The Omegle Reading List

This post needs a backstory to make any sense - so, here goes.

I was on StumbleUpon two days back when I came across Omegle. It looked interesting, and I decided to give it a try. My theory: If you type "Do you like to read?" in an chat window, any pervert on the other end would quit. This seemed to work, for the first few people I got connected with disconnected almost immediately. I also got a reply of "Yes, I love Twilight"- I disconnected.

But after that, I got someone who said that s/he loved to read. It led on to the question - Can you suggest something for me? Well, from the books that that person talked about, I suggested Contact, and asked for a suggestion in return. The result? "Flowers for Algernon", by Daniel Kayes. After I ended the chat, I realised that I had just gotten a book recommendation from someone whom I knew absolutely nothing about. If I tried this a few more times, what sort of collection would I end up with?

For some time now, I've noticed that I read a lot but I stick to a few genres and authors. Asking for book recommendations on a world-wide chat forum would be sure to break this cycle. So, I typed this up and pasted it on the chat after the initial question.

This is my plan - Get 10 book recommendations from anonymous people here, read as many of them as possible, put up a review of each of them on my blog. So far, I've got:

-------List of books-----

Can you give me your favourite to add to this list?

In a surprisingly short time, and with not many disconnections, (People do love to read) I got this list:

1. Flowers for Algernon
2. Ranger's Apprentice
3. Tomorrow when the war began
4. The girl with the dragon tattoo
5. We were soldiers once, and young
6. Of Mice and Men
7. The five people you meet in heaven
8. Maximum Ride
9. Silence of the lambs
10. The shark net

So, that's the story behind the Omegle reading list. I'm planning to read as many of these I can get my hands on.

When am I hoping to finish it? I have no idea. I'm just replacing my usual reading with these. I'm not putting off any other stuff (and there's a lot) in order to complete the list.

Will I finish the list? Hopefully.

Will I like all of them? Probably not.

Will the books teach me something new, and broaden my mind on one or two things? Almost definitely, yes. (A theoretical physicist has to remember the small but finite probability of anything.)

Right now, the time I have for reading is pretty short, but I think I can get another 30-40 minutes more if I quit random browsing and Zynga. I've started off the project by borrowing Silence of the Lambs.

Let's see how this turns out.

Sparkly sexist vampires > Space-Time curvature?

I haven't blogged for over three months. I did map out a number of posts, some on paper, some in my mind, but I never got around to sitting down and typing them out. But I came across something on the Web just now which I have to SCREAM about.

It's this:

The top search suggestion on Google for 'step' is Stephenie Meyer! Take a look at the people 'below' her - the second name is Stephen Hawking, and two steps down, there's Stephen King, who is one of the best writers of horror fiction. And as for Hawking....

My sister gave me Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" for my 16th birthday. I don't think I've ever held a book so reverently, or learnt so much from a single book after that. In it, Dr.Hawking presents cosmological concepts and theories in a simple narrative style, chapter after chapter. When I studied cosmology in M.Sc, I found that the theories in the book are a little oversimplified. But why did I study cosmology? Stephen Hawking was definitely a reason. His book is an inspiration to thousands, if not millions of young students. It is also an excellent resource for the even larger population who are curious about the Universe but have lost touch with mathematics.

So, what do I have against Stephenie Meyer? Absolutely nothing, except that all she has done is write the Twilight 'Saga.' (ugh)

I don't hate Twilight because hating it is fashionable. I hate it because I did read the books - I read the 50-odd pages in the first three books that remain if you skip the 'Edward is so handsome' parts. As for Breaking Dawn, I read it till the wedding and stopped because my pharyngeal reflex works. Talking about the Twilight 'Saga' is redundant, as the bad writing, sexism, and sparkly vampires in it have been discussed very well.

When more people are interested in the person who wrote Twilight than the person who wrote A Brief History of Time, all I can say is:

'நெஞ்சு பொறுக்கு திலையே - இந்த
நிலைகெட்ட மனிதரை நினைத்துவிட்டால்'

அன்னையர் தினம்

அன்னையர் தின நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள்!

Happy Mother's Day!

Clean Surfing

The Internet is the biggest single source of knowledge in the history of humankind. The problem is that it's not a source of facts,just knowledge that ranges from hard facts to absolute nonsense.

This wide spectrum leads to the accidental viewing of dirty images or animations and profanity while you are doing serious research. Removing the unnecessary elements can make browsing faster and much more enjoyable. For a family computer, filtering these elements is a necessity rather than a convenience. In this post, I am going to run through the steps to filter out unnecessary images, flash videos, advertisements and profanity.

Here is an example of a webpage with all elements present. I've chosen one with clean graphics.

(A note here - Advertisements are how Websites get their revenue, so blocking them is unethical in a way. I prefer to let the site load, take a look at the content and then unblock the advertisements - the sites don't lose revenue, and no weird images burn themselves onto my hard disk.)

Now, here are the steps to remove the unnecessary stuff:

Install Mozilla Firefox – the latest version. As it is open source, the browser is much easier to customize.

Install the following add-ons:

1. Image Switcher - This add-on lets you stop loading images with a single click. It's a good idea to block images while browsing, especially when using StumbleUpon. After the text in the page load, you can decide whether to load the images or not.

2. Adblock Plus– This gets rid of most of the unnecessary images. But after installing, you may still see some advertisements that are flash based. The next add-on takes care of this.
   

3. Flashblock – This replaces all streaming videos, flash based ads, forms, animations with a button. If you want to play one of the animations, all it needs is a single click. It is easily customizable, so that you can allow some sites to automatically load flash.
   

