What does not change?

The monitor you are looking at probably refreshes more than the rate your eyes can recognize just to give you the constancy feeling of the text that is being displayed. Of course, I am assuming you are not printing this stuff out (a very safe assumption).

For a simple interface like a web-browser displaying junk of text, we need a lot of things unchanging - giving the constancy feeling which is very essential for us to "do" anything. How much does the universe have to "do" to give us the constancy feeling that we so much enjoy. "The only thing that does not change is change itself" - is a well known observation by some random old dude many centuries ago, though the constancy feeling that does enable us to observe and appreciate the change is equally (if not more) important. So what does the universe maintain constant for us to enjoy life? Which cardinal constraints should all physical and chemical reactions follow?

1) Energy: Energy is not lost or gained but remains constant in any reaction. Though, if you very small particles (quantum stuff), energy and mass are constant (because Einstein says energy and mass are interchangable).

2) Momentum and Angular momentum: Take a particles mass multiply it by its velocity (or angular velocity) and you get the momentum. Do anything (walk, jump, cry or die), you should conserve momentum as badly as you should conserve energy. It so happens, even the small stuff inside the atom needs to conserve momentum and angular momentum.

3) Charge: Charge is a property shared by all particles. +ve, -ve or neutral. Once a particle has a charge, it cannot magically loose it. In any type of reaction, if a charge comes in, one of the outputs should take the charge out. So the overall charge is same.

4) TCP: time reversal, charge conjugation and mirror reversal. This conservation happens only in quantum stuff. Take any quantum reaction,

a) take the outputs of the reaction and run the reaction backwards (time reversal)

b) Conjugate the charges (electron to positron etc..).

c) Run the reaction in mirror image. Every particle spins clockwise or anticlockwise, just swap them.

If you do all these, you should get the original inputs back! - theoretically of course.

These are the only things that are always there and give us the continuity feeling that we are so used to. So wat? Nothing, just typing junk as usual. Go ahead and do some real work instead of wasting time on pointless stuff on the net.

Hollywood Hollywood

I always thought road trips are those kind of things which everyone pretends to be excited about because it sounds cool. To my surprise my first driving road trip proved to be awesome fun and profoundly entertaining.

I am trying to break the pieces of the road trip into its constiuent parts - but as you all know the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts.. So here all the list of fun things I did last saturday in no particualar order

Aug-15-2009 7:15 am : Pretending to not hear my friend's wake up call to start the road trip.

Aug-15-2009 8:15 am : Continuing previous step with great resolve.

Aug-15-2009 9:10 am : Woke up and asked the simple question "Are we really going?"

Aug-15-2009 9:20 am: Driving my nissan maxima out of my house.

Aug-15-2009 1:00 pm: I travelled at 100 miles/hour for the first time in my car.

Aug-15-2009 3:35 pm: Ate "Soy chicken" in vegan world restaurant.

Aug-15-2009 6:00 pm: Figuring out how to go to Hollywood sign.

Aug-15-2009 7:00 pm: Illegally Hiking toward the hollywood sign.

Aug-15-2009 7:30 pm: Shot a "deeply philosophical" short film (run time 27 secs)

Aug-15-2009 9:00 pm: Sitting in Electirc Karma restaurant waiting for the "sambhar soup" which didnt come with the "Thali" that I ordered.

Aug-15-2009 10:30 pm: Walking in some kind of crazy hi-fi street where things are supposed to be fashionable (meaning expensive).

Aug-15-2009 11:45 pm: Took a picture of my patient friend near Staples building.

Aug-16-2009 12:16 am: Made a wierd left lane change in a curve making the trip adventerous.

Aug-16-2009 1:10 am: Driving back towards L.A to refuel the car.

Aug-16-2009 4:30 am: Found highway driving really boring because there is nothing happening.

Aug-16-2009 5:15 am: Me and my friend had no more topics to discuss and began to start repeating words, phrases, jokes, debates and arguments.

Aug-16-2009 6:25 am: I closed my eyes in sleep while travelling in 101.

Aug-16-2009 6:26 am: Woke up again still in 101 - still travelling in the right direction.

Aug-16-2009 7:15 am: Came home and slept till 3 pm.

Sweet lie or Hard truth?

We are confronted with the choice time and again in a civilized environment. There are always things that we do not want talk about. Lets say a very boring relative calls me up - I have to ask him how he is doing though I have no interest in his wellbeing and I have to laugh for his "jokes".

