RIFLE RANGE BOY

It all started with a digital election glitch in a locale in Brussels in 2003. The officials realised that an unpopular local candidate secured more than the vote she should. The number 4096 struck a chord with the IT personnel but passed it off as teething problems of digital voting. That is the number of votes that the computers accidentally added to her tally. A further assessment suggested that 4096 is 2 to the power of 12 (2¹²). As input into the computers is in multiples of 2 (2⁰, 2¹, 2²....2¹¹,2¹²...), somehow the part (bit) which controlled (2¹²) got lit. Hence, this flip caused the addition of 4096 to the tally.  Now, the challenge was to ascertain where the surge to this flip came about. Investigators were soon made aware of similar unexplainable occurrences in the airline and automobile industries. There were instances where autopilot settings had to see re-set as it had gone berserk. There was even a plane that suddenly plunged into the ocean. Aircraft, as they ...

Capernaum (Capharnaüm, Arabic    کفرناحوم ‎,  Lebanon; 2018) Story, Screenplay, Direction: Nadine Labaki I remember a family in Penang which had so many children that even the family members never knew how many siblings they had. The mother had so many miscarriages, stillbirths and twins that she gave away that if she were in Stalin Russia, she would have been conferred the 'Order of Maternal Glory' award. The last time the siblings counted, the tally was 16. Despite growing like wildflowers on a shoestring budget provided by the single breadwinner of the family, they all achieved success in their own accord by adulthood. Nobody had arrested psychological development due to a lack of parental attention.  It was a time when children were viewed as God's gift. Never mind if Man a lot to do with it to make it possible. The extended family concept of living ensured that everyone, especially the older ones, was cared.  Soon with the changes in societal ...

There was an anaesthetic medical officer with whom I had misfortunate to work with always had the, at least I thought so, annoying habit of encouraging the patient that he was going to anaesthetise to engage in a little prayer. He would do so as he was just going to induce sleep. The puzzling thing is that even when a regional anaesthetic failed to induce desired actions, he would ask the patient to brace and say a little prayer! To a staunch believer, what the good doctor does seem to appear just right; that we are mere mortals, that we should not be too cocky, that everything is indeed not under our control and that we are not infallible. In the other words, we dress the wound, He heals it! To most people, rationalists and atheists, a call for prayer may sound like a desperate measure and the one that most people resort to when all other humanly endeavours have failed! In other words, a mayday message saying, "only a miracle can save you now!" In the modern world, i...

Many who live in the present, enjoying the comforts of modernity, growing fat with the affluence and the ease of doing things with scientific advances abhor the many changes that happen around them. They clamour about decadence, injustice and our self-induced path to destruction. They reminisce about the good days when foods were tasty, the air was clean and leaders were honest. The more you delve into history, the more one realises that Man's past was never anything but of turmoil. Take the instance of South India, for example. They talk about the glorious good old Golden Age of the Pandyas, Cheras and Cholas and their gargantuan seafaring, scientific and philosophical feats. Thanjavur Periya Kovil Sample of Chola architectural prowess All these achievements did not come without any human sacrifices. The Hindu kings had to outdo their Jain Kings with their architecture and their wealth. They had to compete with the Buddhist for support from the masses as Budd...

Secret Sunshine (Korean; 2007) Director Lee Chang-dong Life is not easy. The inner desire for everyone is to be in control of things, especially of his own. This more so in the modern era where our way of thinking has been stimulated by philosophers and thinkers before us have told us to ask why, what, when and how? Gone are the days when subjects are just are going to take whatever told by the master wholesome without batting an eyelid. It must have been to convince someone that He was the Son of God, or He was the product of an Immaculate Conception and a virgin birth. Try doing it now! There is something about this Korean director, Lee Chang-dong, that I find fascinating. His stories are seamlessly mostly outdoors and scenic view of the countryside. The actors also appear like everyday people like in a neorealist setup. The film starts with Lee Shin-ae travelling to a small town named Miryang (means Secret Sunshine in ancient Chinese language) with her son. The car ...

