"The question isn't who is going to let me,it's who is going to stop me."

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Goodbye To Life as We Know It

These are the Editor's words to the readers for THiNK : 0

The name of this piece. Its a homage. To Pink Floyd.It's taken from the name of a special in their Dual DVD edition of PULSE.
And it describes the feeling I have had at every major experience I care to call a watershed in my life. This one, the launch of THiNK zero, is up there with the best of them.

Well, I wont lie.This isn't my biggest moment ever.

Not as great as listening to Hey You on a perfect English morning on the lawns of Oval Maidan just before sunrise. Free . Floating.

Not as great as sitting on the deck of Libra, under a pale moon, with theocean stretching out in every direction, listeing to Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. Feeling Omnipotent. Feeling Alive.

No. But this is what I have put my heart and soul into over the last sixmonths. Sometimes, I came close to giving up. Sometimes, I felt like crap. Mostly though,I was a happy deluded ignoramus out to change the world and people's perception of it with my small idea.

But always, their was this feeling, this shimmer of hope, that I ain't alone in believing in expressing my thoughts. that there are others here who have something to say out to the rest of us.

That my motto is not mine alone. That it has meaning for others as well. My motto, my statement, my answer to everyone who asked me to explain my actions.

I Am.
Nothing else. Just that. A plain two word reply.

Coming back to Floyd. I first heard it 8 years ago. And have rediscoveredsomething new everytime I lay back, closed my eyes and floated away.

That was the first Goodbye. This is another one. I hope it is one for youtoo. That this effort on part of my friends who took the time out to shape this dream into something concrete has some meaning to you.

Maybe I'm hungry. Maybe I'm Foolish.
Maybe you understand. Maybe You Don't.

But at the end of the day, all that matters is those two words.
Your Answer. Your Justification for Your Existence.None.

I Am.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THiNK : 0 shall be launched on the First of April 2007.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

An ode to Counter Strike

The bug has bitten us. The Counter Strike epidemic is spreading. And fast. I guess it's one of the side effects of a "wired" life. All you hear all day long now in the lobby is: "Fire in the hole!!" No one seems to be able to resist the Counter Strike juggernaut....AOE fundamentalists have converted. Warcraft is passe. In the realm of LAN gaming, CS rules supreme unchallenged. No one seems to be caring about the exams either!

So do I like what's happening? Can't say. I'm an addict too. I mean yes I'm tired of the snipes and headshots that I end up on the receiving end of, but then there's always that desire to keep playing.

Bleary eyes, aching metacarpals and throbbing temples..... no physical discomfiture seems to be strong enough to curb the zeal for the game. Servers run 24x7, interrupted only by the not-so-infrequent power cuts( that are greeted with the choicest expletives). DC++ forums are flooded with CS talk... casual banter on the games of the day and innumerable requests for CS IP's....

Wonder if this will ever end. I know for sure I don't want it to. 2 months of summer vacation may only increase BIT's obsession for CS.... So next semester when placements commence, don't be surprised if you hear a distressed call from inside the cell... I'd bet I heard something like :"Need Backup!!"

Monday, March 19, 2007

A Design Contest

THiNK is having a design contest, sponsored by JAM.

Here is the deal :

YOU draw/sketch/paint/create(as in collage / or on the comp) a piece of art, based on the theme provided by us.

In return,
The top 2 Entries get an year's free subscription of JAM,
with 3 Runner's up getting a 6 month's free subscription of JAM.

In case you are wondering what JAM is,
see it for yourself at JAM

Here is the theme:

The basic idea is to depict the need to break down walls created by social conventions, dogma and prejudice; to explore what lies beyond, irrespective of the consequences.
stay hungry, stay foolish !


One possible image (a suggestion) has been described by Zog, as:

Image :
From the perspective of the viewer :
He/she sees a wall. On the side of the wall, facing the viewer, he/she sees a numbar of fetal forms breaking the wall down with hammers/pikes/any other instruments they can lay their hands on.

Fetal Forms :
In the later stages of human fetal development, the embryo looks like a worm, with ridges on the back, a somewhat disproportionately large upper half with enormous eyes and a tapering tail like formation at the lower half. This fetal structure, with the hands and legs attached is the "Fetal form" of the image. They represent, in a sense, curiosity and freedom from predisposed notions - the ideal state for an anthropod.

