Human Stupidity or Human Curiosity

So, what do you think it is, human stupidity or human curiosity, that causes traffic to get stuck?

I had to spend more than double the usual time on the road this morning to get to work, which made me about 20 minutes late.  The slowly moving traffic was caused by, i think you could say, human endeavour - there were a lot of road works. However we got talking about it at work, and the question was, what causes a traffic jam, the  temporary insanity of the driver who crashes, or all the people who slow down to see what happened?

Talking of traffic, my pet peeve is when people drive gigantic enormous car that flash light into the eyes of driver ahead of them. what is yours?

The foundations of clever dude-ness

Sometimes I fail even by my very lax standards in writing this blog. There are some brilliant gems scattered quite liberally all over the blog, as I am sure, even a non-long suffering reader can tell^^. The question is, should I or should I not add to that list - "What a clever dude Asimov was!!" (Is there some rule somewhere about who can be called a dude and who cannot?) I have been enjoying reading Asimov's massive "Asimov on Shakespeare" lately – basically reading and forgetting almost simultaneously a whole lot of trivia related to Shakespeare's plays, which is totally irrelevant to anything I do or have to do or even want to do!

But, as I said previously, Asimov is just so clever about it, that the massive two volume door stopper is a pleasure to flip thru, and feels much like a conversation with a random stranger on the bus (with whom you wouldn't share anything personal) that just ends up being about 3 hours long. While that tempts me to pick up Asimov on The Bible, I would recommend you to pick up the Foundation Trilogy*, which forms such an important part of my past reading life that while I can barely remember the bare bones plot, I can still remember it was about something- and you could not guess what till you read it^. And, I haven't met anyone who has read the book and disagreed, so let the majority win and just read it – yes? (Good, glad to have you convinced!)

While we are talking about Asimov, how can we not speak about the Robot series? The Three Laws of Robots were, Asimov says, written as a response to the Frankenstein syndrome** - where a scientist would create monsters that would eventually kill the creator, which seemed to have taken over the science fiction world of the time. Now, you tell me, clever dude or what?

 

^^ does anyone remember reading about a half hearted attempt at a book review that mentions the author writing "interestingly" about politics of 4 kinds of creatures? No?

*that was voted, along with Lord of the Rings Trilogy, as the best fantasy of the century.

^ ok, I might have just made that last bit up…

** that Asimov might have referred to by another name, in an introduction to collection of his Robot stories  

About believing in God

I think, the existence of God* makes perfect sense – or at least as much sense as laws such as gravity, relativity theory, uncertainty principle do. The doubt really is about whether there is a purpose to this universe? And if so what is it; then the further doubt is about if God favours believers⁺ over non-believers**?  Thus, God makes perfect sense, till we bring our random shopping lists of desires into the picture^.

However, there is a difference between laws of nature and God, because you see, God makes sense only when God is THE lawmaker of nature. I mean, you can have gods, who are laws of nature, but eventually there will be a God – who is the unlimited ultimate and conscious.  

*God who is universal consciousness and all the matter in the universe too.

⁺ which does lead to the question about "who we are?" doesn't it?

**which, if I would hazard a guess, is absurd an idea as the idea that gravity favours birds but not elephants

^which is fairly confusing because all religions seem to project God as a conditional or unconditional wish fulfiller  

Unravelling the mysteries in the moment

Many a knots have a right end of the string and a wrong end of a string, one that unravels it and another that makes it tighter. Apparently*, situations are like that too, if thought of in a certain way, they simplify and resolve; but thought of in another way, they complicate and confuse. And that, of course, reminds me of a story, which goes like this:

A king called Vājashrava was once performing a sacrifice. The king had a young 8 year old son, called Nachiketa. Nachiketa, observing his father, realised that he was cutting corners and was thus, really, doing more harm than good. Thus concerned, Nachiketa, tries to gently point this out to Vajashrava, who naturally doesn’t want to hear anything about it. Nachiketa only ends up making Vajashrava fairly angry who in the heat of the moment, forgetting that he is standing at sacred place of worship and sacrifice, curses his son to be damned to death. The son, now realises, that he has been cursed without a just cause and thinks, “If every effect has a cause, then since I did not do anything wrong, what has happened to me can also not be wrong. Thus, even tho, it looks like I have been cursed, it is only likely that there is a great purpose to be fulfilled thru this situation.” Nachiketa then does go ahead and fulfils great purpose before the end; of which there is a glorious story told in the Katha Upanishad.

So, listen to Katha Upanishad here and think wonderful thoughts, that lead to glorious actions, that fulfil great purpose – no matter what life throws your way!!

*or so I believe

unread books on the shelf

It is time to start packing again, and that includes books. (a good time, if any, to move to electronic books - but  I can't seem to be able to take that leap, for some odd reason!)

how does one pack books? (and so then how does one sift values from valuables?) 

It would be a shame to lug them around in a box, I could give you a list of them, but the unfortunate thing is, I already have! you see, it is pretty much the same as it was on Thursday, 25 November 2010. Sad, eh?

Un-thinking

It has been a rather un-thinking kind of time, in that that it has been a lot of pulp fiction kind of time: The Inheritance cycle, Sherlock Holmes (the 2 series on BBC and the books), Lewis, Downton Abbey, Phryne Fisher and a bit of Dr.Who. And today I am going to watch Avengers. My friend's choice, but I could have easily made it too. What I really want to watch is Tintin, which, it appears, is out on DVD now.

Along with it being unthinking, it has been a sleep deprived kind of a time too - watching TV shows into the night is not good for the day job. Unfortunately. Not being alert and active during the day job isn't good for my morale. Tragically.

I am missing thinking.  

Update: Avengers is not a good watch, really.