The Prerequisites Of Possibility

This is a really funny and inspirational TED Talks talk by Emily Levine where she speaks about everything and how she has a theory for it. This particular talk was also a hit because of the way it challenged many preconceived notions by especially questioning the methods of observation of reality.

After listening to this talk, I was reminded of an argument me and 2 of my friends had had a few months ago. We were traveling back to our hostel from outside by bus and found ourselves bored. In order to liven things up, I asked Aditya about his views on this fact: “Communist countries don’t fare well in this world, and that’s a known thing. But is it because of Communism itself or is it because of the many sanctions imposed on it by capitalist nations?” Of course, the answer to this question might exist out there but all I wanted was his views, which he assiduously went on to elucidate upon. One of the points he touched on was the persistent economic disparity between people living under the umbra of a closed economy and those living in an open one.

I’d like to use this particular argument and point out two very striking aspects of it that define its arguing power. Every argument has two sides – and I’m not talking about the “priori” and  “posteriori” – but what I call the assurance density. Although the term might sound hi-fi, what I mean is that when an argument has a high assurance density, it is capable of driving the point home comfortably and, as a result, finds it easy to convince (or assure) others about its validity. Now, this is just the first side of the coin: what the argument does and how well it does it.

The second side is what the argument itself postulates – the theory or the subject matter it carries and is supposed to convey. (Why I thought of this during Aditya’s argument was because there was a particular way he took to it that clearly brought out the importance of verbal structuring and how it could dominate over the content.)

Now, let’s say someone’s made the following statement: “coffee tastes better when it’s cold.”

The first side would be the its assurance density. Do you think this argument does its job? I think it does because it seems to concern a very trivial matter and could well be an argument between a son and his mother. Because of that, the structure of the argument seems appropriate: the boy is introducing his subject, and then he’s using it as a subject of one of his personal wants – that of his taste – and he’s also giving a solution for it (“when it’s cold”). Subject-verb-object structure. Good boy.

The second thing about this argument is that the boy is asking for cold coffee. If he’s given to having frequent illnesses or displaying a caffeine allergy, then cold coffee or coffee itself may not be advisable. In this case, we have insufficient information to classify the argument as valid or invalid.

And this is where I say what I’ve wanted to say for the past 3 minutes: there are two sides to any argument – the structure and the information – that make it recognisable as a statement employed to signify conflict or agreement; conflict mostly.

To refer back to the TED Talk at the top of this post, Emily Levine made me think whether everything in this universe has 2 such aspects to it: a function and a rule that governed it. In fact, if you looked here, you’d find that Paul Romer chooses to put it as “technology” and “rules” as constituents of an “idea”. I’m sure you must be thinking, “My god! It took this dumbass so much time to get here!” It’s fine. What matters is I did! Anyway, what’s striking about this universality of behavior is that it’s like nature itself has put forth a commandment that everything in the universe must conform to. This could be one of the fundamental rules of everything – a theory.

I’m sure all of you must be aware of the bad things about theories – they theorize, they seem very ambiguous on extremely specific (and sometimes relevant) specific subject matter and they’re all filled with squiggly symbols. But the one good thing about them overshadows all of that. They provide everyone working with them a basis, a platform to stand on continue from there, a fallback option. Now, my theory seems infallible enough. But what can I build on top of it?

I’ve decided that instead of building anything on top of it, I’ll use it as the mother of other such standalones, smaller though, that build and define anything from a mom-son argument to Keplerian astronomical systems. Now, how do I begin?

Self-questioning for the win.

What do I have in hand? I have a theory that dictates all kinds of behavior of all kinds of things by saying that they have two inseparable components: a rule specified by nature and a function specified by content.

What do I infer from it? If you’d break it down, you’ll see that the behavior is governed by two elements – one from the outside and one from the inside. Therefore, anything that has a function and a rule attributable to itself can definitely exist. As an axiom, anything that exists has a definite function governed by a definite rule.

