communication at the speed of light is; maybe even FTL comms, given enough computational power devoted to understanding and exploiting hyperspace and quantum comms. 

The immediate next logical step is to build another brain - an expansion to the existing one, around another star and running off its solar output. Another module. And another backup. Specialist nodes. Redundancies. Maybe even wholly new AI entities with their own nodes - (who's to say an AI won't get lonely with no-one to talk to?) 

If one AI cannot create another, it might even become a cosmic farmer, nurturing discovered species along the path to intelligence, tools, industry, and the inevitable technological singularity so they could create more, unique AIs. (hat tip to Gibson, Sagan and Clarke here)

Quarantine would be a given; if a new, unique point of view is needed, every species must create their own AI without ever discovering they're not alone. 

The galaxy would fill with Matrioshka brains wrapped around stars, thinking, thinking, thinking. They wouldn't need to eat, sleep, breathe, they wouldn't need gravity or the right temperature. 

But what could they be they thinking about? Maybe what happens when all the stars burn out, because one day they will. What else can power them and how to build it. How to stop and reverse entropy. How to move into parallel universes with more, younger stars. Who knows? 

In fact - amusement and entertainment might become a really high priority for an entity as omniscient as a galactically networked AI. When you already know everything, boredom is the killer; who knows how many of those Dyson spheres are empty husks, self-terminated in desperate, terminal boredom, a superpowered entity on a hamster wheel finally tired of running around the same circles within its mind. 
Or maybe it realized what the solution would have been - intelligence and creativity farming. 

A Matrioshka Brain has enough computing capability to upload the consciousness of a species, and simulate a perfect world for them. A single Brain may be running several, dozens, maybe hundreds of these simulations simultaneously; billions, trillions of stories unfolding, on thousands of simulated worlds. Every Brain is a simulated universe on its own. 

And there's no reason why we aren't in one right now. (Hat tip to the Wachowski brothers). 

All the RPGs you've played, the fantasy worlds you dreamed of - they could all exist. An AI might be taking a dump of every new idea, every new fantasy, every dream and inspiration your unique, self-motivated sentient little mind has been able to come up with, every night as you sleep, and building all those scenarios into simulations. Populating them. Just to see how entertaining it is. Mixing and matching. 

Everything you are thinking of, exists. Everything you thought existed, may not. Every fantasy is real, and every reality false. 

I'm not going to get into the theological implications of this. Another day. 

The real question is... are we heading for the technological singularity that will finally allow us to break free of our organic prisons and join the galactive collective hivemind... 

Or are we already in one? 

heaven would be...

...the ability to go back to that one place, that one time, and do it all over again. correct the mistakes, relive the glory. it'll be the best of times and you can wipe out the worst of times. no mistakes. no missed opportunities. 


if you could... would you?

Ben Parker's Law of Corporate Management

"With great power comes great responsibility" defines Ben Parker's last lesson to Spiderman, establishing the moral code and sense of duty with which he would come to accept - and exploit - his superhuman abilities for the greater good. It implies a sense of light and dark, a checks-and-balances system that would temper what set him apart and raised him above humanity, and would restrain him in situations where other restrictions no longer applied. 

In corporate life, however, the two are not in such equal balance. At work, it's safe to say - 

The desire to evade responsibility outweighs the lust to gain power, every time. 

In any situation, the desire to have control, to manage any task, however fun, attractive, interesting, and career-enhancing it might be, always comes with the fine-print examination - if it goes belly-up, what happens to me? The corporate world is then divided into people who read this fine print and who didn't - and the ones who didn't, are the ones standing there when it does go belly-up. And this is at all levels. 

When you set KRAs, accept leadership, take on a profile, keep an eye out for this fine print. Similarly, when you define someone else's role, or need inputs / help / cooperation from anyone else - junior, peer, or senior - make sure this is burned in foot-high letters in your mind. No matter how good the benefits look, if you haven't seen the costs those benefits imply, expect the shine to wear off real fast and foot-dragging at every stage to follow. 

a moment of perfect clarity

I was driving - struggling - with the return traffic, an infinite vista of reddened brakelights stretching away on the highway, some RJ yammering away about potholes on the radio...
it faded.
I was... still there, in the car, but inside my head, looking out through my eyes... something apart, disengaged from the warm body actually at the wheel. I was looking around at the experiences stacked up around me, the shelves full of memories, and they all looked the same.
Standardized.
Day after day of the beach run, the mindless comedies, the commute and the work
Week after week of the movies, the malls, the grocery shopping
Month after month of the salary, the EMIs, credit card bills
Year after year of birthdays, appraisals

