I watched the movie "Godzilla" today. It has an IMDB rating of 4.5. It fully deserves its rating, but people have missed the point. People reviewing it say that it is a rip-off of the "classic" originals which I haven't seen and frankly don't want to see. I don't care whether this offends the "finer" sensibilities of these "critics" who make classics out of movies because "they are so bad they're good".
The reason why this movie causes stomach ulcers is not its cinematography or screenplay or CGI. It is not its bad acting or ludicrous setting. It is just because it is plain irritating. I honestly can't recall another movie in which I felt like taking a gun and finishing off the hero(es) myself.
The cameraman - he made me so angry that I had to pause the movie for a while to control my anger. The dumb idiot runs after the monster and stands in its path. Then he wears a look of horror on his face as the monster's foot bears down on him. Why the hell does he run into its path and then act horrified? If I felt like hitting him at that point, I later hated him so much that I wanted to shoot him. While the godzilla egg is hatching, the heroine and the cameraman are standing beside it. She says "run!" and the subhuman says "One minute! I've gotta record this!" Why should he live? Nuke him I say.
Later, they are escaping from the monsters which are pursuing them closely. The cameraman then stops and tries to collect his camera which has fallen on the floor. When he managed to escape, I felt cheated. I am sure the audience would have been more pleased if the monster(s) had taken him in their mouth along with his precious camera and crushed him to pieces. If he values his camera more than his life, why should he live?
The hero - he should have been killed a thousand times. In the entire movie, he goes around seeing the monster every now and then. Yet each time, his mouth opens like a cavern and he looks surprised. He stands rooted to the spot and watches the monster emerge from the subway (yes, the subway). He could have run 50 meters and hidden in a doorway in the time he had. Instead, he stands and watches the surface of the road crack. Then he waits for the monster to surface; all the while his pupils are dilated. We are then treated to an entirely avoidable scene where the monster looks him in the face. It offends my sense of "survival of the fittest". He should have been either fed to the monster or tied to one of the missiles and shot at it. At least we would have been spared the sight of him buying boxes of pills at a medical store and then finding out that the monster is pregnant using pills meant for humans. "Similar hormonal patterns" my foot.
The heroine is a whiny nuisance. She could have been used much more efficiently as fodder for the monster. She is so manipulative it made me sick. She takes tapes which have "Top secret" written on them in big red letters (yes, really!) and later cries and says it was wrong. While everyone is running away from the monster, she slips and falls. The hero turns back and rescues her. Every time I see this stunt pulled by the director, two more minutes are sawed off my life because of the resulting surge of anger.
One scene which illustrates this is when the monster surfaces from Madison Square Garden. The group of four people stand and watch wide eyed as the monster confirms that its children are dead. They wait while it becomes angry and looks closely at them. They still look at it in awe. Then one of them says "what do we do?". The other replies "I think we should run". I have an alternate line for him. He should have said "Look around for some ketchup and onions. Let's garnish ourselves".
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Comments on a tragedy
I do not consider myself a geek. I do not code much. I still use precompiled packages. I use windows for a significant fraction of time. I do not have sufficient knowledge to take part in entirely rational discussions about which programming language is better or which OS is better. But I appreciate the fact that those who do so are the reason we are in this stage the first place. I have a dilettantish interest in such matters. I have an interest in and know something about Physics. I (hopefully) will contribute something to the world.
If all people were like the typical IITK student, we would still be in the stone age.
Heck, his entire awful life lurches from one "festival" to another. In the beginning, he tries to get "ragged", so that he gets contacts with his paragons - his seniors. Then he either takes part or watches with bated breath a talent hunt, so that he can be involved in the "freshers". If he has no talent, well, he can always perform the role of the minion painter. Then he can go to various introductory club lectures, attend a few workshops wide-eyed and leave them for "cultural activities", like dumb charades and dramatics. He is never going to become Al Pacino, but the herd goes, so he goes. Then he rushes around and mugs up some things for his initial mid semester exam. He performs miserably, utters a few choice abuses at the instructor and returns to his arena of choice - the herd. Then he can run around and be a volunteer for menial work for the cultural festival in October. He can either play or "turn up and cheer his block" in the "prelude" to an intra hall sports festival. Yes, that's right, prelude to a damned intra hall sports festival. After that, come his second mid semester exams. Some more curses for the poor instructor. Then he can focus his attention on making his block triumph in the intra hall cultural festival, if not by performing, by "turning up and cheering". Bloody idiots could be replaced by an army of clapping furbys. Then he gets all "serious" and mugs up a few more things for his end semester examination. A final volley of curses.
