Onward

I am moving here under a different name. Six years is a long time, especially if it starts in college.

The Infinitely Prolonged

Tomorrow shall find me filling this up with a disposition and patience not unlike that of Genghis Khan excusing himself into Europe after Wowbagger's (whom you'll need to know to make sense of the title) rather unexpected visit. For now, the following shall have to do.

As Edsger Dijkstra, Don Knuth and, doubtless, a number of other awfully brainy chaps have observed, Computer Science is not much about computers as we know them and is about as much of a science as numismatics. This is a prime example of what is in the general populace known as a misnomer. Another prime example, though not as humongous in scale, is something I chose to call "Song of the Week" - it has always been more than one song, and if it seems like a week since the previous one, it should be the case that a certain European neutrino did indeed give his photon pals quite a run.

So that I may retire to the safety of my bed before the swarm of mosquitoes I seem to be seated in has the opportunity to finish its bloody business (pun intended) with the forearm, I embrace brevity. Here are two for now.


One can never tire of Irish folk songs. I heard this one first about a month ago and have repeated the act a large number of times hence.

Jug of Punch, as performed by The Clancy Brothers (and Tommy Makem, I think).

Speaking of folk songs, here's one from Liverpool.

Maggie Mae, as performed by some rock band from the aforementioned locality.

I believe there are stories behind how this song got into Let It Be that you can read somewhere.

Just a day? Definitely not.

If majesty were to be defined with an example, look no further ahead of this one from the legendary Balamuralikrishna. As I have mentioned earlier, he is one of my favourite vocalists, this song being no lesser than any other as a reason. Needless to say, his concert was the event I most looked forward to last Saarang. (What transpired during the concert itself is a different, rather unfortunate story.)

Oru Naal Podhuma, as sung by M.Balamuralikrishna for the movie Thiruvilayadal.

Also should be mentioned the mangalam of his own composition with which he usually concludes concerts. (Trust me, some day in the future I will be able to tell which ragam it is by listening to it.)

Watch out, the world's behind you

After coming across a mention of The Velvet Underground somewhere recently, I decided to give this legendary 60's band a try. Cited as one of the most influential groups in the history of rock music, they faced surprisingly little commercial success. Quoting Wikipedia quoting someone, "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band". Though I just started on them two or three days ago, I've been haunted by their songs ever since. Here are a couple.

Sunday Morning, by The Velvet Underground.

Beginning to See the Light, by The Velvet Underground.

I'm sure they have many more such awaiting me.

PS: About the sentence with the quote above - start a quotation in a sentence, end it in the sentence. Put the period after the quotation mark. I believe this makes more sense than the commonly adopted alternative.

As Darwin once said

(If I am ever unable to meet any deadline of any sort over here, blame it on my Operating Systems Lab.)

I discovered The Kinks earlier this week. I only hope there await me many more such discoveries that are as pleasurable.

Two songs this week too. Both by The Kinks, of course.



Apeman, by The Kinks.

And my favourite of theirs,
Lola, by The Kinks.

Also check out Autumn Almanac and You Really Got Me, for which they're most famous.

Don't Worry, Be Happy.

I needed some way to keep the blog alive till more time is at hand to throw at it. So, shamelessly ripping off a concept from Gauss knows how many places on the interweb, I start the Song of The Week (I have a recognisably bad sense of which words it is appropriate to start with upper-case) series with what I have recently decided to adopt as my personal anthem:


I owe Deva one for introducing me to this song, but then, he owes me BB(10) for The Beatles anyway. (Or does he?)

Don't Worry Be Happy, by Bobby McFerrin.

And in case you need help with doing so:

Rebel's Hop, by Bob Marley and The Wailers.

Frankly, my dear, ...

(I had plans for something else, as I had indicated in a comment previously, but this here was just too big a revelation to leave unmentioned till later.)