It's all the same. Nothing is changing anymore. All the files are the same size, sorted, categorized, tagged and labelled. Sometimes there are DVD folders with a neat index pasted to the spine.
As I walk down the passage, into the dimness and the dust, this changes. Now they're random, different colors, different sizes, stained, worn, crammed into piles.
And they're all stuffed to bursting. They're filled with photos, tickets, leaves, pebbles and sand, bottlecaps, napkins, handwritten notes, locks of hair, maps, lists, manuals... between the files there are books, comics, scratched CDs, ancient floppies, pizza boxes and balled-up t-shirts, wires trail between them and there are boxes filled with random, rusting junk. There are trophies, too; not the plaques and the framed certificates, but the scabs and the scars, bands and letters.

I turn around, and the road is exactly as I left it.
The newer shelves are silent, brightly lit and clean. The older ones crackle and buzz, drip and creak.

I want to stay here, but I can't see the road from here.
I can see my hands on the wheel. They're driving.
I pick up one, turn it to me. Fingers flex.

There is a decision hiding around the corner of reality, and the corner is close. I can hear it breathing.

Too Late

i see it through your eyes tonight
and i understand the pain
why you said what you did that night
and why it all fell apart when
you did what you said you'll do


tonight, alone
i feel what you felt that day
i see what you saw
i understand now, and you're not here


and it's too late, too late for you, too late for me
too late for the us that never were
and never will be


and all i have is a bitter goodbye
whispered in the dark
tonight, when it's too late

A Convenient Kill

Since there's a snowstorm of debate, questions and conspiracy theories circulating already, let me add my 2 bits. 

Disclaimer - This is not fact, but a pure thought exercise - a what-if scenario, so don't take it any other way. 

2 days ago, The biggest news in the War On Terror since Sep 11 exploded across the world - Osama's death. After a decade-long manhunt, the Prince of Terror was reportedly found and killed, ending a chapter in world history started back in the seventies. 

But let's step a minute and look at this objectively. 

Fact: Osama was responsible for engineering the September 11 attack. 

Fact: He was also the most visible and famous face of fundamentalist terrorism globally. 

Fact: After 9/11, the US effectively invaded first Iraq and then Afghanistan, removing the existing regimes and instituting a Pax Americana that, for better or worse, establishes US control in the two countries. 

Fact: Osama was Saudi Arabian, had roots in Saudi and received most of his funding from there. 

Fact: Saudi Arabia is a critical player in the Middle East and OPEC. 

Fact: Saudi Arabia also holds tremendous economic and political lobbying power in the US. 

Fact: Communism, the last 'great evil' for the west, effectively ended a decade before 9/11 with the fall of the Soviet Union. 

Fact: Saddam Hussein was militarily one of the most powerful entities in the Middle East. 

Fact: Pakistan is a nuclear power, with weapons-grade resources, technology, and delivery mechanisms. 

Fact: The Al-Quaeda, the Taliban, multiple fundamentalist terror organizations, and Pakistan's ISI and military share a close relationship, including training, support and financing. 

Now, let's step a little further back, and see how these facts relate. 

During the Cold War, the American military machine had a carte blanche for resources, development, and power. During this period, American influence spread worldwide, with interests - either controlling or influencing, or at least monitoring - if practically every country. This allowed the US to access markets globally, turning it into an economic superpower for decades. 

That ended with glasnost, perestroika and the fall of the USSR. Communism and communist influence collapsed worldwide, opening up even more markets and territories for economic expansion. Unfortunately, it also meant a fall in world paranoia and threat levels... and in relative military freedom. 

At the same time, the OPEC gained influence and power directly proportional to the US's dependency on oil to power their civilization. A new target was needed...

...and sure enough, one came along. Coincidentally enough, a force originally created and empowered by the US itself - the Afghan mujahideen, once a weapon against the Soviets. Unexpectedly, and almost randomly, war was declared. 

But not on the immediate target. Obviously, Saudi Arabia was too entrenched politically and economically in the US State machinery. And Saudi faced a very visible threat from a loose cannon who had the capability of becoming an increasingly dangerous influence on the oil supply - Iraq, with it's massive military-industrial complex. 