What lies beyond, on the other side of the wall, is unknown, and yet something really big. It's nature however, is ambiguous. We do not know for sure, whether the knowledge of the unknown can cause a beneficial, malevolent, or other influence. Whatevr the case, explore it we must, because it will definately change the way we see ourselves and the world.

Hence, The ideology of THiNK.
The question to be asked is not Why? Its Why Not.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Honour, Courage and Fear

They say that a man can lose anything in his life and still be himself. But if he loses honour, then the man that was him does not remain. We will all disagree because in this world of ours, honour counts for nothing. Honour is just another commodity that people are willing to sell in the market for some price. Maybe it is money, maybe a favour or maybe even the hand of a person you have wanted for years. In any case, the word honour and the ideas associated with it have disappeared or are fading away like a dying sun in winter. Maybe a twilight sun but dying away nevertheless. To such an extent that a man who keeps his honour is called a fool, taunted and made fun of behind and in front of his back.

In times like these, a man of honour should have one more thing. They call it courage. This is not the courage that you associate with a person on a battlefield. Yes, the basic ideas are the same but then the essence will change a little bit when the courage a man possesses is for the protection of his honour. Contrary to what the multitude thinks, courage is not the antithesis of fear. Courage is not even the absence of fear. Courage is what keeps a man going even when he is afraid. Fear is a sickness. A man living in a community, if he becomes afraid of anything, starts reeking of fear. The fear that he walks around with is contagious it spreads around him wherever he goes. It brings a feeling of unease into people even when they do not know what they are afraid of. Maybe nature has programmed us to be afraid when we do not know what is waiting for us out of our eyesight. This makes the mind make up a figure that maybe waiting for us. For people who have had a bad experience in life with something else, a frightening one maybe, this figure in their mind takes that shape. For the others, this figure remains a faceless one, on without identity or name. Maybe we are made that way so that we survive a longer time. What is waiting beyond your sight maybe a harmless monkey. But it may also be a ferocious and wounded lion. The dangerous kind. So why take chances, isn’t it?

Why take chances….this seems to be the mantra which people follow in their daily lives. If anything is going on well, why take a chance and ruin it all? There is only one area where people have been known to take great risks believing that that elusive lady called Luck may kiss them one more time. It is called Gambling. But then when a man is confronted with the possibility of losing his comforts, wealth, happiness and all that he holds dearly if he takes a risk, will he go for it?

I am drifting away from the original topic. Courage is a great thing, and one that is for a honourable causes automatically becomes greater. But then excessive courage becomes something that we are all very familiar with. Folly. Courage and folly are cousins, according to some and brothers according to others and twins according to the cowards.

Modern literature does not say much on the concept of honour. Some areas where you can see courage and honour are in the ancient epics, be it Indian, Geek, Norse or Egyptian. Commentaries on these books are abound with mentions of honour of heroes, heroes who would give up everything to keep their honour intact. And in the end what does it serve them? A man will die no matter what. So why can’t he keep his honour in some dark corner of his conscience to save what he loved?

We cannot answer this question. Why? Because we don’t know what it is to have honour. We don’t know what it is to feel like when we and our nearest suffer to save the honour. Weird thing, this honour. Coming back to modern literature’s take on honour, if one searches hard enough, he will reach the realm of fantasy literature in his search of honour. No, I am not talking of Harry Potter. His world is set in our own time and hence the concept of honour does not apply. But if one cares to look at those literatures which create a timeline and world of their own like Tolkien’s Legendarium, or George R.R Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire”, honour stares back at us from every page. You always have people saying yes or no according to the situation for the sake of honour. Not necessarily theirs but for honour nevertheless.

Bismarck said once that the End Justifies the Means. This is the line that is a reflection of our thoughts. No one cares how success was achieved as long as it was achieved. Loss of lives or honour does not faze these success addicted people. A good example would be of course The Great Adventures of George.W.Bush, Jr. I am not going into this topic as it is a clichéd subject and there are many others who will willingly write a 1000 page treatise on this topic.

I have been thinking about the thing called Fear. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it s a disease. Two people traveling in a plane talked to each other in sign language. A woman who saw this got scared. Pretty soon the whole flight was scared to death and the next thing you know, two fighter planes escorted the plane to an airport and the people who started it all were interrogated for hours. This is what the terrorists are so good at doing. All they have to do is strike fear in the hearts of the common folk and the next thing you know is that half the countryside is scared shitless.