Next comes his precious intra hall sports festival. He participates in long meetings into the night to choose teams and "waits with bated breath". He cheers his block on. He runs around and exchanges high fives. He analyzes games after their end and pats the losers on their sweaty backs. He cheers if his block gets a good position or heckles the other blocks. The midsems in between and resultant curses are a common feature I won't go into. Then we have the Hall Day! An occasion to wait for, prepare for, and die for! He works as hired labour to make backdrops; He cheers and claps for the dram guys and dancers. He heckles people from other halls and ogles the girls.
Then comes the "inter hall sports festival" - Josh. The same as for the intra hall festival, with suitable substitutions. Then comes the hullabaloo of the general and hall elections. He campaigns for his friends: He goes around with a group of like minded, strong bodied students and persuades people to vote for his candidate, saying that they will get greater representation in so and so body. He listens wide eyed with his wingmates when older versions of him come with their candidate and preach his virtues. He cheers his hall candidate on in the general elections and cheers his block candidate on in the hall elections.
During intra hall elections and contests, he is against other blocks. During inter hall elections and contests, he is against other halls. When students from outside come for various contests, he is against the other institutes. His entire life is a meaningless series of affiliations and "passions" for cheering finer and finer subsets of the general herd.
With the possible reintroduction of the inter hall cultural festival, even more events will be added for him to work in, to cheer in and be a general part of the mindless herd in.
What a meaningless, dumb life! It will prepare him for his destiny - management! After all, what hard work does he need to do to be in management, he just needs to be "well known" or have the right contacts.
What these herd members don't realize is how much they owe to the geeks they want to eventually "manage". For example, look at the simple things they do like playing computer games.
Someone has developed ways of reversing the entropy of the universe and generating usable power by expending the least amount of work. Someone has developed technology so that we can transmit that power vast distances from where it was generated. Someone has developed a computer so that idiots can press the power button and make millions of circuits work in perfect synchronization. Someone has developed an OS so that dumbos like him can click on Install and Autoplay. Someone has developed games for him. Someone has cracked them so that he can play it for free. Someone has made a chat client so that his friend can tell him about the games. Someone has developed a file sharing system so that he can do what they describe as "DC se uthalo". Someone has developed technology so that they can have good speakers in a small volume and decent manufacturing cost, so that he can hear the sounds of the game. Someone has found a decent way of transmitting complex signals like his asinine bellow across networks, so that he can hurl cruse abudes at the other players. Someone has found a way of compressing complicated sights and sounds so that they be rendered and displayed using the minimal memory his system has.
It is good that our world has become user friendly, or as some disgruntled people say, idiot friendly. But it has become far too easy to forget the incredible leaps of technology and science which led to this ease of use. Easy to the point where management jobs are valued above technical ones. Easy to the point where the people in India's supposedly premier technical institute read "self improvement" books and improve their "soft skills".
To hell with studies of brand failures. To hell with Shiv Khera and Jack Welch. Maybe Douglas Adams (may his memory be sacred) was right after all. Let's emulate the people of Golgafrincham. Let's take all these middlemen and launch them into space. We can do something while they land on some planet and set up committees to develop the wheel.
If all people were like the typical IITK student, we would still be in the stone age.