It is not a few times in the past that I have found myself speechless in response to questions on my stand on theism. Do I believe in a God? Or in gods? Or in invisible pink unicorns? Am I a black shirt (Periyar, not Mussolini)? Or am I an agnostic? If so, an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist?

Many a time have I contemplated upon the above myself, never consistently settling on a set of views - one day there just had to be something that set off the Big Bang, and the next the very same argument seemed naive - it would only be a matter of time before physicists would discover what really happened, right? (But some aspects of any such being that could possibly exist were definitely ruled out - omniscience seemed a bit too unnatural, really not very necessary, and if were possessed, only indicated injustice and intolerance on the part of the god; omnipotence, of course, has long been defeated by diagonalisation. (I have a lot to thank Cantor for.))

I am aware, mind you, that there are numerous arguments against these beliefs, and counters to those and so on; you shall see why I do not consider them here.

For reasons I cannot recall, the following passages somehow came to mind sometime before dinner today and with them, again for reasons unknown, the sudden realisation that this was precisely the stand I would like to take, and also a sense of relief not too different from what one would expect upon having solved a difficult mathematical problem after an entire evening's effort. Funny how one can land up with a thought and have no idea whatsoever how one got there.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
"You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it."
"To forget it!"
"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
"But the Solar System!" I protested.
"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."

-A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

 So there.

PS: Note the expression "What the deuce...". Worth adopting?

Sherlock Homes is NOT James Bond

And I'll say it again, in case you missed it - Sherlock Holmes is NOT James Bond.

To start with a placement of this matter in context, I shall have you know that Sir Doyle is to me what J.K.Rowling is to what is arguably a vast majority of my generation. When Potter fans were boarding their first train at nine and three-quarters at King's Cross, I was witnessing the discovery of a reagent to identify blood stains in the chemical laboratory of a hospital a few miles away; when they were collected by the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room, I was watching puffs of tobacco smoke swirl away into non-existence in a cluttered room on the first floor of a London residence; as their heroes were on their numerous trips through the castle under an invisibility cloak, mine was all but invisible as an old woman, or perhaps a priest, or a servant in the household of Charles Augustus Milverton, anything, anyone; when they were flying around their open castle grounds on brooms and invisible flying horses, I was in a hansom, darting across the Thames on one of its many bridges through fog as blinding as darkness itself; as they were battling three-headed dogs, I was hunting a single-headed one on the marshes of Dartmoor; as they witnesses the Dark Lord go down to a tame disarming spell, I was at the top of a waterfall in Switzerland watching one of the greatest minds in the world plunge into the torrent below.

And finally, as Potter fans are feeling sad that the movie franchise has also come to an end, and more so that the last one was quite a bit of a disappointment (at least I thought it was), I am more or less furious about what Guy Ritchie has done to one of the greatest and most memorable literary characters of all time. Of course, Guy Ritchie is a great director; in fact, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is one of my favourite movies. He can handle an ensemble cast like no one else can, and his ability to put together twists, action and an almost comic narrative is unmatched as far as I know. Not that the movie (Sherlock Holmes) was bad - it was quite good. Just that what he did to Holmes in it is quite unforgivable. 

To begin with, Irene Adler was brought in - she is a very remarkable character, one of very few to outwit Holmes, and the movie does little justice to her by presenting her as Moriarty's crony. I believe that even involving her was sort of a mistake, as appearing in only one short story and being mentioned for her brilliance in but a few other places lent her a certain esoteric quality that the movie took away.

Next, Robert Downey Jr. made for a very bad Holmes. I could hardly identify the character I am very familiar with. A lot of things were amiss somehow - the manner, the voice, his physical build, etc. But then, I'm being a bit of a snob here - I don't think I can hope that every portrayal will be as good as that of Jeremy Brett's in the TV series (which, by the way, was very good and quite honest too).

