RIFLE RANGE BOY

Love Today (Tamil; 2022) Writer, Director, Actor: Pradeep Ranganathan It is said that the amount of data carried by a mobile phone is equivalent to the amount needed to launch the spaceship Apollo 11. Having that much data, like an appendage attached to our body, cannot be without liabilities. People store way too much muck in there that, at any time, anyone can use it to paint an individual how they want him to be painted. With the same brush, they can be either portrayed as a saint or a devil re-incarnated from the raw data. People, like salivating dogs to a bone, will volunteer their personal information to be used and misused at the sight of dangling freebies. All the promise of privacy is a fallacy. With a few tweaks here and there, the digital trail is at your disposal. This innovative movie highlights this exact problem. Two lovebirds fall helplessly in love with each other. When the boy approaches her father for her hand, the father, a strict disciplinarian, puts the couple to ...

Xuanzang (大唐玄奘, Mandarin, Hindi; 2016) Hsuan Tsang or Xuanzang is mentioned in early historical scriptures as of one the first person who journeyed from China via the Silk Road through Central Asia to reach India (or Sindhu as it was referred to then). He documented his travels meticulously and penned down all his escapades as he traversed the treacherous terrains, hills, deserts, monsoon and scorching heat. A child prodigy, Xuanzang entered the Buddhist monastery and was ordained a monk in Mahayana Buddhism at the age of 20. He then mastered Sanskrit and started studying ancient texts. Discovering discrepancies in the available scriptures, at the age of 25, in the year 627AD, he started a solo journey on foot from Chang 'An to India. This was the transition time from the Sui to the relatively peaceful Tang dynasty. His final destination was Nalanda University, in Meghada kingdom. After three long years, travelling through modern-day Kazhakstan, Kyzhegistan, Uzbekistan, Afgha...

To all my friends who ask me not to think too much, please ponder upon the following. We think we know everything and there is nothing more to learn. How wrong we are? I have come to realise that every living day is another fresh day to acquire knowledge. At the end of the 19th century, investigative officers thought they had a full-proof system to track down criminals. Anthromorphological features as described by witnesses and evidence at crime were sufficient to convict suspects. We all know how unreliable are accounts by bystanders or witnesses.  This arrangement worked fairly well when it was practised in the West where individual variations in hair, eye colours and other obvious physical were there. The British Colonial Police had a tough time policing as the natives all looked the same in their eyes. That is when fingerprinting techniques became the state-of-art avantgarde armamentarium in crime-busting. For some time, the method was thought to be so unique that it could...

Aryabhata (476-550 CE) Mathematician/Astronomer. The first person to say that Earth  is spherical and revolves around  the sun. The first to suggest that  any number divided by 0  gives infinity ∞. (pinterest) Continuing in the quest to make sense of things around me, I stumbled into something quite thought-provoking. It has something to do with our idea of separating knowledge into the sciences and the arts. It is interesting to note that the Ionians, of the Eastern part of the Greek civilisation, and the Hindu culture started learning things about the world we live in entirely independent of each other. It is incredible how quite similar their discoveries were, at least in the initial stages. The pre-Socratic thinkers thought that there was a connection between the Universe and the world immediately around us. Thales tried to say that water is the essence of our existence. Democritus put forward the theory of Void and eternal, indivisible ato...

 Kardashians - fiz-x.com This post was spurred with someone mentioning how the whole Government machinery has suddenly found new vigour to streamline all its dealings. At a wink of an eye, civil servants who all this while had not been civil enough to show the gratitude to the salary that the taxpayers paid them, have found rejuvenated zest to right their wrong of so many decades. Have they really turned over a new leaf? Have they had their wings clipped or hand tied that prevented them from doing what they were yearning to do all these while - to serve? Are these moves just reactionary to the change in the tide of the time? My thoughts were cradled back to a time in our recent past. The mantra of the day then was that we were to become an industrialised and advanced country by 2020. Wealth and money were then the new God. The yardstick to gauge the advancement of a society was the material things, not civic-mindedness, positive human values or culture. Megalomania was an acce...