Even history is full of accounts in which invading Kings have used nothing but the power of fear to conquer cities. One good example is Genghis Khan. He would attack a city and sack it. The battle finishes fast but the slaughter continues. You have rape, pillage and murder all going on side by side. Women are raped and killed in front of their husbands, children are killed in front of their mothers and in the end, Genghis would have a mountain of heads belonging to the former occupants of the city. The few people who manage to flee the sack rush to the nearest city and pretty soon all the cities in the neighborhood are drowned in fear which makes it easy for the great conqueror to finish off his job.

But there are also instances when armies pushed off fear and fought to the death instead of cowering like cowards. Take the case of the Battle of Thermopylae. A huge Persian army numbering million according to some, hundred thousands according to others were facing an army of less than thousand Spartans. The Persians waited for days hoping to intimidate the Spartans by the size of their army. The Spartans, seemingly unconcerned about the opposing army’s size also waited for the Persians to attack. The Persians were incredulous that an army numbering barely a thousand would dare to face its huge army. So then they fought, and the Spartans made the Persians pay dearly for each life that they lost. The Persian army won but not before the bravery of those Spartans was etched for eternity in the annals of history. I believe they are now making a movie out of it…

Read history, it is a fun thing. So much can be learnt from it that no one can teach…

Targaryen

Monday, March 12, 2007

You Are Fortunate If, Your Mom Is 'Mean'

the foll. is taken from the 'Speaking Tree'(TOI)


Some day when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a parent, i will tell them, as my Mean Mom told me: I loved you enough... to ask where you were going, with whom, and what time you would be home.


I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover that your new best friend was a creep. I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your room, a job that should have taken me just 15 minutes.

I loved you enough to let you see anger, disappointment, and tears in my eyes. Children: Parents aren't perfect, you know.

I loved you enough to let you assume the responsi-bility for your actions even when the penalties were so harsh they almost broke my heart.

But most of all, i loved you enough... to say "NO" when i knew you would hate me for it. Those were the most difficult battles of all.

I'm glad i won them, because in the end you won, too. And some day when your children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates parents, you will tell them. Was your Mom mean? I know mine was.

We had the meanest mother in the whole world! While other kids ate candy for breakfast, we had to have cereal, eggs, and toast.

When others had a Pepsi and a Twinkie for lunch, we had to eat sandwiches. And you can guess our mother fixed us a dinner that was different from what other kids had, too.

Mother insisted on knowing where we were at all times. You'd think we were convicts in a prison. She had to know who our friends were, and what we were doing with them.

She insisted that if we said we would be gone for an hour, we would be gone for an hour or less. We were ashamed to admit it, but she had the nerve to break the Child Labour Laws by making us work.

We had to wash the dishes, make the beds, learn to cook, vacuum the floor, do laundry, empty the trash and all sorts of cruel jobs.

I think she would lie awake at night thinking of more things for us to do. She always insisted on us telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

By the time we were teenagers, she could read our minds and had eyes in the back of her head. Then, life was really tough!

Mother wouldn't let our friends just honk the horn when they drove up. They had to come up to the door so she could meet them. While everyone else could date when they were 12 or 13, we had to wait until we were 16.

Because of our mother we missed out on lots of things other kids experienced. None of us have ever been caught shoplifting, vandalising others'property or ever arrested for any crime.

It was all her fault. Now that we have left home, we are all educated, honest adults. We are doing our best to be mean parents just like Mom was. I think that is what's wrong with the world today.

It just doesn't have enough mean moms!

Friday, March 02, 2007

METAL GAUNTLET

One of the major and most popular forms and styles of music is metal. It is so popular in some parts of the world that many people believe that it’s a way of life and it fulfils and completes them when they feel inadequate. This style of music can be traced to its origins in the late 70s and 80s along with its cousin ROCK. Influences to this style are many and some ironic such as Blues, Folk and operas. Many of the major scales in the guitar work have been adopted and imbibed from these styles. One of the founders of this kind of music has been BLACK SABBATH, a British band with an inclination towards the dark side of the human psyche. Along with bands like Judas Priest, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath created a huge impact on people who wanted something different, something raw and something aggressive. From then on, there was a rapid increase in the number of bands, styles and subspecies of metal.

