A thought per day

I do not know…

contemplator — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 12:18:13 +0000

whether through design or by choice, we seem to be such good conductors of the negatives, always adding out bit to the snowball; but when its turn for the good tidings, one hardly knows how it dies down before the shore.
Thgought Bubbles: Art of Living inspiration, Humanity needs happiness: tons of it, Let us not doubt happiness, Lets add our share to it, Lets sleep only upon the share that we add

Material insights…

contemplator — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:23:41 +0000

maybe temporary, but spiritual ones have to transcend time. Therein, lies the burden of proof.

Thought Bubbles: Permanence in Hinduism, The Banana and the Banyan trees: Fruit versus permanence

Goddess Lakshmi…

contemplator — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:25:41 +0000

is thought to have emerged from the Samudra manthan: a Goddess from the earth.

Thought Bubbles: Wealth has always been from the earth below while Gods are always from the heaven above, Lakshmi Puja, Deepavalli

When learning,…

contemplator — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:49:50 +0000

a crucial step is to be able to associate rewrads and penalties to appropriate past actions.

Thought Bubbles: How Reinforcement Learning succeeds, How humans in life don’t always

Even the smallest step…

contemplator — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:46:36 +0000

towards North seems so far distanced from such a step towards South.

Thought Bubbles: Career options, Is it because we are still too close to the origin?

Money, afterall…

contemplator — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:44:08 +0000

is a vasana.

Thought Bubbles: There are no experts: one people with varying amounts of greed and appetite, The financial collapse

Life is best lived..

contemplator — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:31:16 +0000

serving those who are generous with their gratitude.

Thought Bubbles: October rains in Mumbai, How off-season rains are savoured so much more

Moore’s law…

contemplator — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:14:45 +0000

as a side-effect, makes believe that everything about the industry has to be at a frantic pace: even research.

Thought Bubbles: The overheads of technology in research, Simplification, How American a term ‘make believe’ is

Deity-devotee relationship…

contemplator — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 03:25:07 +0000

is a model for so many others.

Thought Bubbles: What religion teaches us? Mythology as education. Leader-follower, husband-wife, parent-child

Compassion should…

contemplator — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:52:10 +0000

indeed be higher than justice.

Thought Bubbles: Gandhi Jayanti, The organic need for justice

The dream…

contemplator — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 04:15:58 +0000

and the dreaming are two very different things.

Thought Bubbles: The movie: Welcome to Sajjanpur, Hindi movies: aspirational for the masses

The last…

contemplator — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 05:05:49 +0000

the last drop, from the roof top
force of gravity, innocent vitality
earthly acceleration, yet levitation
the inconsequential bit, the final hit

Thought Bubbles: End of rainy season in Mumbai, The drop as a model for detachment

Ganesha…

contemplator — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:26:07 +0000

is probably the most lovable God worshiped.

Thought Bubbles: Pot-belly and opulence, Krishna vs Ganesha – Ganesha a God-friend, Ganesh chaturthi

My life, I learn, is…

contemplator — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:41:10 +0000

like a synchronous circuit, needing a global clock to trigger events, however irrelevant.

Thought Bubbles: The need for and struggle towards detachment, Failure at GRE, DFS

More…

contemplator — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:03:05 +0000

Bliss strained her face, no more
Caprice shared her bed, no more
Gravity taxed her ink, no more
All was lost as he was no more

Blogging…

contemplator — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:48:05 +0000

on thoughts is reality thrice removed.

Thought Bubbles: Plato, Truth (Ideas) → Materialism (The world) → Impression (Art) → Thoughts on impressions (Blogging)

“Love is an…

contemplator — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:05:04 +0000

interpersonal creative capacity rather than an emotion.”

Thought Bubbles: Eric Fromm, Art of lOving: the book

Birth-death cycle…

contemplator — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:39:07 +0000

as a theory, renders everything ephemeral and hence equal: arising from and belonging to the same source.

Thought Bubbles: Hiniduism: Its distinguishing stance on the non-existence of a permanent heaven, Devas and Asuras as merely qualifications of Karmic balance-sheets

Solitude as a…

contemplator — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 03:30:52 +0000

counterposture to intimacy, makes us worthy of sharing ourselves.

Thought Bubbles: Eventually man is social and everything revolves around that. Is this really true? Nature? Higher being?

When strength is built…

contemplator — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 07:49:08 +0000

from innocuous tiddlers of might; what appears is beauty, beyond anything else.