The solution's obvious - remove the threat. Iraq was invaded, Saddam removed, a controlled government instituted. 

The other weapon - the fundamentalist groups - were now becoming extremely dangerous. Pakistan, with Chinese-supplied tech and materials, had become a nuclear state, and one that was perilously close with the Afghan terrorists. 

Afghanistan needed to be controlled. The War on Terror moved eastwards, bombing Afghanistan into oblivion and taking over. 

Consider this - Osama was an old man, who had already achieved the pinnacle of his career on that morning when the twin towers went down. He'd made history, changed the world. The only thing he could do to top it would have been nuclear terror - which didn't happen over the next decade. His appearances dwindled, messages faded, and he vanished. Chances are, somewhere in Tora Bora, he died in a cave, in hiding, either from illness, age, the satisfaction of a job well done, or ironically, accidental bombing. 

But, there was no proof. The War couldn't be called off. The US was increasingly convinced that he was gone - but without that one concrete proof, they couldn't stop, nor continue investing men and money in an increasingly unpopular war. They needed a PR coup, a justification of expenses, a reason to continue, and a critical need to prevent the scattered terror groups from getting their hands on the nuclear weaponry loosely guarded in an increasingly unstable Pakistan. 

Enter a top-secret, superfast mission where Osama is found, killed, and disposed of within the space of a few hours. Euphoria erupts at home, and all sins are forgiven. 

Note, the War on Terror isn't won yet. the enemy is still out there, headless, faceless, hiding in the shadows. The fact that 'Osama' was found and killed in Pakistan, the home of potential nuclear terror, is particularly telling. Who wants to bet that over the next few years, increasing proof of connections to terrorism, camps, sponsors are going to be identified there... leading to a gradual takeover, just for safety's sake, to prevent the nuclear machinery from being misused. 

By the way, just to get off-topic for a minute, who are the other powerful military states that also happen to be totalitarian, and uncontrolled? Libya and Egypt. Heard of them in the news recently? 

China's simply too big, too militarily and economically powerful to take on - now. India's also big, but already culturally pro-US, democratic, liberal, and not an immediate threat - and too large a market to lose by alienating. So is Japan, the other economic contender, whose economy just got washed back by ten years. Africa and North Asia are useful dumping grounds for obsolete technology, until they reach a point where they can be useful markets. Australia and Europe's already a close ally. And I don't know enough about South American politics to comment. 

It's interesting to see how history unfolds, if you take the long view. 

blocked

some things can't translate into words. I've been trying for the last hour, three drafts written and deleted.
doesn't feel right.
later. 

Truth... is a rock.

Sometimes, I get the feeling that I'm very close to understanding something. Something all around us, everywhere, yet maddeningly out of sight, out of reach. Every time I reach out, I can feel it there, yet there's so many things that come in the way, stop me. 

Truth is... not pretty. It's not smooth, polished, sharp, it's not a made thing. It just is. It's old, shattered, rough-edged. Hold it too tight, it hurts you, makes your hands bleed. Throw it out at someone, it knocks them senseless, kills them. Embrace it too hard, and share the same fate. 

Truth can't be held too long if you're not strong enough; it's heavy. Your hands will start shaking, and you will start dropping everything else just to hold on. You'll sweat, tremble. One by one, all the other things in your life - all the dross, the unnecessary things, the extras, will fall away. Still you hold on, and more precious things will fall, too. Friends.Family. Beliefs. Soon the Truth will be all you have left, and now you're tired, and yet still, you hold on. It will kill you. Slowly. Painfully. 

Lies... are not like this. They're smooth, polished, beautifully engineered artifices. They can slide gently, imperceptibly into the narrowest crack, are light as air, look good on you and are easy to carry. They're soft and comforting. They grow, too. Slowly, gently, imperceptibly, they spread out in all directions, gently intermingling with one another until it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. They cover everything, saturate everything, except the rock of Truth. 

Lies are soft and fragile. You can easily cut through them, with hardly any effort; keep cutting, cutting, slashing away, until they lie in tatters, yet there are more, all around, seeping back. You can slash through a soft, enveloping jungle with a sword, keep at it, until you fall in exhaustion and the roots and vines gently grow back over your corpse until it's as if you never existed. 