The most popular subspecies were Black, Death, Goth and Heavy. The front runners in Death were Cradle of Filth, Corrosions of Conformity. Death metal was ruled by bands like Obituary, Cannibal Corpse, Venom etc. Heavy Metal bans were Pantara, Sepulture etc. Besides three subspecies there were many variants such as Doom, Melodic Death, Blackwave, Darkwave, Speed, Trash, New Wave of British and American metal, Metal Core, Viking, Operative, Symphonic, Industrial, Shock and many more.

One thing common to all these styles and variants was that they all exhibited an aggressive and rebellious attitude towards the normal man and his way of life. They showed their uniqueness by their music. Many of these outfits came under fire for their antics and views on sensitive issues like society, religion etc. They did not create their music to go commercial but to express their emotions on certain issues. Another important feature in metal music is that most of the metal outfits deal with emotions of man such as hate, pain, sorrow, misery, envy, greed etc. these bands create songs related to their past experiences and their feelings. Since they are commercial they hit right in the hearts of people who can relate their feelings to the songs. With the rise in the styles of music, there have been many new techniques invented and practiced to perfection with a flare of uniqueness.

Growling gutturals and screeching vocals, galloping bass, screaming guitars and thunderous drums are the main stays of metal. In a glance the combination of all the above may sound like noise to any layman. But people with ability to understand can appreciate and enjoy metal. Its like any drug, once you have tasted it you want more and more and are never stop loving it. It’s so addictive that it becomes a part of you. One last thing, people who don’t appreciate the beauty, superiority of this music and claim that they are music lovers, I can say only one thing ---- F*#Φ YOU.

Leper.

RIPPED

Alone on a misty road, when the night froze like hell,

When the snow from God’s womb reaches down with a chilly smell,

My ripped heart that drips with sorrow, in vain I try to fill the holes,

That fire burning inside me as it slowly smokes my soul.

Slice by slice my life was cut and my world came crashing upon my feet.

Hopes shattered, dreams lost, alone I was facing that strange cold heat.

Many questions were unanswered and even more answers unasked.

I tried to search the missing in me but a tear slipped and dropped.

Under the dark night sky I walk, with nothing but a heavy heart,

I question the existence of this overburdened life and the answer cuts me further apart.

I see a ray of light in that dark tunnel of pain,

I looked up in search of a hint and down poured the rain.

For those times we spent together,

Those promises to each other we made,

All disappeared like castles on the beach,

When they are hit by the coming wave.

With an ambiguous mind and a restless soul I hope that you return,

A single birth was too short for me to know you and I never got my turn.

I hope that we cross again and that love between us always stays the same.

No matter how many times God takes you away from me, I will be born for you again.

Ankur Saxena

HEROIN-FROM BUNKER 13

Aniruddha Bahal

It was during that period (Renaissance) in the sixteenth century that the Swiss-German physician Bambastus von Hahenheim accomplished the pharmacological breakthrough of producing a tincture of opium by mixing it with alcohol and calling it laudanum. The concoction saturated Europe and civilization was on track for sedation on a mass scale. The following generations fiddled with Hahenheim’s pharmacological forerunner, which became the indispensable tool of medicine in the eighteenth century.

In 1805, however, it was left `to another German, Frederick Serturner, to isolate the alkaloid of morphine from opium. This separation of the principal ingredient from the parent compound was a dazzling feat. It unleashed into the market a drug ten times more powerful than opium. There was another first for Germany, when Bayer company started the commercial production of heroin in 1898.

Heroin wasn’t Germany’s only area of chemical triumph. In 1855, the German physicist Frederick Gaedcke isolated the active principle of cocaine. World War II also saw the invention of methadone as a substitute for Heroin in Germany.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Brace up for the future..

I don't belong to the doomsday cult and I'm not a pessimist, but there are reasons to believe that the future MAY not be as rosy as we may want to expect. India has had a honeymoon run in the past three years....everybody's feeling great....and there are a lot of jobs out there....But we have reason to believe that things might change. The US is going the recession way. Any American slowdown will imply a global slowdown and recessions in emerging markets like ours...The symptoms were clear yesterday.... the Sensex crashed not only due to a sucky budget but also because global markets are sniffing an American recession... and India's markets being more globalised than ever could not have stayed unaffected...

We've had it pretty good in the last couple of years haven't we? Plenty of jobs in the marketplace..higher salaries...lots to choose from....but any reality checks will force companies to constrict their recruiting habits...which will affect us directly...

Of course all this may never happen. In which case we may continue our dream runs.....but it's nice to know the possibilities