Thought Bubbles: TiddlyWiki, My search for a personal Wiki ends, Sweet nothings for nerds

The trinity of…

contemplator — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 18:53:10 +0000

man, woman and child.

Thought Bubbles: The movie: August Rush, Nature (Music) as the centroid

Repentance elicits…

contemplator — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:09:53 +0000

probably the most empathetic of human emotions.

Thought Bubbles: Hurt: The song and video by Johnny Cash, Walk the line: The movie

Light never illuminates…

contemplator — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:35:09 +0000

as much as the darkness, there is, without it.

Thought Bubbles: The book – The inheritance of loss, Kiran Desai’s cruelly true portrayal of ordinary frailties of ordinary humans

The Darker aspects of The Dark Knight

contemplator — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:34:51 +0000

… because sometimes it takes more than thoughts and invisible bubbles to digest two and half hours of Nolan.

The Dark Knight was breathtaking and the fact that it lasts a whole 150 minutes left me gasping for air. However, I first want to sit down and write aspects I DINT like of the movie, because it is the kinks which catch the eye first – kinks which with time inadvertently integrate into being part of the ‘bigger’ picture, but more importantly because the movie has been already tagged with an excessively sweet 9.7 on IMDB (and that too after 30K votes!), no dearth of sunshine there. So here is my contribution of some darkness on The Dark Knight.

The greatest let down for me was the character build up of the DA Harvey Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart), the ‘White Knight’ of the movie. The anticipated signifance of the character is brought out by Batman’s words towards the end, when he says that the Joker succeeded in defeating the best amongst the three of them (himself, Dent and Gordon). The character developed how ever was far from being true to those words: We see Dent brawling over department’s loyalties with Gordon, almost chukling in his office and his first appearance in the court was more pomp than substance. Actually, (given my complete ignorance regarding the plot before I stepped into the theater) I suspected that Dent was the rat, and that would settle the plot for good!
Now the part on the ships towards the end – It just dint fit with the theme of the movie at all: people actually show goodness and that too a ship full of convicted thugs. And to top it all Batman knew about it! I very strongly feel that the ‘actual’ plot would have had a few blown ships. But I guess it was just a means to assuage the already acute darkness in the movie and cut a few corners in the production dept.
This might sound really subjective, but to me Maggie Gyllenhaal just dint suit the character of Rachel Dawes and I was left missing the comely Katie Homes. Maybe its just a bias I have acquired from Maggie’s previous movies. But certainly, given her earlier works the casting appears dubious.
The Title! Comon’ its a Batman movie and already I have half a mind of complaining that he appeared to only fly across in the dark background, and on top of that the title. Now the title could allude to lot of things: but to me it is all about the darkness that the movie unravels. But the Dark Knight is certainly an unacceptable title for Batman given the context. LOTR parallels of Nazguls and Wtichking seem to cloud the angry mind. Pfff!
To me the movie is a touch heavy: probably with the metallic darkness more than anything else. The pace is frantic all through, aided by some splendid music (I am resisting letting out positives but this just had to be told). 150 mins of Nolanic(!) cuts into parallel sequences can be slightly distorting but definitely compel another viewing.

Bright light next time after a rerun.

The elevation of love…

contemplator — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:30:44 +0000

to worship, seems almost utopian.

Thought Bubbles: Books: The work of PremChand, Idealizing and idolizing women, The austerity of worshipping beauty, Goddesses in Indian culture

Cynicism is the worst…

contemplator — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:35:50 +0000

defense against the real world and its innumerable frailties.

Thought Bubbles: The earlier works of PremChand, Idealism in his voice

Intricate philosophical constructs…

contemplator — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:15:44 +0000

distinctively kindle the intellgence, but I guess they are far from being primal needs of a human.

Thought Bubbles: Rationalizing my difficulty in wading through philosophical profusion

Human emotions…

contemplator — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:26:34 +0000

seem to be a set of recurrent feelings with varying periodicities.

Thought Bubbles: The Fourier Transform of my emotions, How there are days when I have to feel like that

Success is…

contemplator — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:45:02 +0000

always a societal benchmark.

Thought Bubbles: Success is defined for a societal framework. Success is nothing when not shared? Movie: Into the Wild.

Reinforcement learning…

contemplator — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 03:26:36 +0000

as a theory requires that what is being learnt should eventually converge.

Thought Bubbles: Analogy to real life learning, Learning eventually converges?, Neuro-Dynamic Programming