What are the implications? If one of us can come up with a biological function that permits rhinoceroses to give birth to baby dragons and then fortify it with a ruling system, then it will happen at sometime in the future (if it already hasn’t!). As a result, the theory becomes a prerequisite of possibility. Now, what we have to be careful about now is contradictions. Is there a case where such a function-rule-possibility (FRP) system will fail? Possible. Perhaps I can use the FRP system itself to come up with a contradicting scenario!

Anyway, what I’ve deduced is that this FRP system could indeed be a standalone system that could provide the sort of support that further verifies any given system’s functional veracity. However, the hypothesis is not perfected yet. Again, before I forget, the answer to this particular question could already be out there, but what I’m doing on this blog is finding things out for myself because I’ve found that once you read about all kinds of thoughts and philosophies, coming to an objective conclusion about somethings can become difficult. The influence in such cases becomes dominating and at one point, you can’t even say if that’s how you’d intend things to happen.

I’ve to confess here that I began this post with a completely different content in mind. As I began writing and discovering things for myself, I had to change the title 6 times and finally leave it at ‘The Prerequisites Of Possibility’. That’s one reason I like three things: TED, self-questioning and my blog.

The manifestation of argument in the great political debate

• Argument as government: In all, and especially, the industrial democracies of this world, the implementation of the decisions of the state as a discernible body on the functioning of the society is essentially a product of the great political debate. Even though a party has been elected to power, the basis of the presence of argument during the triumphant party’s tenure is contained in the fact that democracy does not halt at granting the citizen his vote, but at crediting him with having influenced the making of a decision in the senate. In fact, in a colloquial sense, democracy would indeed be perceived as the protection of the powers of the citizen on a national level at the very least. However, the strength of democracy lies not completely in the strength of this protection, but in the manifestation of these powers that have been safeguarded by it. As a result, in my opinion, democracy is not the modus operandi of a state post-polity, but the documented encouragement of debate and contention between different leaders and, eventually, different responsibilities. The face of the governing party is only the face of the nation for other states, but within, it is the citizen and rightly so. Argument, even a non-ideal one, dutifully fosters the inculcation of discipline and morality amongst the most narrow-minded amongst us, and when it is that the future of a burgeoning nation of a billion depends on the decisions of a volatile oligarchy, agreement and opposition are both equally essential in the making of a decision. One cannot afford to pin all of one’s hopes on the mindset of one man.

• Argument as representation of the voter:

The big picture

Drawn above is a simple representation of the electoral process in India. Voters from all over the nation vote to elect the central government, which may be a single party which manages to secure the minimum majority of 272 seats (out of a total of 543) in the lower house, Lok Sabha, or multiple parties that coalesce under the umbrella of a common goal. Once a party has been lofted to the center, a ministry is formed that manages the various portfolios. As I stated earlier, the decision of the citizenry in electing such and such a government is questioned in the senate when argument is used as a tool for decision-making. If the ruling party wins the argument, the investment of the voting populace is vindicated. If the ruling party (or parties) meets with formidable opposition that it cannot quell with sufficient conviction, we the people will have made a mistake, nay wronged.

• What the good arguer has: In his ‘Language and Responsibility’ (1977), noted linguist Noam Chomsky asks only the following from any man who has an opinion:

1. 1. The capability of facing the facts objectively,
   2. The usage of a rational line of common sense,
   3. A Cartesian sense of argument, per se, and
   4. A little skepticism.

Whenever there is some “breaking news” in the air, the various components of the mass media, especially the news channels on the television, turn to professionals in fields pertaining to the content of the news in order to extricate an opinion that is either valuable by itself or is made so by repeated broadcasts. Why this esotericism? Why can’t the chap behind the desk ask you and me if the country has to intervene in Angola? When the above factors suffice to define the good arguer, why is it that I must be in possession of compatible certification to but profess a one-line opinion? What must be discussed is the content and not my right to discuss it!