Also, there was too much action in the movie. As the title reads, Holmes is not Bond, and while Doyle's stories were often sensational, there was a boat chase in one of the novels and The Final Problem exists, explosions were never part of them. Yes, he was an expert single-stick fighter, champion boxer and knew Japanese wrestling, but Holmes does not need to shoot bad guys to solve a case and has hardly ever done that, one instance being that guy who tries to shoot poison darts at him and Watson in The Sign of Four.

Because of these and a few other reasons that I cannot recollect now, I felt the movie was very unfair to Holmes and his fans. In fact, I had guessed it would be so as soon as I saw the movie's trailer. And I'll tell you why I care - a lot of people today haven't read Doyle's work. While they are greatly accustomed to Holmes being the archetypal detective owing to the character's immense popularity and the uncountable references made to him in various forms of media, they do not know him for what he really is, for they have not read the original works - this is a sad but curious fate that Holmes shares with Dracula. This being so, it is reasonable to believe that many of those who are exposed only to the movies will come to believe that this is what Holmes is - a boxer with Max Payne style slow motion powers instead of the forensic genius that he is, and hence would not understand his being an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (yes, he is a fellow - for real, not in the stories), and that shall be a great source of worry to me.

I saw Guy Ritchie's movie quite some time back, actually. The reason this came up now is that I have come to hear that he's making another one. Again, having seen the trailer, I'm not really looking forward to it. Apparently, Adler is still there, and this one shall have Professor Moriarty more in the open. The only good thing I see about it is that Stephen Fry is being cast as Mycroft Holmes who, as you may have noticed, is my favourite character. The role should fit him well, and it would have been really swell if only they had brought in Hugh Laurie as Sherlock Holmes too, for that would accomplish two things that should be very exciting - the possibility of an honest portrayal of Holmes (he's had loads of practice in House, you know) and the great comedy duo of Fry and Laurie starring together again.

Lipton totally stole my title

Richard Lipton is a professor of Computer Science at Georgia Tech and a leading theorist. His blog does a great job of bringing old and current topics in the field to the unsuspecting public.

This is his post today:
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/and-then-there-were-two/
His two were two candidate NP-intermediate problems.


And this is mine from last year:
http://thememoirsofmycroftholmes.blogspot.com/2010/08/and-then-there-were-two.html
My two were ID1200 and BT1010.

Its a pretty easy phrase to think up, especially if you've come across the rhyme.

Another serenader

#30 - Your favourite song at this time last year

That would be some time before my obsession with The Beatles was to begin. I believe Billy Joel, who I was introduced to by Rangooski, was my favourite then (apart from the all-timers, that is). So here's one of his best.

"The Entertainer", by Billy Joel.
(Not to be confused with the piano piece.)

Also like his "Uptown Girl" and "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant".

That about wraps up the 30 days, but I have songs for about a couple more categories that are not on the list. Will put those up soon.

Rowing the old boat

#29 - A song from your childhood

I do not say much, as I have no wish to "put senti", other than that Arvind Swamy was a fine actor.

"Ottakkara Marimuthu", from Indira, composed by A.R.Rahman, sung by S.P.B and Seerkazhi Siva Chidambaram.

Singin' skittilee rink-a-doodle

#28 - A song that makes you feel guilty

The Text is plural. Which is not simply to say that it has several meanings, but that it accomplishes the very plural of meaning: an irreducible (and not merely an acceptable) plural.

-Roland Barthes, From Work to Text

This song makes me feel guilty of not having known about this group earlier - I discovered them today while looking for The Dubliners' cover of "Rocky Road to Dublin". I've heard some unpleasant things about the climate in Ireland, but the music they make should more than make up for it.

"The Little Beggarman", as sung by The High Kings.

And here is the same song by Buddy Greene, the harmonica guy from yesterday. If you thought his performance at Carnegie Hall was mighty impressive, you haven't seen this one yet.

Why does there need to be a title anyway?

#27 - A song that you wish you could play

First, these are the reasons for my starting with the harmonica:

1. It fits in my pocket. Why, I even have a harmonica that's shorter than my little finger. Also, somewhere in the world, there exist key-chains that are functional harmonicas.
2. This guy. (That the first song he plays was on yesterday's list is not a co-incidence.)