4. Greasemonkey: This add-on lets you run scripts in your browser. This is not useful for our purpose by itself, but it is necessary for the next step.

5. Profanity filter - This is the script which runs using Greasemonkey. It is an experimental script, but it works fine for me on Ubuntu 9.10 with Firefox. It replaces all swear words with ***. To check the amount of profanity it protects you from, check the source code here.
   

6. Disable pop-ups - This does not need an add-on, just use the preferences in Firefox.
   

Now, here's the result:

Happy Surfing!

Hypatia of Alexandria

This post is a tribute to one of the greatest mathematicians of the ancient world, Hypatia (Yπατία) of Alexandria.

Hypatia at the School of Athens by Raphael

Hypatia was born between 350 and 370 A.D to the mathematician Theon Alexandricus, a librarian of the Library of Alexandria. She was trained in Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy and Philosophy, and was a Neoplatonist philosopher. She travelled to Athens and Italy to study (something unheard of for women at the time), and rose to the position of the Head of the Platonist school at Alexandria, where she taught the philosophy of Plato and Socrates to her students, some of whom travelled large distances to study under her.

She preferred to dress in the style of men and drive her chariot herself. She had a large number of students who were from Greece as well as other countries. Though most of her works have been lost in the dark ages, some of those we know about are:

• A commentary on the 13-volume Arithmetica by Diophantus.

• A commentary on the Conics of Apollonius

• Edited the existing version of Ptolemy's Almagest

• Edited her father's commentary on Euclid's Elements (According to one account, when she was 19)

• She wrote a text "The Astronomical Canon."(Possibly a new edition of Ptolemy's Handy Tables.)

She was a good engineer as well, and some of the inventions credited to her are the hydrometer, and a version of the astrolabe.

So...what was the fate of this remarkable woman? The church condemned her as a witch and accused her of bewitching the Imperial Prefect, Orestes. One day, on her way to work, she was mobbed by a group of men. She was pulled off her chariot, (by her hair according to one source) dragged through the city, and brought to a church called Caesarion. Here, she was stripped, and killed by scraping the skin off her body with broken tiles and shells. Her body was torn to pieces and burnt, and her bones scattered on the ground to bleach in the sun.

Carl Sagan talks about Hypatia:

Throughout history, Hypatia has been hailed as a saint, and condemned as a witch and a pagan. She has recently been sainted as a Virian Saint by the Church of Virus. In my opinion, Hypatia was a person who devoted her life to the pursuit of knowledge, and died because of her gender. The motive for her murder might have been political, but the actual deed – stripping and flaying, then leaving her bones in the sun - shows the fear that men have always had of an intelligent woman. If killing a person because of their identity makes them a martyr, Hypatia is a martyr to the feminist cause. She is, in a way, a Feminist Saint.

For her on Women's Day:

போற்றி போற்றி! ஓர் ஆயிரம் போற்றி! நின்

பொன்ன டிக்குப்பல் லாயிரம் போற்றிகாண்

More Sketches....

I tried sketching the kids in my family...

Types of Atheism

When I tell people that I don't believe in God, I'm usually asked whether I follow someone's teachings. Or if I belong to a certain political party, or if I'm a communist. Actually, I do not satisfy any of these criteria. I am an atheist because I cannot understand the miracles God(s) is supposed to have performed, or the answers to prayers devotees receive. For every answered prayer, there are thousands left unanswered, and for every life saved by a miracle, there are at least a thousand unnecessary, unjust, deaths.

Why do people assume that all atheists have something in common? Do atheists form a group, like the devotees of a certain God? I don't think so, because people become atheists for several reasons, as different and varied as the people are. However, an atheist usually fits one of the following types:

The Moderate Atheist: The vast majority of atheists – they mind their own business, try not to hurt other's feelings, and would like it if others do the same.

The Spiritual Atheist: One who does not believe in God, but believes in Spiritualism and Numinosity. If you know someone who goes into raptures at the sight of a beautiful idol, but does not believe in God, you know what a spiritual atheist is.

The 'Robin Hood' Atheist: Someone who is an atheist but uses the infrastructure provided by a religious institution to help humanity. In a sense, they rob the rich to serve the poor while acting against their conscience everyday.

The Militant Atheist: The supposed threat to humanity, though I doubt a single death can be attributed to them. Of course, no terrorist is religious, right?

The Forced Worshipper: One who is an atheist but is not free to speak the truth, maybe even on pain of death.

The Scared Atheist: One who does not believe for any reason except to escape Hell. Anyone who thinks Pascal's Wager makes sense, really!

Side-Effect Atheists: People who convert to atheism due to their love for a person, place or thing.

Mindless Atheists: Those who are atheists because their parent/parents do not believe in God, and not due to any self examination or thought, including asking their parents why they do not believe in God.

The Fluctuating Atheist: One who is an atheist for a year, a believer for a couple of years, again an atheist... This may be done knowingly, weighing current benefits over their personal beliefs and opinions, or simply because they have no opinion of their own.

The God-hater: Not an atheist at all, just hates God for something 'He' didn't provide. Selfishness personified!

The Escapist Atheist: One who uses atheism as an excuse to not have a conscience. These are hardened criminals – it doesn't matter what they use this excuse for.

The Hypocritical Atheist: One who proclaims to be an atheist while secretly believing in God. In some cases they are more vocal than true atheists. These people check the panjangam to do anything, even when there are no believers involved. Wearing a particular colour and consulting an astrologer while disparaging God – prime example.

The Religious Atheist: One who pretends to pray but does not have faith - for very selfish reasons. Corrupt priests in all religions are the perfect examples for this.