That part is simple because it is just a temporary mask - or is it? Where does the mask end and "the real you" begins. The way I see it, its much like onions, we have different masks for different people and most probably there is nothing inside.

Assuming that everything discussed so far is reasonably accurate, the next obvious question is what is there in the inner most level of the onion? Cant it be the real you? My best bet is the inner most layer in the onion is just a set of believes held so close to you that you cannot live without them. It just represents one of the stereotypical images at the heart.

In a nutshell, we are all stereotypes of one type or the other and we lie to ourselves about it by forming more and more layers around the fundamental.

Motivation

I woke up at 5:30 PM today evening after sleeping at 4 AM in the morning - a good 13.5 hrs sleep. I woke up twice in between at 10:33 AM and 12:15 PM and chose to go back to sleep because ... ?

The reason I went back to sleep is that I knew that there is no one out there that will know and feel my absence - in other words - anything that I would have done would have been so inconsequential that I figured out that they are worthless in mid-sleep. In essence I have been jobless for yet another day.

What happened to the fire inside me - assuming there is one still left? Have I been fueling it well enough? Have I given it a reason to glow? Or have I let the system-of-things-I-don't-particularly-like and the inertia-of-inaction give in to my fundamental spirit?

Its true that given a deadline I would not have been this lethargic - but shouldn't all motivation be self-motivation? Shouldn't I command myself instead of subjecting myself to a system which commands me to work? Do I have to loose free-will and subject myself to the system-of-things and run inside the system to ensure that I don't choose inaction out of lack of self-motivation?

Ok - Enough work done - I am getting back to sleep :)

Hello Stranger!

If you are extremely calculative and overly analytical and if you start to guess (and assume) the exact reasons why your friends are actually friends with you, you would realize that most of them have ulterior motives to maintain your friendship. Or, if you have some good friends, you may realize that those people are not friends with you for any particular reason(s). There is a strange sense of satisfaction that is derived from the fact that reasons for those friendships cannot be trivially articulated. This of course is a mere difficulty in expression probably due to lack of development of enough words for all possible emotions in literature and cannot be attributed to the "quality" of the friendship. But it can be safely argued that best friends usually belong to this inexplicable category.

We have a vague notion of differentiating friends from best friends using the limits of language and expression abilities. But this theory, even assuming is 100% true is not worth a penny. There is one more simple succinct theory on friendship (rather acquaintanceship) based on communication that will be worth a life times learning - which most people already know, but face great difficulty implementing. "If you need friends, you need to listen!" Seems trivial and easy but its not (at least to me).

Today I had to make a simple conversation asking for a small (probably useless) gift for a friend from a stranger. I was bold enough to initiate the conversation ( I am very happy about it!) but was so embarrassed in the middle of the conversation that I didn't actually realize the fact that the female said something synonymous to "yes- u can have it". In essence , I asked for something from a stranger for which she said yes (in spite of my record poor communication skills) and I didn't register that yes (probably assuming pessimistically a NO!) and walked away like(?) a total fool.

Irksome

Guess what! I found my super power.

I can irritate anyone in this world without even knowing what I am doing. I am kind of happy about this super power but for the simple fact that I cannot control my powers.. the same problem that many heroes have in the not-so-stupid serial "heroes".

I wish I am totally senseless so that I don't care about the damage that I create, thereby there will be nothing to live with or think about. If thats not possible, I wish I am totally sensible never doing the irksome things that I do. But if the later happens, I will have to be dumb for the most part of my life! I talk so much that sooner or later I will have to offend someone. I have been talking talking for so long that I really do not know what will become of my if I don't talk.

In conclusion, be warned about my super power!

hi 08

Lets welcome another set of 365 days of existence. Before I can realize 2 of them are already gone. I don't remember doing anything other than eating and sleeping in the first 2 days of this year. Its tempting to wish to spend my entire life with this level of laziness.

What do I expect from this new year? I want to surprised and excited about something this year.this shouldn't be just another year that I will forget.this should be a terrifying and fun experience.

Now that the requirement is clear what are the things that I am going to do to make sure that this year catches me of balance and keeps me interested in this game of life? I have no answers for that question. I am inherently so lazy and uninteresting that I am getting bored of myself.. I am becoming too predicable.. How to make myself more interesting?

Some one said "It takes 100 years for a person to be bored of himself".. why is this estimate wrong?