• Isolation of power by conserving argument: Arguments can be brought to life by interpreting information, and information is nothing but the lingual interpretation of an event, the interpretation being performed in order to transmit and convey it to people who are unaware of the occurrence of it. The information we assess and digest everyday is proportional as well as dependent on the ideals of the local government, which governs the information that it thinks its people need to come into contact with, and the ideas and opinions of the people around us that constitute the populace in general. With a democratic government ruling the central aspects of the Indian economy, finance, industry, society and other aspects of living and development, the interests of each individual vested in it demands productive work day in and day out. On the other hand, the ruling government, to carry out its wishes, needs people other than those who control its functions to fall in line with their solutions. Due to the embedding of this fundamental rule, as it were, in the roots of the structure of every democratic state, information can only play a greater role in the lives of the people of the state every day. The conveyance of this information happens through the media, viz. print, audio, and audiovisual. The print media includes newspapers, magazines, newsletters, articles, essays, stories and others; the audio media includes, prominently, radio channels; video comprises of information delivered via telebroadcasting, movies, etc. The radio and the television are two modern techniques that have stolen the limelight of sorts from the print media. Owing to advancements in technology, of these two, the audiovisual media is growing steadily as well as quickly, borrowing from the inherently faster conveyance of data, the greater accessibility, and, with the incorporation of a sense of personality, the notion of originality and being specific to a given set of peoples with respect to their ethnicity involved is also born. Therefore, keeping in mind the importance of such a medium, its regulation has to be handled with care and finesse in order to get across your message while maintaining the original intensity of the purpose and the frequency of conveying it. But in a large, immensely populous, and democratic nation like India, apart from the already very many number of television channels, there are many more being operated by political parties. Although this does not constitute any violation of any rule for that matter, using the medium as a method of propaganda is not something I would suggest. You can not initiate and run programs just because it’s there for you to. In a way, it violates the right to information. How? Information is only when it is factual and wholly interpretative in a neutral manner. When you tamper and mess with it in order to get across a message that has been interpreted in a biased manner, it is a misrepresentation of the event that has occurred. You are now putting specific ideas in the minds of the people, ideas that can invariably lead only to a single conclusion. Furthermore, but in a partly trivial way, political propaganda must always begin and end during the time of elections for the local or national government, and must be nonexistent at all other times unless it is being projected via the deeds of those elected to office. Telebroadcasting can not be considered as a deed because it is propaganda itself, and parties that use this as a tool to brainwash the plebian and proletarian population in their favour is wrong. You will notice that now, with everyone around you being highly opinionated about some political party or the other, the ability to think freely and objectively will be on the decline.

Blessed Death Psychedelium

Most of my posts concern themselves with how perception varies from person to person, and how understanding (of anything and everything around us) is innately tied up as a Gordian knot with it. It takes an Alexander to cut through it, and that is what constitutes self realisation. Anyway, today, I was pondering on death. All my previous contentions were as to how the experience of living seems to be the same even though its perception is varied. On stumbling upon the concept of death, I understood the meaning of the inevitability it carried around dignifiedly. Even though what we make of everything that comes between birth and death is different, the beginning and the end remain the same for everyone. They cannot be changed nor altered, and remain perpetually unasked for; a part of the package, if you will.

Suppose that there is a table. On that table are two objects, for example two wooden cubes – one painted blue and one painted red. If the table were to represent reality, and the cubes represent birth and death, you are now witness to the way I take to these phenomena. In one of my previous posts, I had described about the concept of Maya and Brahman in Hinduism. Maya is the universal illusion, whereas Brahman is the Universal Truth. Truth and realism are one and the same – although their perception is not. Truth is an absolute concept. If person A says person B is not speaking the truth, then it may or may not be an assumption on A’s part that B is not speaking what constitutes A’s realism. In other words, A sees something in one way, and the bone of contention happens to be that B does not see things in the same way. If the ability to conceive varied perception was unavailable, then realism will cease to exist. Only the Universal Truth will be present and understandable. 

