My Favourite Game

It can be played almost any time - day or night, rain or shine... You don't need anything to play the game (like a board or coins or cards or ball or bat)... Any number of players can participate... And all the players who participate will have a role to play... None will be left out... The skill levels of the players don't matter that much, if at all it matters... All that matters is probably a little bit of creativity...And for a game as simplistic as this - the amount of fun and level of excitement it offers is virtually unlimited...

Such is the beauty of my favourite game popularly known as Dumb Charades!

I always had a special liking for simple games... Games with simple rules easy enough to understand and natural enough to almost expect... Particularly in group or party games... Charades, I see, is one of the simplest of all...

Even though I am not any real expert on the game, I have so much fun playing it that I almost feel the game belongs to me... Or vice-versa... I have seen that this game has enough in it to attract even the most reluctant of people in any group... In a group there will always be the odd one out who will say I will just watch you guys play... Or I will just be referee... Even such people, I have seen, inevitably get attracted to playing the game...

The amount of fun you have being part of any phase of this game - be it miming, guessing or just watching others fumble - in just infinite... I am amazed to see how creative people can get when you let a person mime and a group to guess... An added dimension to the fun can be the distracting comments and time countdowns the opposing teams can shout out when one team is performing...

I have seen the best bullies stumble and fumble and be all nerves when the other team start their 10,9,8... countdown towards the finish... And after they fail, you have to see how they get back to their "bully" status almost immediately and swear at their teammates for guessing so badly...

All in all, there isn't another game like Dumb(?) Charades!

Are Indians really dumb?

A dumb article exploring whether Indians are dumb...

Rediff can really be thought of as a public commenting system where anyone can come in and write whatever he/she dreams up... Until sometime ago, Rediff used to have disclaimers on such articles... I don't see even that now...

Stunt of the Millennium

Well, even granting that marriage can get difficult at times, I didn't know it could take a man to this...

New Wicket Keeper for India

The wicket-keeper's position in the Indian national cricket team has become some sort of a training ground. They first rope in a teenager, try him out on a few arduous tours/seasons involving top international teams, see if he comes good and then drop him when they find out he doesn't.

Even though this is not a good way to go about the team selection job and this is not what the experts meant when they said you have to groom wicket-keepers, I really hope Dinesh Karthik does well.

Ramachandra Guha

Ram Guha is writing a series on recent Indian History, I believe, in The Hindu. Atleast the last two weeks, I have read it and found it interesting.

By the way, this is my 102nd post. So says blogger. I have taken close to two years to cross the 100 mark. Evidently, I havent had much to say!

:-)

I see that the new blogger irritatingly adds an empty line to all my posts when I publish it. This is a recent habit. This is a bug - not a feature, isnt it?

Google's Take on Global Worming...

There is something about this post that I dont like...

Particularly these lines...

"Hey, we didn't think we'd ever have to show it to anyone(Error-27 Page)"

"So Google got hacked, huh? - Actually, we didn't."

"Then why did some people get error messages when they tried to do searches? - A very small percentage of our users and networks..."

Now what is a very small percentage?

I think the post also claims that Google blocked searches only from those computers that were affected by MyDoom.  Mine wasn't.  And Google blocked my queries for close to an hour (atleast)!

Google's explanation is so much 'corporate'ish...  Even if it is too early and too rash to comment, I think the share market is already affecting them... 

All is not well with the world...

I had my doubts when Jivha closed down his blog...

Now a simple search on Google returns a server error...

The error I got..
______________________________________________________________

Google  

Error

Server ErrorThe service you requested is not available at this time.
Service error -27.
______________________________________________________________

Surely, all is not well with the world...

Theninum iniya Thamizh...

Here , you find electronic versions of Tamil Classics. 
 
I never knew that something called Project Madurai existed and that they were doing such wonderful work.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that Jayakanthan has been liberal enough to let some of his short stories be converted into downloadable/printable PDF format and be showcased for free. 
 
Maybe some day, I will get time to read the e-version of Kalki's "Ponniyin Selvan".

I am feeling sleepy...

Its time for some ramblings. I need to freshen up my brains. So lets do this quick.

The other day, as I was reading a book, the author of the book tried to convince me that scientific theories are only a product of the human mind and thus they dont "exist" in some sense.

Even though things that happen in real life are explained through various scientific theories, time and again, many of these scientific theories are found wanting and are either replaced by or supplemented with newer theories. The author of this book seems to argue that if some people believe in ghosts (lets say), then it is just another theory that they believe in. They have reasons to believe in their theory in the same way that proponents of science have reasons to believe in theirs.

Just for the sake of this argument, it would be good to have Newtonian Mechanics and the Theory of Relativity in mind as examples. Even if we dont understand this, it will be good to have in mind during the course of this argument.

We need the help of science to give us "reasons" for things happening in real life, and we believe them, only later to be asked to believe another theory of science (for explaining the same things). So as the human mind evolves (or rather suits itself to a newer Universe), newer scientific theories are born. And thus newer beliefs.

It might help at this time, to just stop here and make a mental note that some theories (or should I say Truths) don't fall into this category. The Pythogoras Theorem, or for that matter the Theory of Numbers etc (even if they exist only in the human mind and can be classified "scientific") are different from the kind of theories that I am referring to here. As a Mathematics enthusiast, I was tempted and am happy, to point out that these are not the ones I am trying to equate to belief in Ghosts. The author of the book seemed to ignore this difference, and I think it is mainly because he is not a Math enthusiast.

So, getting back to where we were, as far as the other kind of accepted scientific thoery goes, all we can say is that they are the "best" explanations for things happening around us at a given point in time. I qualify "best" in quotes because not everyone seem to consider them best. And all of these theories are answers to "why things are happening the way they are". But then, so is the belief in God.

People believe in God because they think there is some power that is the "reason" for certain things happening the way they are. I can see two Atheist arguments here.

1. The question "WHY these certain things are happening like this?" is invalid. There needs to be no "reason" for these things to be the way they are. That is their "natural" state.

2. The question "WHY" is very valid. But "God" is not the correct answer.

Replacing "God" with "this particular scientific theory", both the arguments above remain with the same plausibility levels.

So, I conclude - At this point in time, I should admit that I dont have a convincing argument to say that the bias towards scientific belief (as opposed to other beliefs like Ghosts, God etc.) is entirely justified.

Technocracy?

I suddenly remembered that India has a Space Scientist as President and an Economics Professor as Prime Minister.

In a dreamy, non-cynical mood, it is a nice feeling.