The question is whether an occurrence can solely be put on one event is questionable. It appears that our national pastime is playing the blame game and to shame the alleged perpetrator(s) in the hope that if someone can be pinpointed to have caused the gaffe, we can put closure to a catastrophe. And they hope to prevent the shortcomings in future. It all sounds noble but unfortunately life is not so simple. Not every bad incident has a simple etiology. Most often than not it is multi factorial. Like in Murphy's Law, when something is doomed to go wrong, it will go wrong. Airline industry have considered a 'no blame' policy but to identify the precipitating events and to take a collective approach to improve safety. On the other hand, is a leader culpable to take the brickbats if his subordinates faltered? Should he be made to answer or just take the easy way of saying, "it wasn't me. It is not easy to control so many people's actions, you know!"? ...

Year in year out it is the same story. December would come and like an uninvited guest would gate crash your Christmas party. The intruder would be party, a wet wild kind, to be a ruin to many, leaving its hosts wet and grounded. It had wrecked property, upset school examination schedules and took lives from time immemorial. It must have happened all over the ages that the house designs in this part of the world involved stilts. The annual floods this time seem to have hit us a carnage of Titanic proportions. Even medical personnel who normally be at limelight for victims to seek help now find themselves trapped in hospitals. And on top of it all, hospitals traditionally had been built on higher ground! Rather than finding the root of the problem and thinking of ways to mete the problem with our God given minds, what do we do? Say it is all 'act of God'. Lest we forget, God helps those who help themselves. We cut, we pilfer, we rape, we mutilate and we flatten Nature and ...

PK (Tipsy, Hindi; 2014) So it looks sightings of UFOs and visitations from alien civilisations corresponds to the affluence of a country. In the 50s, it occurred exclusively in the US. Then it was China and now, India. Put an alien in God's favourite land with the most number of God-men per square feet and a good screenwriter and what do you get? 2 and a half of laughter from a philosophical  comedy of divine proportions. Followers of this blog would notice that some of the ideas from this movie had come up in our previous posts ( here ,  here  and  here ). But hey, with a ready market worth multi-millions sprawling with talents waiting to hit the jackpot in a world of survival of the fittest, ideas just ooze. This movie pokes fun at segregation of people according to religious beliefs and the things people do in the name in the name of God. An alien lands in the deserts of Rajasthan dressed only with a transmitter medallion. His mission is to survey Earth and r...

Now how often have we heard people sitting high up and looking down saying, "yeah but they is the real way of doing it! They are not doing it right. There are specific ways of doing it. The Truth is all there in the scriptures!" Yes and yet no religion is not guilty of it. The animals are supposed to be respected and are said to be also creations of the Almighty but the way they are abused, culled and hunted, it appears like their sole purpose of existence is to be eaten, hunted and be bullied. They say that their religious way of justice is God sent and is cast on stone. If you look around, their justice is made to look so disconnected from the train of thought of contemporary man. If you do not have a living example to follow, how can you proclaim that your system is the best. We need a sign. We need a living proof of superiority of the merchandise that you are trying to sell us! Your religious leaders allow atrocities to be carried out on fellow citizens. Yet they adv...

Zeus I have a friend who was devastated when his only son was afflicted with a scary form of cancer. He was aggressive in offering whatever humanly possible to nip the disease to the root of things. He has thus far successfully dodged his son's disease. At time of the initial denial phase, my friend made a vow at the spur of the moment that he who stop doing his divine duties indefinitely if his son did not escape the grab of the dreaded crab. So far, 2 years on, the Gods have not lost a devotee! Then back to the present time, a plane goes missing. What are we told to do? To pray and invoke intervention of the unknown as the experts do not know what else to do! How is prayers going to change the fate of things that had been predetermined through the synchronised chaos of the butterfly effects? Whatever has happened to the ill-fated vessel had already happened. Our interventions or coaxing of the Forces is not going to undo what had already happened. What prayers could invok...