However, the untruth and illusion are not the same. The untruth is the negation of the truth. On the other hand, illusion is the perceived truth – or realism as we see it. Therefore, under our perusal, we have:

1. Truth
2. Illusion
3. Untruth

Birth is truth. Death is truth. Realism is illusion. The children of Maya are not necessarily illusions. The can of deodorant in front of my eyes is illusion. The fragrance it emits is true. The lava lamp above the shelf is illusion. The light it emits is true.

That being established, I now come to the concept of the soul. The soul, as it were, is true if one wants it to be. I want it to be. Why? Going by my argument:

• Core argument 1: There is only One Absolute Truth.
• Core argument 2: There can only be one True perception of it.
• Parallel argument 1: we are all part of the same Universe.
• Parallel argument 2: we all concur to the same Truth because of CA2 and PA1.
• Parallel argument 3: Sight (or visual perception) of the body that contains the soul is varied.
• Core argument 3: One perception of the Truth recapitulates that the body outside the soul is illusory.
• Parallel argument 4: I think therefore I am; the illusion I perceive as being around me is so because I think that it exists. In other words, the illusion exists only because I do. If I were not here to be able to perceive it, then the illusion itself does not exist anymore.
• Core argument 4: An element other than the body constitutes the Truth.

The soul is a hypotheses drawn from these conclusions – like in a physics laboratory, a graviton is hypothesised and simultaneously believed to be existent just so particle physics agrees with its Newtonian counterpart. So, getting back to the topic at hand, I believe the soul to be existent. As a side note, I would like to stress the independency of the soul as such from religion and religious beliefs. Pondering on one’s existential truths need not have anything to do with God or any of His minions. Yes, I am a religious and God-fearing man, but that only means my Absolute Truth takes the form of a Supreme Being. To some, it may be moral values. To some others, it may be power. It can be anything. But everything that has nothing to do with the form of the Truth doesn’t have to be religious.

To be sitting on the floor of a 80 sq. ft. bedroom and contentedly typing away on a Razer (Arctosa!) keyboard is my realism. And thus is born life: as each one of us takes to Maya and Brahman in a unique way, we come across perceptions and experiences. Just as my senses bring to life the illusions of Maya, my experiences tell me that I am walking on the road that is life. Just as my experiences tell me that changes are happening and that I am finally blessed with the ability to track them, my death will tell me that my soul will break free from the container that is the body. Some people take to these things warily, and I don’t blame them. If we had been born such animals with the inability to look downwards at our paws, then mathematics would have been a distorted and bizarre dream. We are because we think. What we think of is up to ourselves. I believe in there being a Universal Truth. To a person to whom such a thing is absurd, his realism and his truths and untruths will lie elsewhere. The beauty of it all is that such things as the Truth and the Untruth will always exist in one form or the other. Our realism, as a last word, exists because of perception but, more so, in the self-assertion that whatever is perceived is real.    

Maya, Brahman & Karma: The True Standing of Hinduism

(I’ve written this more like a rhapsody because I got terribly confused in between!)

Amongst the various doctrines of Hinduism, the Vedas and the associated Vedantas play an extremely important role. The Vedas are classified into four volumes: Rig, Sama, Atharva, Yajur, whereas Vedanta represents the ‘end of knowledge’, rather the ‘complete knowledge’ (‘anta‘, Sanskrit for end). Now, the Vedas have to do with man’s realisation of Brahman, or the universal truth, whereas the Vedanta focus on the illusions of Maya, or the indescribable. The concept of Maya was first introduced by the great philosopher Adi Sankara, and deals with the illusions of the Universe. According to Hinduism, Brahman is the sole universal truth, thereby depriving Maya of its truisms. On the other hand, Brahman is realised only through transcendental meditation to pierce the veil of Maya, there by restoring Maya‘s truth. This is the reason she is referred to as the indescribable, since her truth contradicts itself. The concept of Maya itself is extremely difficult to comprehend. Maya is said to have been born from the dream of the Supreme Lord, and she carries forth the characteristics of the universe that make it perceptible, tangible. There is a good metaphor for godliness in this vision: when the Brahman is reflected on Maya, God is the image.

Maya

Here is a good example by Sri Sankaracharya as to the definition of Maya.