But when it comes to playing, my greatest wish is, more than to emulate Buddy Greene (which would be too lofty), to be able to play the theme from Padaiyappa. Composed by A.R.Rahman, this brilliant piece is as good as the harmonica has ever gotten in the country, and while the movie may have been memorable to Rajini fans for various other reasons (such as it being a Rajini movie), this is what it held for me.

Fiddling on the roof (and off it)

#26 - A song that you can play on an instrument

I play the harmonica; not very well. (If you're picturing a box with a keyboard and bellows, that's a harmonium. I just insulted your knowledge of musical instruments.)

I started off a long time back somewhat like this guy. Much later, I got to something that's supposed to sound like this, but is not very close. I can also sort of play "The Downfall of Paris", which was mentioned in an earlier post, and this. But the one that I shall be most proud of with lots more practice is "The Irish Washerwoman", an Irish traditional jig, which I can now barely play.

Come here, my banana fry (and other such things)

#25 - A song that makes you laugh

This one here has no competition. A well-deserved tribute to one of the most capable actor-director-producer-writer-cinematographer-poet-...'s in the history of the Tamil film industry, nay, of all existent film industries, including those in sub-Saharan Africa. Don't believe me? Don't get emotion and irritation, you wait and see further action here and here. If you still do not agree, consider your views suppressed, oppressed and depressed.

"ReTRibution to AtTRibution: Our ConTRibution", by Parodesy Noise.

When you're finally free of the abdominal spasms that would have doubtlessly ensued after the above, go here and check out their other works of art, especially "Rucking Fules".

On a different note, go to this page on NhD's blog and see the Coke ad. I loved it.

No one dare disturb

#24 - A song that you want to play at your funeral

(I wanted to say "The Death Punch", a classic Tamil folk piece, but couldn't find a good enough sample anywhere. Please do tell me if you do. For further information, see here.)

"The Sound of Silence", by Simon and Garfunkel.

And if you haven't seen Watchmen yet, watch it as soon as you can. It is perhaps the best superhero-based movie out there. If not for anything else, watch it atleast for the title sequence featuring one of Dylan's greatest songs and also for the Comedian's funeral with the above song in it. (And see if you can spot Rorschach in the latter.)

Under the uniting roof

#23 - A song that you want to play at your wedding

When I was looking for something for today I came upon the following, which I thought I should put here, even though it is not in line with the topic. This was M.S.Subbulakshmi's rendering of a song written by Rajaji at the United Nations General Assembly in 1966.

And what I was actually looking for was "English Note", a composition by Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavatar. A Carnatic composer, he came up with this when someone asked him whether he could compose music like that of the West.

This was the best instrumental video that I could find of the song. I have a cassette tape of Chitti Babu playing this on the Veena in a manner that can only be described as 'heavenly'. See here for the scene with this song on the nadhaswaram from the Tamil movie Thillana Moganambal.

Don't worry about a thing

#22 - A song that you listen to when you're sad

I'm not being really honest on this one - I can't remember any song that would fit this description. The lyrics of the following would suit, that's all.

"Three Little Birds", by Bob Marley.
 

It used to be called Zaire

#21 - A song that you listen to when you're happy

Mose Fan Fan is a guitarist from the Democratic Republic of Congo who's been around since the late 60's. He performs a genre of dance music originating in Congo called Soukous.

The following song is, I believe, in the Lingala language local to Congo. This is as much as I was able to find out. As to what the song means, I have no idea. But, as you'll see if you listen to it, it doesn't really matter.


"Hello Hello", by Mose Fan Fan.

Seriously, I can't think of a name

#20 - A song that you listen to when you're angry

This one somehow cools my nerves. I don't know much about the song itself, or I'd tell you.

"The Downfall of Paris", played by The Dubliners.
(I believe its an Irish folk tune, as The Dubliners were indeed an Irish folk band.)