We are all living in a world where everybody is just waiting for another to make a mistake whilst at the same time everybody is just so careful that their posterior is not exposed and hence vulnerable to abuses. Whenever a misadventure is encountered, the first response is mum! Nobody talks to anybody as anything you say will be used against you in any situation just to fry your goose. Silence is golden whilst the conniving officers of the law scheme out devious plans to dissociate yourself any plausible repercussions. Truth, justice, liberty you say? What is that? When you are persecuted and crucified for an event that even be beyond your control and your rice bowl is jeopardised, to hell with doing the right thing. It is the right thing alright, for yourself and your dependants. By admitting mistakes, everything would be pinned on you conveniently. In this world of fault seeking and destiny defying population, no one will empathise with you or have sympathy for your predicament. ...

Heard an interesting podcast recently... There was this 15 year old girl in Wisconsin in 2004 who became febrile and started losing her coordination gradually. Exhaustive medical investigative procedure came to zilch. And her condition was deteriorating. She was almost in and out of coma. While engaged in small talk during the visit by her old paediatrician, the mother mentioned about their visit to the church the previous month and how the animal lover part of the girl helped a stranded bat in the church. The bat was injured was flying helplessly banging into the glass and missing the exit. Her Good Samaritan deed earned her a bite on the hand which the family nursed it as per a usual wound. That struck an alarm... Bats, bites, rabies...Unfortunately, rabies had 100% mortality rate. The doctors could not do much but put her in a dark room, minimise stimulation, supportive care and slowly ease her path to meet her Maker. Left with Hobson's choice, the family kept on doing the o...

As usual things happen in waves of coincidences. Of late, quite many individuals are quite open about their beliefs and have no qualms about questioning the existence of the Almighty. Maybe, they admit the existence of a divine power or force that spins the universe but they cannot stomach the idea of God as preached by Man. Are they spiritualistic atheists? First, in the Steve Job's biography that I am presently reading, Jobs became a non believer (he practiced Zen Buddhism later) after he refused to accept that the all knowing God refused to help the starving children of Africa.  Then, they was another guy who questioned that no rational explanation can be given to explain the reason why his apparently healthy teenage son had to return to God after a mysterious illness. Somehow telling him that God has bigger plans and we mere mortal are at a position to comprehend the greater plans seem out of place! The politics in the house of God also does not paint a nice picture of j...

Osho Meditations PRAYER THERE is nobody to hear your prayers. Your prayer is simply a monologue; you are praying to the empty sky. Nobody is going to reward you for your prayers – remember it. If you really know what prayer is, prayer itself is its own reward. There is nobody else to reward you; the reward is not there in the future, not in the afterlife. But praying itself is such a beautiful phenomenon that who cares about the future and who bothers about the reward? That is greed, the idea of reward. Prayer in itself is such a celebration, it brings such great joy and ecstasy, that one prays for the prayer’s sake. One does not pray out of fear and one does not pray out of greed. One prays because one enjoys it. One does not even bother whether there is a God or not. If you enjoy dance you don’t ask whether there is a God or not. If you enjoy dance, you simply dance; whether anybody is seeing the dance from the sky or...

Dean Johns Dec 1, 10  11:24am Judging by what I've heard of her, PKR president Dr Wan Azizah Wan   Ismail is as good and godly a human being as Allah ever put breath into. But I wish she'd spare us the kind of codswallop she sincerely but I think unwisely spouted in her speech to the PKR party when she praised her husband Anwar Ibrahim as a “great man who has been awarded by God to all of us to be our leader”. For a start, it's a bit presumptuous to speak on God's behalf when you couldn't possible have the slightest idea of the Almighty's thoughts, intentions, ideas or ideals. Like clerics and their flocks in Pakistan, Afghanistan and similar earthly paradises who imagine that God demands the death penalty for those accused of adultery, blasphemy, apostasy or whatever else they deem terminally sinful. Or potentates like the Pope ( right ), who claims to be God's earthly mouthpiece in making such preposterous pronouncements as his recent one that the use...