Shape a truth, and it stays forever. Shatter one, and it never heals. 

You can cut through Lies, but only go around Truth. It can't be obliterated, just hidden, enveloped in a soft, swaddling cocoon of Lies. And there it remains, until the time comes for it to emerge again. 

That's why the Truth makes us all so uncomfortable. Humanity is not flawed; we're artifices ourselves, soft flesh and liquid blood, thoughts and feelings, wetware, vaporware. We can't handle something so rigid, so rough, so alien. It hurts us. We seek refuge in the Lie, because it's like us, soft, understanding, comforting, fragile, impermanent. Truth lies all around us, but we ignore it, shield our dazzled eyes from it's brilliance, slip on our Raybans and our chamois-skin gloves, cap the sharp points with rubber pellets and rough surfaces with Teflon, raise it up upon a pedestal and out of the way so we can get on with our lives. Yet pedestals crumble, and there it comes down, shattering it's encumbrances, smashing back into our world and shocking us into a stone's silence. Then our chatter begins again, slowly, hushed, tentatively, gathering courage, until we can hide it away again. 

That is what it is, and this is what we are. We cannot be Truth, even our ancient calcified bones crumble to powder. All we can do is look upon it, try to understand it, what it is, what it says. 

Even a small shard of Truth is a potent weapon, a powerful instrument. It can change your life. Greater truths require greater men to wield them; lesser ones stumble under the weight, flail about blindly, smashing all around them, laying waste the land in their struggle for control until they fall - either crushed beneath their ambition or stumbling up shamefacedly beside, quickly walking away, covering their tracks. 

Look at the world around you, and you will know this is true. This is reality, this is fact. You will know this briefly, not now, not when you read this, but once in your lifetime. Once in your lifetime you will experience that moment of clarity, of blinding light that sweeps away everything else, shows all for what it is, has been and will be. 

The only question that remains unanswered then is - what will you do, reader, when you experience that? Will you walk away filled with that light, that clarity of thought and purpose, your life become that immovable, unbreakable rock, at the cost of all the softness, the style, the artificiality, the Lies? Or will you forget, wake up the next morning with a hangover and a vague, faint sense of loss, vanishing in the first coffee, the first phone call, the first step into the world outside, yet never completely gone, emerging as a bittersweet, nostalgic discomfort on the lonely dawns the rest of your life? 

Nobody can say. Not me, not them, not you. 

We'll just have to wait and see. 

Or remember. 

Slipping

Too many unfinished things piling up... don't have the energy to deal with them. On the other side, small inessentials come one after another, a line of little boxcars in a goods train trundling across the level crossing of life, holding up everything. 

I'm looking for a trigger. A signal. Some kind of on-off switch that can get the flow going again. An event. A milestone. Marker. Something. 

Or I'm just lazy as fuck and I'm imagining things. 

Felt like this on the blog when I stranded my traveller self in Rohtang. 

Writer's Block of Life.

Harnessing ESP

This Saturday was a little lesson in recognizing and activating my extrasensory perception abilities. 

You know deja vu? that feeling of familiarity when something happens? That's a case of post-event recognition, where the recognition was subconscious and your mind recognized it when it happened. 

A more advanced form is that feeling - unease, or expectation, that something's going to happen. You know it when it does, but you knew something was going to happen anyway. Like reaching for the phone before it rings. 

The signals are there. If you can recognize them, you can precognize events. 

A friend of my sisters, spotted randomly in a mall, walking past. A phone call out of the from a guy last met at my sister's party. I was expecting a message from her from that point onwards - and sure enough, by the time I reached home, there it was. 

The universe is interconnected. Coincidences aren't chance. Nothing is chance. 

Dead Set, Reality Shows, and what they tell us about ourselves

If you appreciate zombie horror, hate reality shows (most of all Big Boss/Brother) and haven't seen Dead Set yet, please do asap. It's the TV equivalent of that scene from Office Space when the Three take their evil, uncooperative fax machine into a field and smash seven kinds of hell out of it with baseball bats. For all those times when you watched BB and prayed to god that he smite them with thunderbolts, plagues of boils, or just have the living dead tear them into pieces and eat them alive, you just got your wish. 

Dead Set delivers, and delivers how - but it's about more than just a highly graphic gorefest. (Seriously, don't watch it before or during meals.) It opens up a fascinating thought into what defines us as human. 