Yet another perspective of trying to understand the secrets of life. Perhaps there might be another way to tap wisdom from the Intellect around us. www.scienceandnonduality.com The vessel to concentrate energies.  The location,  on a  particular grid,  in relation  to the  Earth's  magnetic powers  coupled with the specific  placing  of  deities on certain  metals  to act  as  conductors  and linked to  the  chanting  of  'mantras' attempt to open the  gateway  for a seamless flow of  knowledge of the  Agent Intellect. Imagine a shortwave radio or a ham radio. In order to receive transmissions, it needs to be set at a specific frequency for unhampered communications. Their whole function is determined by the ability to pick up signals by setting the dial at a particular station and for the antenna to absorb the waves. The devices in the ...

I have a confession. When I was young, at an impression age, when my guards were down, naive and the eyes of knowledge were still in slumber, I was ashamed whenever I attended religious functions. The theatrics showed by the professors of religions were, in my nimble mind, laughable. During Thaipusam and fire-walking ceremonies, the high decibels, high energies and activities that they emanated just took away any semblance of divinity from it. Now, I know better, I think, I hope. Like the Oracles of Delphi, messages are transmitted in coded languages and double speaks. They are all symbolic notes to the secret of life. We have to understand that the religious leaders were spreading the good word to mostly illiterate simpletons and agrarians with primal needs. The power, force, fire, sounds, noise, water and light are not as they are. The evil or dark forces are not from without but within; our naivety, ignorance and our inertia to progress. The sceptic in me, however, asks myself ...

Image Credit: superhv.com Bruce Lee is famous not only for his martial art skill. He is also renowned for his ability to infuse traditional Confucius wisdom into contemporary modern living. One of his quotations goes as follows ‘A learned man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer’! Shakespeare too mentioned something to that effect. ‘A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool!’   We are always under the impression that wisdom can learn from the books and scriptures and that one can wise just by sitting down and burying himself in the company of books. I disagree. First, let us define ‘wisdom’. Wisdom can be described as the soundness of one’s action based on his application of experience, knowledge and good judgement. Somewhere along the way, there would also be empathy.   True, academic knowledge is necessary for one to gain wisdom. From the books, we can acquire a wealth of knowledge...

So you go around with a chip on your shoulder, with the nose so high up in the air as if you walk inhaling imported air. You straddle around like you are on Yudhistira's chariot, always two feet above the ground, quite full of air. You speak with such confidence convinced that your listeners are impressed with your command of the language. You think you produced a masterpiece that everybody would sing only praises of it. That is until you send it for proofreading. That is when your bubble bursts, your ego gets deflated, and you get down from your mighty horse and is brought down to the ground. You soon realise that the things which you had taken for granted mean more than what meets the eyes. You get an extra 'e' when you are a lady engaged to a man. A fiancée is to a female just what a fiancé is to a man. Everything seems watertight as if you have a foolproof system but your friends tell you that he has full proof that 'fullproof' is not even a word! I gu...

Thanks SK for input! Me wanna go to Norway for continuing education ... Them Moscovite dogs surely are smarter than me ! eeeerie ! remember the movie "Final Destination" ?? ... nope, not applicable in Malaysia nor China : ... can prisoners be deported to Netherlands then ? ... naaah ! I won't be joining the queue to try poop-meat anytime soon ... : ... Wow ! I would certainly be the DEARly departed .. ... no wonder ... betcha I would made trillions if I could bottle it & sell it ... :) so sad ... why did the mama elephant reject / kick the baby ? : ... there you go - never judge a banana by its skin ... - fatal attraction of the vehicular kind - that's why pandas are called China's national treasures ... - so what is the message - don't stop generating rubbish ? T, this was the size of our Pekingese, Mimi's puppies...