On the number of words, web-pages, humans ....

Some [not all!] of the readers here might think whether my wordage in my writing is natural. Your suspicion may be right-- I don't and can't speak in the manner that I write here. I have to make ample use of http://www.dictionary.com/ some times to check some words I heard of and which I have forgotten the meaning of [BTW, if a word sounds good, it tends to stay in memory -- how does bamboozle sound? :) ]. Granted, one takes a lot of short-cuts with spoken language or regional versions [ dnt frg8 mbyl SMS]. But it is the written version where the highest conformity or perfection of language rules [syntax for techies, grammar for librarians -- that reminds me -- some girls look so attractive with glasses :-o] can be exercised; it is also the medium of contracts, legal statements, and such. It is the authors, journalists, lawmakers etc. who set the high standards -- if they were to write like the common man, they wouldn't have many jobs. Also, it is a good way to give our minds something to learn-- new words, idioms, slang and so on. Besides, people who write well get respected, are thought to be well educated and [unfortunately] tend to get easily believed as 'experts'! If you think this manner of writing is too showy and dislike it, you may mutter some abuses or laugh at this and navigate away. But otherwise, do stay and read the rest of this post [I don't know why you chose to read this far, but am not complaining, and would be happy to write for you if you told me a topic to focus on..:)].

Also note my use of [] as opposed to () ? It is to make less confusing the use of the little faces -- :) ;) :-o ... which is important to me to reach out to you [ <> doesn't work as the parser(s?) interpret it specially--as a tag?]. Also, I tend to write/blog here as if I am talking to you face to face. Note that I assume or propose somethings or some trends whereas I could have easily checked some facts or figure online. This is because I know you can check it yourself, and I want to deal more with intuition/feelings than facts here [like the hero of Star Wars, Luke Skywalker switches off the computer on his fighter and aims at the evil weapon base manually using his concentration, called 'the force' by director George Lucas-- not that you should do actually something like this in your car/bike/helicopter/plane/.... !]. Or maybe, I am just lazy :(.

Now that we have established some norms of my thought delivery [or 'communication protocol' -- guess who would use that? techies again!], let's move on. People often talk about population growth of the human species. It is also known that the Internet is expanding with data-- terabytes, petabytes.. [then what? must see http://www.wikipedia.com/!]. I think there is a possibility that the number of pages grow at a faster rate today than the number of people on the planet [not Venus or Mars of course ...heh heh one more of my PJs -- Poor Jokes ]. So anyone with an understanding of primary school arithmetic and the knowledge that the Internet is always growing can figure out that pages/person is a metric which is a big number [or at least on the increase even if my contention that page growth rate seems higher than population growth rate is false]. Does it mean anything? Well I guess this is how the thinking of statisticians works. Although playing with numbers is cool to a certain extent, translating it to news headlines can give scary 'facts' [mathematically correct, physically not so much]. For instance, I read recently
something like --' Pedestrians in the beginning of winter / during daylight time change are more likely to be hit by cars than other times of the year'. What is say a student who uses his/her legs more than wheels to get around to do when he/she reads it?

Regarding population growth, if we think like a machine/computer in terms of numbers, say we could assign a fixed value to all of the human species. Then as the population increases, would it not decrease the value of a single organism in the species? Is that why people tend to 'invest' less of everything in every acquaintance they have -- attach less with other people, break up families (cause of wars!)? If this idea is fully believed/endorsed, the person doing it would be thought of as a psychopath/sociopath [ or whatever the correct term is -- refer a psychologist or wikipedia!]. But what if it's tr......................

So many people make complexity of the world systems higher and our mind probably goes insane at least to the extent that it is unable to process the information and the meaning of the situation. Some studies have suggested that a man cannot think realistically about the well being of more than few dozen people (like a close knot tribe/band of monkeys) he recognizes and likes, even if it's a Gandhian figure.Well, we can see that when we litter plastics somwhere, we think not of the trouble added to the habitat of more than 6+ billion other people, but just comprehend that the place of disposal is nowhere close to our home, eh?