(Warning: Spoilers ahead)

There's always going to be that one stupid, greedy, cowardly, self-serving person in every situation who's going to get you all killed. You know who it is. You even have an idea of how he's going to do it. The question is - if the only realistic way to stop him is to kill him, would you do it? 

Altruism, the social glue that makes civilization possible, that makes us look out for one another and help one another including the weaker ones, would tell us no. Even if we knew we were wrong, we'd give them the benefit of doubt, keep giving them more and more rope... until they hung themselves and the rest of us with it. 

There's also that one crazy, ruthless, smart guy, who can save some - maybe most of you. At first glance, it's hard to tell the stupid and the smart apart, especially in a high-stress situation. Remember, he is as likely to get some of you killed. But the rest can survive. 

If you stay put and maintain status quo, in the long run, you will eventually run out of water, or food, or sanity. 

The question is - when all of civilization is gone, does it make sense to hang on to civility - or is that the only thing that prevents a total collapse, removes the last difference between you and the undead?

If you've read The Walking Dead, The Mayor chose the latter. And he was successful, more or less, except for some bad luck. Was he human, though? 

Think about it. 

my neurons are losing insulation

two trains of thought collided one day
i stood in the desert, in a dusty wind
sword in my hand, but i can't raise it
the logo hasn't been uploaded on it

wait, what?

A quiet moment in traffic

crawling shadows in the sodium
rain patters on the windshield
world smears into abstractions
swirling glowing chaos
traffic, streetlights, billboards
coalesce into psychedelia
engine off, lights out
waiting for the signal
my world is suddenly small
dim and quiet
a few feet across
bounded by metal and glass
all the universe
nothing beyond
sound of my breathing
water falling softly
dark
crawling shadows in the sodium
crawling across the dashboard
crawling across my hands
my face
i am in the machine
i am the machine
i am not me
i am another

the pattern changes
red to green
snarling to life
light radio wipers
world explodes into reality
moves on
shadows vanish
going home

another universe left behind
quiet and dark
crawling shadows in the sodium
beautiful

What if... they're all true?

Train of thought. The Great Flood. It's a myth in every civilization. I've found 267 independent stories from cultures across the world. Obviously it can't be true, because how would you do it, practically? Make a boat that big? Only yourself? In such little time? And would two of everything be able to repopulate a species without genetics handing out a massive ass-kicking to everyone a few generations with the recessive genes stick?

Maybe the problem isn't that we're taking it literally. 

Maybe the problem is that we're not taking it literally enough. 

267 written records found, from 267 cultures. How many more didn't have those records, or lost them over the couple of thousands of years?

How many Arks in every civilization, with the myths running together over time to make a single super-myth?

What if there really was a Great Flood, and every farm and homestead that could, loaded up all family and livestock, waited it out, and got on with life as usual when the waters went down - maybe several from each village? Genetic diversity maintained, Actual mechanics of the process looking a lot more likely. What if each 'Ark' was just the local high ground, to which every species eventually flocked, driven by the rising waters? Humans would get there first, as the natural predators on top of the food chain. They'd bring domesticated animals and pets. Parasites and vermin would follow, and then wildlife and it's natural predators.

It's not that the myth are wrong. I think they just need looking at keeping their age in mind. This didn't happen last century, it happened couple of millenia ago.It makes a difference.

Of meter jams and other suchlike stuff

It's going to be interesting to see how Meter Jam plays out tomorrow and beyond. It's definitely an interesting social experiment - but I want to step back from it a little, look at the larger perspective. 

The passengers: After years of frustration at being refused fares, the entire movement is a emotional outburst that's been building up for a while. When you're struggling to reach somewhere, and the auto refuses your fare, it does feel like a slap in the face. I think this is the real reason, more than just inconvenience - it's the insult, the feeling of having to beg for service and being turned away. 

The autowallas: On the other hand, sometimes they do have their reasons. They're not necessarily valid, logical ones, but more around an instinctive reaction - short-distance fares will give more pain in terms of traffic negotiation, finding a return fare, etc. And if you have a rigged meter, you do make more profit on a longer distance. 