Heck, his entire awful life lurches from one "festival" to another. In the beginning, he tries to get "ragged", so that he gets contacts with his paragons - his seniors. Then he either takes part or watches with bated breath a talent hunt, so that he can be involved in the "freshers". If he has no talent, well, he can always perform the role of the minion painter. Then he can go to various introductory club lectures, attend a few workshops wide-eyed and leave them for "cultural activities", like dumb charades and dramatics. He is never going to become Al Pacino, but the herd goes, so he goes. Then he rushes around and mugs up some things for his initial mid semester exam. He performs miserably, utters a few choice abuses at the instructor and returns to his arena of choice - the herd. Then he can run around and be a volunteer for menial work for the cultural festival in October. He can either play or "turn up and cheer his block" in the "prelude" to an intra hall sports festival. Yes, that's right, prelude to a damned intra hall sports festival. After that, come his second mid semester exams. Some more curses for the poor instructor. Then he can focus his attention on making his block triumph in the intra hall cultural festival, if not by performing, by "turning up and cheering". Bloody idiots could be replaced by an army of clapping furbys. Then he gets all "serious" and mugs up a few more things for his end semester examination. A final volley of curses.
Next comes his precious intra hall sports festival. He participates in long meetings into the night to choose teams and "waits with bated breath". He cheers his block on. He runs around and exchanges high fives. He analyzes games after their end and pats the losers on their sweaty backs. He cheers if his block gets a good position or heckles the other blocks. The midsems in between and resultant curses are a common feature I won't go into. Then we have the Hall Day! An occasion to wait for, prepare for, and die for! He works as hired labour to make backdrops; He cheers and claps for the dram guys and dancers. He heckles people from other halls and ogles the girls.
Then comes the "inter hall sports festival" - Josh. The same as for the intra hall festival, with suitable substitutions. Then comes the hullabaloo of the general and hall elections. He campaigns for his friends: He goes around with a group of like minded, strong bodied students and persuades people to vote for his candidate, saying that they will get greater representation in so and so body. He listens wide eyed with his wingmates when older versions of him come with their candidate and preach his virtues. He cheers his hall candidate on in the general elections and cheers his block candidate on in the hall elections.
During intra hall elections and contests, he is against other blocks. During inter hall elections and contests, he is against other halls. When students from outside come for various contests, he is against the other institutes. His entire life is a meaningless series of affiliations and "passions" for cheering finer and finer subsets of the general herd.
With the possible reintroduction of the inter hall cultural festival, even more events will be added for him to work in, to cheer in and be a general part of the mindless herd in.
What a meaningless, dumb life! It will prepare him for his destiny - management! After all, what hard work does he need to do to be in management, he just needs to be "well known" or have the right contacts.
What these herd members don't realize is how much they owe to the geeks they want to eventually "manage". For example, look at the simple things they do like playing computer games.
Someone has developed ways of reversing the entropy of the universe and generating usable power by expending the least amount of work. Someone has developed technology so that we can transmit that power vast distances from where it was generated. Someone has developed a computer so that idiots can press the power button and make millions of circuits work in perfect synchronization. Someone has developed an OS so that dumbos like him can click on Install and Autoplay. Someone has developed games for him. Someone has cracked them so that he can play it for free. Someone has made a chat client so that his friend can tell him about the games. Someone has developed a file sharing system so that he can do what they describe as "DC se uthalo". Someone has developed technology so that they can have good speakers in a small volume and decent manufacturing cost, so that he can hear the sounds of the game. Someone has found a decent way of transmitting complex signals like his asinine bellow across networks, so that he can hurl cruse abudes at the other players. Someone has found a way of compressing complicated sights and sounds so that they be rendered and displayed using the minimal memory his system has.
It is good that our world has become user friendly, or as some disgruntled people say, idiot friendly. But it has become far too easy to forget the incredible leaps of technology and science which led to this ease of use. Easy to the point where management jobs are valued above technical ones. Easy to the point where the people in India's supposedly premier technical institute read "self improvement" books and improve their "soft skills".
To hell with studies of brand failures. To hell with Shiv Khera and Jack Welch. Maybe Douglas Adams (may his memory be sacred) was right after all. Let's emulate the people of Golgafrincham. Let's take all these middlemen and launch them into space. We can do something while they land on some planet and set up committees to develop the wheel.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Survey Research: A pathway to "science" for mediocre people
Look at the following -
Does god answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes' - article
Women drawn to men with muscles: UCLA survey - article
Coping with the Stress of the Terrorist Attacks: A survey study - article
All these are Scientific publications. Imagine that, Scientific publications!