“Though the emission of ejaculate onto sleeping garments or bedclothes is yielded by the natural experience of copulation in a wet dream, the stain of the garment is perceived as real upon waking whilst the copulation and lovemaking was not true or real. Both sexual partners in the dream are unreal as they are but dream bodies, and the sexual union and conjugation was illusory, but the emission of the generative fluid was real. This is a metaphor for the resolution of duality into lucid unity.”

The meaning of duality mentioned above is twofold. Duality, in many schools of thought, is the representation of the good powers in the Universe, and the malignant powers. Some religious beliefs recognise both as Supreme Powers (bitheism), whereas some deign the evil as the altercation of the good. Maya, in her being, is born from the dream of the Supreme Lord, which in the case of Hinduism, is representative of the good. The other duality in question is a reference to the two elements of body and mind.

If Brahman were to be constituted as the soul of the self, then the mind would come to represent the knot that firmly establishes the relationship between matter and consciousness. Matter, again, is but a section of Maya herself, and therefore, the perception of the self as being real and true is derived from Maya. Does this mean the self is also illusory? If so, then the body is only a garment. If not, then the body is real and assumes the form of the Truth. But Brahman being declared the sole truth, the concept of Karma comes into action. The mortal is, now, enchained to a cycle of births and deaths until he attains Moksha from Samsara. Karma is the causality of everything and not the cause itself. Man errs. In doing so, his payment for his sins results in him assuming multiple bodies (or garments). My grandfather used to say that if I trampled an ant, I would be reborn as an ant in my next life. However, if the act is committed unknowingly or at the behest of fulfilling a higher purpose, it is not constituted as a sin. For example, there was this tale of a rich merchant who proudly harboured the thought that he had never committed a sin in his life. However, one day, he stamped a cockroach to death. Paranoid and attempting to release himself from accusations of being a sinner, he comes out of his house and hands the cockroach to Ram the sweeper on the street, and asks him to partake of the sin completely. When judgment day arrives for both the men, the sweeper is not consigned to Hell. The merchant is curious and asks the Lord why. The Lord replies that in being a sweeper, Ram’s duty was to kill little insects that troubled other people, and therefore, he was not sinning in killing those insects. Anyway, the presence of Karma Yoga is what results in rebirths. However, at the end of these cycles of life, when a person attains Moksha, the elements of the Universe are finally understood as being the various fixtures of Maya, including Karma itself.

When I, as a child, was exposed to Hinduism and its various beliefs and scriptures, I was of the impression that they were all true (like how a child thinks the story of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ is true). But I never really thought Hinduism had such firm basis on the argumentative verges of philosophical thinking. I  may not know what the Brahman actually stands for other than being the Universal truth, but the reasoning behind it seems intact. The ideas of meditation (as a means to attain Brahman) have totally swept over my head other than for the sole reason of finding peace. But meditation itself has a deep inner meaning I learn. To discover the One true self within ourselves is no simple task. There are tales buried in the many thousand pages of the Hindu scriptures of great sages undertaking strict penances in order to realise Brahman. We, as humans, lay buried beneath the infinitely many layers of Maya and her imagery that, given the complexity of our supposedly illusory lives, we can’t truly recognise Brahman even if we were to stumble across it. In the metaphor I mentioned above, God is the image of Brahman on Maya. It is our belief that godliness is true, and that God as a being does exist. It is a general belief as well as a consensus amongst most believers that the concepts of Maya, Brahman and Karma are very complex and intricate. Many worship God just ask for a favour without really understanding that they are asking the True Self hidden within them for a favour! It is the understanding of these principles that delivers Hinduism its true standing.

