Happy Birthday!

This might just be the first time I have remembered in nearly a decade. Go me!

It now seems appropriate to post what is possibly my favourite poem -

Where the mind is without fear and the head held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

- Rabindranath Tagore

The future of interfaces

So while checking the usual tech news this morning, I came across a fabulous collection of pilot videos from Mozilla Labs on their futuristic concept of a web interface known as Aurora. Now although it seems like the desktop is far too cluttered in these videos, it is exciting to realize that one day, we might have a 3-d interface by which we access information - an interface where things can be grouped together on the desktop more visually and also moved around the desktop more intuitively.

This seems to lead back to this incredibly cool demo by Jeff Han of a multi-touch user interface which gives, in my opinion, the best possible way in which one could interact with a 2-dimensional device.

Now, the neat thing about these things is that the world now seems to be in a position to provide the computing capabilities to make full use of these technologies - for instance, there is D-Wave's Orion quantum computer which can recognize images and tell one from another by being able to harness immense amounts of visual data.

Plus, there is this Microsoft-promoted visualization tool called Photosynth, which is able to collate photographs from flickr, tag them with meta-information and club them together to give a panoramic view of the object/place in question.

All this might seem too much like science fiction, but with the rate at which technology is going forward, I wouldn't be surprised if we had something like Aurora in action in another 5 years.

Protection

Just reading The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett - The book begins with the death of a man named Wally Sonky, who was stuffed into a barrel of molten rubber. You see, Mr. Sonky was known for making, among other things, little "wallies" - a rather life-threatening business in a city full of orthodox dwarfs who don't even allow their women to shave, let alone use a condom.

So it seems appropriate that I blog about something similar - an effort by the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) in India to spread the use of these wallies among the traditionally backward (and hence vulnerable) social groups. They have gone about giving condoms to the women of a rural community north of Delhi, and have educated them as to its benefits. The male-dominated society has responded well, and seems willing to take these measure to prevent the spread of STDs and unplanned parenthood.

This, to me, is a big deal. I very strongly believe that, whether one uses it or not, the option to use a condom without any social stigma associated to it should be available to every living human being. Unfortunately, though, there are a great many places in the world where using a condom is considered a sin, and a prevention of natural (ie. god-given) functions of the human body. Of course, they don't stop to think about the economics of raising children, or, for that matter, getting Aids.


BBC NEWS | South Asia | Condoms help tackle Indian taboos

"We first began marketing the female condom primarily among sex workers three years ago," he says.

"We then decided to introduce this among rural women, since they are also a vulnerable group with little access to public health services.

Fallen

The leaves rustled. A dog barked.
The buzzing of the crickets and the broken shrieks of the wounded lemur.

The forest was alive tonight.

Ruan was alive tonight!

The torn carcass was lying before him, evil red poison pouring from its veins. He had done what he wanted. His nemesis, lying before him in a puddle of his own piss and blood. But why wasn't he satisfied? Why had the burning desire to kill not been dowsed? The rage that had pursued him for days (oh! the torture). It was still there, lying in wait for the body to catch up with itself. Soon it would return, this hunger for human flesh. Soon, the very thought of the ripe chubby flesh falling off the bones of a helpless manling would be enough to send him into a frenzy of rage!

But he wasn't like this, you know. Ruan remembered days, now seemingly in the distant past, where he was merely another wolf, sharing the world with the tasty homo-sapiens, but where the anger and delirium had been missing. And then he remembered ...

Coming home that night after a leisurely stroll through the bog, the smell of his cave had been different. He thought nothing of that, though - just a stray rat, he said to himself. But then he saw them, oh the pain!

They were his cubs! His little cubs, you spineless bastards! You waited till I was gone because you knew I was too strong! Oh you swine ...

And then the madness took over again. Diving through the thicket, Ruan plunged towards the only place he knew he could find fresh human flesh.

In the distance, the eastern sun rose over Beijing.

Void

There's a place
In the darkness of your soul
In the depths of your mind

What will you do?
When the world begins to search
When they begin to find?

How do you explain?
The seeds of lust in your heart
The words of rage in your mind

What will you do?
When you begin to search
And you begin to find?

Philanthropy and Bill Gates

As is common knowledge, after 30 years of heading one of the most power-hungry corporations in the world, Bill Gates has decided to (at least superficially) throw his energies into bettering the lives of the down-trodden peoples of the 3rd world.

The two articles linked to below are the latest in a series of debates on the hypocrisy of it all, and also on the possible good things that might come of his new-found altruism. The difference between these and any other article on the subject is that these tend to focus less on Mr. Gates' abilities/inabilities and more on those of the entire free market economy - as they point out, philanthropy is becoming a much more marketable word now than it used to be, so the question is : "How are the large corporates going to incorporate that thinking into their business strategies?"

Making Capitalism More Creative - TIME

Creative capitalism isn't some big new economic theory. And it isn't a knock on capitalism itself. It is a way to answer a vital question: How can we most effectively spread the benefits of capitalism and the huge improvements in quality of life it can provide to people who have been left out?

The Audacity of Bill Gates - TIME

There is something deeply wrong with a system that allows extremes of inequality, these people believe, and creative capitalism is just a way for the corporate élite to put off making the necessary changes.

Swamp Thing

Just began reading Alan Moore's rendition of "The Swamp Thing" - a horror-fantasy comic about a creature that is a traumatized plant-like monster that spends its life trying to understand itself and its past.

The original story arc revolved around the usual super-hero mythos - something along the lines of The Hulk - the creature was born in a lab experiment gone bad, where an explosion results in the mingling of the scientist's mind with the boggy marsh surrounding the laboratory. When everyone thinks he's dead, he arises phoenix-like, and begins to hunt down those responsible for the explosion and for his wife's death (obviously, she was conveniently disposed off by the bad guy's henchmen).

But Alan Moore takes the original script and gives it a twist - in #21, "The Anatomy Lesson", the reader finds that the Swamp Thing has been located and shot down by the Military Special Corps and now a doctor who moonlights as a half-plant mutant himself is performing the autopsy. In a beautiful interplay between the panelling and the story line, Alan Moore bores into the tortured anatomy of the Swamp Thing, revealing that it is not really a man who has been turned into a plant, but merely a sentient plant, that believes itself to be a human!!

This outstanding revelation now leads into the creatures deepest darkest nightmares, and reveals it as a desperately pathetic animal looking for salvation. Wonderfully illustrated, Alan Moore made his mark with this series, and it certainly is a brilliant read.

There is a wonderful line in one of the comics at a point where the Swamp Thing has visions of running from the plant world into the Human plane of existence while being advised by his humanity. It says : "This is the Human Race, You have to keep going, or you will get disqualified"