In tribute to Rota

Click to refine your thoughts about life, universe and everything else. The hotair enterprise of Gian Carlo Rota.

Wow!

Brilliant discussion on Mathematics, Philosophy and AI. Highly recommended!

Mohiner Ghoraguli

This band was doing in Bengal in the '70s what Indian Ocean are doing today. Being an ultra lit Bong band it experimented with both-lyrics as well as musical style. Describes by many as being Baul fused with Prog rock, it was the common man's intellectual band. No, I don't understand Bong but you don't have to understand Kannada to be a Raghu Dixit fan (some of his best songs, in particular, "Gudugudiya Sedi Na Do" is Kannada) nor do you need to know Tam to be a fan of the 'Boys' movie soundtrack.

Also, their artwork for their posters/concerts was amazing. I have posted some of them here.

I came to know about them when Subho scribbled their song "Telephone" on his cupboard during one of his trips. Also Biswas turned out to be a huge fan of theirs. A little too co-incidentally, the RAVE magazine that sometimes used to turn up in Subho's room carried out a 3 page review of this band from yesteryears and their influence felt today (even though they were hardly "popular").




This is the Wikipedia link to the Band.
Type in "Mohiner" in youtube to get a collection of their audios.

The Rock Concert Today

The bands from Lucknow are performing in a concert this evening at Wave-the East End Mall in Gomtinagar. High time I checked them out. Some of the best bands of this city, surprisingly, are formed by students of our school, previously known as Mahanagar Boys' Inter College. This is surprising because ours was such a kabaadi school and filled with boys who had no sense of culture or philosophy or any of the other so called noble timepasses. Anyway, I might report on this when I come back.

Why we(I?) do that which we(I?) do?

A sign of things to come?

Bull Shit, More Shit, Piled Higher and Deeper

For the uninitiated, check out the brilliant, most funny cartoon strip ever. See it before you die!!!

Mind Numbing TV

Why watch TV? To kill time. And killing time is especially easy when all that's there on TV are news channels vying with each other to broadcast more and more ghost stories (the remarkable point about most of them are the very pulp fiction titles they choose for such programmes, examples being "Maut ka Panja", "Khooni Taraajoo", "Main Badla Loongi" etc).

Also present in overwhelming multitudes are channels catering to the junta that has a partiality for lowbrow movies that the Chiefs like to repeat for want of better options. Examples of such movies are "No Entry", "Masti" etc that seem to be aired at practically all times.

A brief respite is the Triumvirate of Cartoon Network, Pogo and Nick. In particular, I am beginning to find "Galli Galli Sim Sim" and the cartoons "Perman" and "Ninja Hattori" eminently funny. "Puh, puh, puh, puh PuuuuhhhhMan, PuuuhMan hai yahan!", what a song!

However, they are exceptions to the rule. And being off TV (for all practical purposes) for 4 years makes you sit there with the remote and shoot off IR (or whatever) rays every 7 seconds for twelve hours every day. TV is evil. Smash its jaw.

Or better still, wait for it to pulpify your brain so that it can relish your bheja('s) fry. (Status: Pulpificaton levels dangerously high. Sensory Overload. Abort, abort, abort....Crash!)

Books read in the Summers '07

1) Seemayen Toot_ti hain (Shrilal Shukla)
2) Above Average (Amitabh Bagchi)
3) The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins)
4) Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
5) Doctor Zhivago (Boris Pasternak)
6) Let the People Think (Bertrand Russell)
7) The Gambler (Fyodor Dostoyevsky), and with that I have finished reading whatever fiction Dostoyevsky wrote in his lifetime.
8) The Ground Beneath Her Feet (Salman Rushdie)
9) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J K Rowling)
10)The Gulag Archipelago (Vol 1) (Repeat) (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

World Environment Day

Peace man!