Want to be a scientist and publish hundreds of papers? Flunked your analysis and quantum mechanics courses in your college? Never mind, you can still become a bona fide scientist.
All you need is a grounding in statistics and a familiarity with statistics programs which can do the boring work for you. Become a psychiatry/ behavioral science/ sociology (what the hell is it anyway) /biology (like health care) "researcher". Sit around twiddling your thumbs and think of surveys which you can get your minions to do. Put up notice boards in universities offering money for anyone who participates in your survey. Any inane thing will do. "Hmm.... Women are attracted to men with muscles.... Let's study it "scientifically".... Let's get "data" and "prove" the "hypothesis"...." Yay, we have a paper!
While the rest of us here are busting ourself working like idiots, looking at the bandwidth of a waveplate with aberrations, the structure of a complexity class and its subsets and other things which require some actual, honest work, people like you can get free tenure and publications. One or two surveys a month, that's it!
Bah.
Does god answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes' - article
Women drawn to men with muscles: UCLA survey - article
Coping with the Stress of the Terrorist Attacks: A survey study - article
All these are Scientific publications. Imagine that, Scientific publications!
Want to be a scientist and publish hundreds of papers? Flunked your analysis and quantum mechanics courses in your college? Never mind, you can still become a bona fide scientist.
All you need is a grounding in statistics and a familiarity with statistics programs which can do the boring work for you. Become a psychiatry/ behavioral science/ sociology (what the hell is it anyway) /biology (like health care) "researcher". Sit around twiddling your thumbs and think of surveys which you can get your minions to do. Put up notice boards in universities offering money for anyone who participates in your survey. Any inane thing will do. "Hmm.... Women are attracted to men with muscles.... Let's study it "scientifically".... Let's get "data" and "prove" the "hypothesis"...." Yay, we have a paper!
While the rest of us here are busting ourself working like idiots, looking at the bandwidth of a waveplate with aberrations, the structure of a complexity class and its subsets and other things which require some actual, honest work, people like you can get free tenure and publications. One or two surveys a month, that's it!
Bah.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
From Delhi to Kanpur
I was returning to Kanpur from Delhi after taking part in the finals of a quiz contest. The quiz contest didn't go very well, and I didn't like the questions either. But that's not the topic here. The return journey from Delhi to Kanpur was yet another indictment of Northern Railways. I spent most of the journey hunched up on the upper berth. The harrowing experience and the free time I had resulted in the following piece of doggerel:
It's early in the day
when I climb the train
There's water in the walkway
thanks to the rain
There's no room in the aisle
People keep coming in
I can't see how they fail
to see that S6 is not S10
Their luggage leaves no room
They don't seem to mind
As they crush each other in the gloom
I wonder if they're blind
A child begins to wail
His father gives him a sweet
He throws it into the aisle
where it's crushed under many feet
Someone goes to the loo
The toilet's sprung a leak
Now there's urine too
in the place where we walk
I thank my fortune
My berth is an upper
but I've spoken too soon
Someone's kicked away my slipper
I'm stuck for good
I can't come down
The water below has bits of food
It looks muddy brown
As I huddle on my berth
people without tickets come and sit
If there's a hell on earth
this damned place is it
when I climb the train
There's water in the walkway
thanks to the rain
There's no room in the aisle
People keep coming in
I can't see how they fail
to see that S6 is not S10
Their luggage leaves no room
They don't seem to mind
As they crush each other in the gloom
I wonder if they're blind
A child begins to wail
His father gives him a sweet
He throws it into the aisle
where it's crushed under many feet
Someone goes to the loo
The toilet's sprung a leak
Now there's urine too
in the place where we walk
I thank my fortune
My berth is an upper
but I've spoken too soon
Someone's kicked away my slipper
I'm stuck for good
I can't come down
The water below has bits of food
It looks muddy brown
As I huddle on my berth
people without tickets come and sit
If there's a hell on earth
this damned place is it
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