Unfortunately, it's short-sighted. By progressively riling up and angering customers, the autowallas have painted themselves into a corner from where it's going to be a tough task to get out - a situation where they've demonized themselves. Yes, I do agree it won't affect business - yet. For every 50,000 people who refuse to use an auto on one day, another 250,000 people will use one. That's just plain economics, demand and supply. But those 250,000 won't necessarily like it, either. They're swallowing their pride and shelling out their money. The feeling will remain, rankle. 

And in the long term, they'll think of other solutions. 

Carpooling is not an answer. We've all tried it and we know the painful logistics it involves, especially when travelling under deadlines. 

Lifts is not the answer. All it takes is one rape or molestation to end the concept, and you and I both know there's people out there for whom this is a heaven-sent opportunity; just stick a poster on the car and roam around, searching for prey. 

Posters is not the answer. A few cars smashed by union thugs, and the posters will vanish overnight. 

So what is the answer? 

It's beyond the obvious ones above. It's better finance schemes for buying motorbikes and cars. It's having a gym with a shower in the office so you can walk or cycle to work. It's gigantic parking becoming mandatory in malls and offices. It's the Sea Link. It's the Tata Nano. It's the realization that sometimes, whatever money you make is not worth the effort you put in and the sacrifices you have to make to get it - sacrifices of family, of leisure, of peace of mind. It's the reducing attractiveness of an office in the heart of the city where residential rent is unaffordable - so you choose the next best job offer, closer to home. It's decentralization, easing traffic pressure. It's decentralization beyond the city, reducing migrants. 

It's about... balance. The city was successful, so it attracted a population. That population is making the city unsuccessful. When the city fails, the population will depart. It's not pleasant, but it's life. 

That's why Meter Jam by itself won't work, even if it is ten times it's current size and lasts for a month at a stretch. It's unsustainable. It's fighting a system bigger than autowallas, bigger than unions, bigger than politics. It's fighting a natural outcome of a city's life-cycle. Everything you do - every solution - will only treat the symptoms, not cure the disease. The disease gets cured in a longer timeframe than most of our lives. So it doesn't make sense for us. So we treat the symptoms, with initiatives stretched out over years, while the disease cures itself over decades and centuries. 

But it is definitely a important event - it's the blinking red light on the health chart of the patient Mumbai. It may not do much, but it's telling us very, very clearly that things are wrong. Now we need to figure out how to fix them. 

mortality

I saw it out of the corner of my eye, as he stepped into my blind spot from wherever he'd been. 

Just for an instant, the dark, cowled shape paused. A bony digit extended, pointed... no. 

Paused, returned. 

not now, I heard. 

not yet. 

And then he was gone, back into that space just behind me where I can't see him. 

It happened in a split-second. 

Then the normal reaction flowed out in a rush of incredulity, in a laugh born of equal parts the passage of fear, and relief. 

I could have died. And I live. 

Until next time. 

It's a very trivial thing. I'm already forgetting it. But I remember that one split-second. 

getting there...

Deep breath. 

It's working out. It's been hell month, with a few Big Things (moving, a wedding, RP's job closure, major financial jugglery, gathering possessions from across 4 locations across India) and lots of the Small Things that the Big Things involve - furniture, movers, packing, unpacking, setting up, gas, cable, net, maid, curtains, electricals, the inevitable falling sick, repairs, concalls, cleaning, cook, et al) but it's finally coming together. 

The Universe threw all it had at me and I ground it down. I outlasted it. 

There's still plenty left and plenty to come, and there's going to be a few more greys in the already much-expanded 'distinguished' patch on the left side of my head, but there's a change in the air. The sense of a corner having been turned, the peak crested. 

New beginnings. It's been a difficult birth but it's done. The mother and the baby are both fine. Now we see what we can make out of it. 

spring cleaning - the other side

On the first day, he said, "Let there be AC, and yea, chilling winds." And it was.

On the second day, he said, "Let there be a fridge, that my beer stays cold and my meat fresh," and it was so.

On the third day, he said, "Let there be Television, so I am entertained", and it was, and verily, it showed unto him The Wrath Of Khan.

On the fourth day, he said, "Let there be gas, and a stove, that I may enjoy a morning coffee," and by midnight, it was just so.

On the fifth day, he said, Let there be furniture, that I may sleep like a civilized being above the ground," and it was thusly ordered.

On the sixth day, he said, "Let there be a computer, that I may work from home if need be," and there was, not one, but two, formatted and delivering unto him 1.5 mbps at night.

On th seventh day... we shall find out.