Is this what they call dark/black humor? [Great! Have I managed to present THAT?. Spectator putting palm on forehead: "Oh! ah look at that foolish amateur-- acts like a kid" ]

Nippon obsession

Observations about peculiarities of Japan:

anime, manga, cute models , outlandish high-tech, trammeled otaku, obdurate workaholism , dark truths, six-sigma & TQM, movies and more....
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2007/10/28/stories/2007102850130500.htm

COMING SOON!

(My first post) Let's start with 'The Sixth Sense' kid, shall we?

I know most probably, you the reader would have seen the movie mentioned in the title here. We all think of the kid (the character, not the actor) in it as a traumatised, scared individual.. as the director of the movie guides us to think. Let's put some spin on it now. What if this kid got familiar with being around with ghosts, and used it to get ahead in life ?! Let's say he has a history exam, and he's been busy reading Harry Potter or playing Half-Life instead of studying for the exam the night before; wouldn't it be possible for him to summon the spirits of the people engaged in historical events and talk to them to crack his exam [Of course, this presupposes that he has the ability to summon spirits and the required conversation can take place fast or at the speed of thought--which is not infinite by the way :) with all that nerve cell communication depending on chemical reactions-- rather than talk]?

There is some aspect of this kid that is present in bloggers and writers I guess. We hear voices [if not dead people]! These voices prompt us to write stuff down, so others will (hopefully) read them; a higher desire-- one for expression - like earning more money [ different from basic biological needs -- BTW, the 'Hierarchy of Needs' is a wonderful theory about motivation that is a part of management curriculum -- interested readers should ferret it out]. One hopes to write thoughts, so people can read them [before one becomes part of the 'dead people' -- that phrase again :) ]. Is this a manifestation of our subconscious desire to achieve immortality [a wish which psychologists like Freud say is real] ?

Another point which we can talk about here is 'superstition'. Is it really imagination? Are there really ghosts? Maybe a much more emotional question -- is there some God [sorry for using the Christian convention with capital 'G', people of other faith-- it so happens that the language used here has a lot of Christian writers who influence people like us in our writing style]? I am not going to present my position about this. But an interesting write-up I came across can be found here :
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20071102501502500.htm

Just read it to broaden your mind, not to make decisions. A wonderful revelation of this article is that the supposed 'terrorist' Bhagat Singh seems like a well-educated, high thinking person, rather than the brash, violent , impulsive guy who wants to blow up firangis/vellkaran [i.e. British white colonisers, my dear non-Indian reader], as we may have imagined.

But again, it is wrong to come to conclusions after reading one article. As we know, governments can and do rewrite history books literally [sadly , even at home]! One case in point -- Japan refuses to acknowledge even a single war crime from WW II ; they [again I don't mean all the civilians; mainly the government as usual is the big villain] are still proud of their actions. Some ramblings, to activate your thought cells. I am no political activist.. :) heh heh. But I do read a lot of international diplomacy topics on papers/magazines, which may come as a surprise to some who know me [but as is clear now, not completely].

This is just like a stream of consciousness -- they say in meditation, focus on one thing, and it will lead to another, which will lead to another. Maybe something of that sort. I have run out of thoughts now. So, that's all for my first post... I am satisfied -- as far as pouring out my thoughts is concerned, 'mission accomplished' .Poring over them -- you may continue.

Let me know what you think of this post. All comments welcome. As a one-time annoyance, I wish to thank all my teachers, reading material like newspapers/magazines, language exams, other influences and my temporary minor 'career hiccups' for giving me the tools, time and motivation necessary to put this writing together. Hope, I do a decent job of entertaining some people, even if that group has only one member. I may have more style than substance sometimes-- hey, but that's my style [as they say in the TV world- there's no business like show business!] ! But I will try to always keep any bias out of these writings. If you made it this far from the top, thanks for reading this amateur's post, and do come back , and suggest what you would like. See you next time!