The Writers' Crib

By the writers’ crib, I don’t mean their cribbing; I mean their tool-room, the place where they derive their ideas from, their sources of inspiration. A writer begins to write when he wishes to express his ideas, when he believes that there might be others who will want to learn of what he has learnt, understood or perceived. The language he chooses to use will be the language he finds most convenient to write in, one in which his grammar and the way he structures his sentences will reflect perfectly in the messages that the reader comes to understand. There must be no conflict, and there must be an inherent brevity that says the writer need not use an unnecessary number of words to express himself completely. The style of writing, the flavouring of the text, which he employs will deliver the mood of the text, and thereby let the reader know which side of the argument he is on, if indeed there is one. If not for an argument- well, I think there are always arguments: this conforms to my principles of a binary world! The language and the grammar decided, next is the perspective if the writer. Now, the perspective is, I think, independent of the subject at hand. Why do I think this? Because, herein the good earth I think there are a set of symbols, a set of signs, that tell us that there exist an interconnectivity between all things, objects as well as beings. Whether the writer writes of a pencil, or of the Vietnam war, he will always write in a such a manner as to reflect his perception of the world and those who inhabit it. This perception cannot be stolen from the mind’s eye, and cannot be changed easily. Perception as I would define it, is an understanding that is born from our innate personality. Moreover, this personality doesn’t come to account for our perception just by the name, but also by what it exhibits in turn: our up bringing, our religion, our nativity, our patriotism, our identity, our imbued humanity. The degree to which we adhere to these elements of our living defines our perception, and narrows it or broadens it depending on how we exercise them. And now, looking beyond the perception, there is nothing but objectification. Objectification is identification, not association. Perception is. When we perceive an object, we identify it, true, but then, we also move on to understand our relationship with it. When we believe that we have a possibly meaningful relationship in the offing, we give the object a name. By giving a name, we have established association.

When, at our most basic levels, we are confined to the mind and how it perceives the objects around us, our perception of the more complex ones follows a simple mathematical principle: we tend to break down those complex events into smaller and smaller ones, until we have in our hands a multitude of the simple events.

Now, the symbols in this earth. What are they? How do they look like? I don’t know. Are they there? Yes they are. How do you know? Let me tell you. Look at this picture.

Red 'X' in white?

What do you see in this picture? Do you see a red ‘X’ on a white page? Of course you do. Everyone does. But what everyone fails to notice is that, why do we always see only the red ‘X’? Why not the white background? Why don’t we see the white background as having a red-coloured ‘X’ shaped cavity? Or why don’t we see a white pattern on a red background?Why do we tend to prioritise the symbol over its background, and why do we not consider the background itself as a symbol to be existent? Well, in this particular case, it may have been because of the familiarity of the symbol as an alphabet, but what about a very many number of other symbols? Simply, why do we associate more with those symbols that are easier to perceive? The difficulty to perceive another symbol doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist!

Imagine this. There is a stainless, white wall. Perfectly white. There is a perfectly white table in front of it. On this table is a semi-hemispherical orange bowl. If you were to stand at a distance of around 3 metres, how would you know that that orange coloured object is a bowl? First and foremost, you will know that by its shape. The curvature, and a flat section towards the bottom will tell you that it is a bowl. What gives this bowl an image of being curved? This is obtained from its relation to its background. If man had been living in a world composed only of circles, and if the line hadn’t been discovered yet, he would not know of linearity. He will be able to perceive only curvature, and therefore, he will not identify the circle for what it is. Similarly, since man knows the line, he can recognise the circle for what it is. Deriving another analogy, the shape of the bowl is understood by how it cuts out the background. In this case, you know the object is a bowl only by how a section of the wall is hidden from your sight: the section that is hidden is instead covered by an orange, semi-circular patch.

Therefore, if you were to think of it, there is a red ‘X’ on white paper, or there is a red ‘X’ shaped cavity in the white symbol that is the paper. The difference between the two is prioritisation. Through this selective prioritisation, we allot a certain density to some parameters we find easier to work with, and therefore, write about. This is the reason more than one single perception exists in the world. Look at the number of symbols you have splattered have around you in your daily life. Have you ever wondered whether the symbol you perceive is the only symbol in sight? Those for whom there seems to be no harm in this selective prioritisation can move on. But for those who are seeking a solution to something, this is some food for thought.

The end of the world?

See more pwn and owned pictures

(The text reads: I was watching Inconvenient truth the other day and theres this bit where it shows the sea level rising really high and flooding most of the world. Well I live near the sea, don’t want to drown, so I got to thinking. Maybe if we lower the sea level a bit, when the water level rises then it won’t rise high enough to flood. Anyway, here’s the plan. Everyone who can should take a bucket of sea water and pour it down the sink. If lots of people put the effort in, we could lower the sea level substantially and make a better world for our children to live in.)

THE END OF THE WORLD? A lot of stuff’s been going on about the end of the world as foretold in the Mayan calendar, WW3 as predicted by Nostradamus, and the LHC experiment to be conducted by CERN in 2012. Amidst all of this, the debates also rage around the recent Mumbai blasts and India’s suspected attack (either military or diplomatic :P) against Pakistan. To top it all, US Secy. of State, Condoleezza Rice, lands up in India and asks us to calm down and not go to war – look who’s talking! We’ve taken a gazillion terror strikes up our ass and we’re contemplating war, while they take in just one and wage war against two countries!

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I think we should be heard too. Here’s what’s going around my hostel here in Dubai!

Bala: We must go to war! If India can produce a list of terrorists with their contact details in Pakistan, it can’t be a fake. If Pakistan refuses to extradite them, then it’s a case of failure to show goodwill. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough politicians at the top with a backbone. But war is the best option! BrahMos it off!

Nair: I hate America! But I don’t know if I’m a communist, although I’m pro-BJP. And who the **** are those A******ns to step into our soil and ask us not to go to war! Mind your own business, *************! You know what India should do? Just walk into Pakistan! Like in civilian clothes! Give a **** not for them! I hate America!

Sawant: Going to war is not an option. Even if both countries have nukes, the use of a nuclear weapon is highly regulated, and no matter how many nukes we have – use one and we’re ******. But I’ve been wondering. What if this is a ruse by the Al Qaeda or some other clan to distract Pakistan’s attention on India? If that was it, then they’ve succeeded. I think we should stick to a diplomatic victory now.

Iyyer: Oh… I didn’t know!

MS: We shouldn’t continuously blame Pakistan. If A says we’re not involved in any of the activities of C, and don’t know where C is hidden inside A, then B should try something other than placing the blame on A, ‘cos that’s just foolish and a waste of important time. Oh, and A is Pak, B is India, and C is who ever it is.

Funny Man: I think India should use its floating tanks. They exist, I tell you! Tanks that float in water! You know how it works? I know! I’ll tell you. It’s made of metal, and it is hollow inside, so it will float. And India has 1000 nukes, and Pakistan has 4. What are we waiting for?!

Bala: THEY’RE CALLED SHIPS!

The_MJ: It’ll be sexy, no?! The end of the world as we know it in 2012! Amazing! I’m just gonna spend my money on all that I’ve ever wanted! But I do hope the world ends after that. I don’t want to come back to life in 2013 and find that I’m bankrupt!

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Anyway, the most fiery search these days on Google happens to be Nostradamus and his predictions. I myself have received some hundred visitors looking for his ideas on WW3. Along with the rumour that the Mayans thought the world was gonna end in 2012, I think 2012 ought to be one intense year of speculation and anticipation. Something has to happen then! A famed seer and an age old civilization have both earmarked these next four years for some apocalyptic event. When I believe that I am a man of science and one having faith only in scientific reasoning, I am only led to think that the Illuminati or the Priory of Sion are still active, them and their fabled secrets.

That reminds me of the CERN people. Apparently, they have this kick-ass experiment scheduled for performance in 2012 at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider). I’m sure there must be one or two loons in there hurrying to build that damned thing and leave before it implodes into a black hole. Fine, I’ve conceded that I’m waiting for 2012 to happen. Now think of the scientists! If they postpone or advance the experiment, it will mean that they’ve surrendered to non-scientific reasoning. If they do hold the experiment as per schedule, then it’s gotta be with them biting their nails and stuff.

For once, science isn’t freaking me so much!