[Note: The devoutly religious may want to skip this one.]

A few years ago, in a small village not far from the erstwhile Madras, a respectable and self-admittedly suicidal young man had a ‘divine vision’–or what the kids today would call a bad trip. God, who took time out of his relatively packed schedule (alleviating poverty in Africa and studying the implications of the rise of the Soviet Union closely), convinced this diminutive but sharply dressed man that he had been called on to preach the gospel. Overjoyed by the instructions he had received, he proceeded to spread the good news to anyone who’d lend an ear. As luck (or providence) would have it, not many people asked questions about parthenogenesis, spontaneous cellular regeneration or the second law of thermodynamics being violated.

Against all odds, this man grew quite popular among a sizeable section of people who distracted themselves from their poverty and illiteracy with the very appealing notion of an afterlife. Heaven, they were told, was a place constructed entirely of pure gold. (God, in His infinite wisdom, opted for gold because it was shiny, inert and because you can’t spell gold without god.) Money and adulation poured in and he saw that it was good.

Being a prudent investor, the man upstairs instructed our hero to go forth and establish an engineering college because He, being all-knowing, knew that the promise of a worthless piece of paper would be enough to lure in His children. Religious indoctrination and imposed virginity would be thrown in for free. And lo, the sheep did come.

Years passed and our hero, now a ‘prophet’, amassed enough wealth to buy small islands in the Caribbean. His fame spread far and wide and his sources of income now no longer included just the poor and down-trodden underclass; rich sinners living abroad bought their salvation from him, too. He purchased a number of mansions and a fleet of luxury cars. When asked about the inherent ethical problems with preaching love and humility while riding around in pimped out wheels, he told his flock that the cars and houses were gifts from God. The sheep seemed cool with that.

Understandably, God was a little confused. Had He been talking in His sleep again? Because the last time that happened, someone got nailed to a cross.

Here’s what Douglas Hofstadter writes about relationship analogies in I Am A Strange Loop.

If two people are romantically involved (or even if they aren’t, but at least one of them feels there’s a potential spark), then almost any conversation between them about any romance whatsoever, no matter who it involves, stands a good chance of being heard by one or both of them as putting a spotlight on their own situation. Such boomerang-back is inevitable because romances, even very good ones, are filled with uncertainty and yearning. We are always on the lookout for clues or insights into our romantic lives, and analogies are among the greatest sources of clues and insights.

I’m trying to write more regularly, so expect some rambling.

We used to watch a lot of Star Trek: TNG back in the day and there was this one episode I’m sure my parents were a little uncomfortable with - ‘Justice’. After around 10 minutes of watching the half-naked inhabitants of Rubicon III indulge in guilt-free sex and other pleasures (and my mother’s glares), we were asked to leave the room  (damn you, understandable but misplaced fears).

I finally watched the episode last night, 16 years later. It was pretty silly but thematically more substantial than I recall. The USS Enterprise makes contact with a planet whose peaceful inhabitants live in fear of their god, an advanced alien being kicking it out in the planet’s orbit. When Wesley Crusher breaks a trivial rule, the Enterprise has to prevent his execution and this isn’t easy considering they’re sworn to the Prime Directive. The reason I prefer TNG over the original series is because of the former’s obvious moral core.

Anyway, Captain Picard saves the day with a speech.

I don’t know how to communicate this, or even if it is possible. But the question of justice has concerned me greatly of late. And I say to any creature who may be listening, there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions.

Let me digress, but only slightly. The IT law overhaul in India is clearly a bad idea but shouldn’t we be worried that there are people out there making arguments like this?

Excerpts from Conan O’Brien’s slightly inappropriate but mostly hilarious commencement address at Dartmouth.

It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.  It’s not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can be a catalyst for profound re-invention.

…

But today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come.  The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.

…

And there is no greater cliché in a commencement address than “follow your dream.”  Well I am here to tell you that whatever you think your dream is now, it will probably change.  And that’s okay.  Four years ago, many of you had a specific vision of what your college experience was going to be and who you were going to become.  And I bet, today, most of you would admit that your time here was very different from what you imagined.  Your roommates changed, your major changed, for some of you your sexual orientation changed.   I bet some of you have changed your sexual orientation since I began this speech.  I know I have.  But through the good and especially the bad, the person you are now is someone you could never have conjured in the fall of 2007.

True that.

I really want to make rapture and zombie apocalypse jokes but this is the saddest thing I’ve read today.

In New York’s Times Square, Robert Fitzpatrick, of Staten Island, said he was surprised when the six o’clock hour simply came and went. He had spent his own money to put up advertising about the end of the world.

“I can’t tell you what I feel right now,” he said, surrounded by tourists. “Obviously, I haven’t understood it correctly because we’re still here.”

I suspect a lot of people are going to need counselling and hugs.

Taken from here.

“How does he go before the Australian people dressed in the clothes of a Liberal leader and deny more than 20 years of Liberal engagement with the science of climate change?” she said.

Mr Abbott then took another point of order.

“The question was about the Lodge, not the dodge – that’s what it was.”

After outlining her belief in climate change and the need for a price on carbon, Ms Gillard launched another attack on Mr Abbott.

“If he wants to debate political honesty in this place, then bring it on,” she said.

“Did he go to the Australian people before the last election telling them about his $11 billion black hole?”

Amid roars from the Opposition benches and futile attempts by Mr Jenkins to restore order, the Prime Minister went on.

“Did he go to the Australian people before the last election saying [Pauline Hanson's] One Nation would write his economic policy?” she said.

“Did he go to the Australian people before the last election saying senior members of his frontbench like the shadow treasurer would agitate for the return of WorkChoices? No he did not.

“So if we want to have a debate about political honesty then bring it on, Mr Speaker, bring it on because we have the most hollow man with the least conviction sitting in the Opposition Leader’s chair we’ve ever seen in this Parliament.”

Hans Rosling’s (if you haven’t watched his TED talk, you should) Gapminder is a wonderful tool for statistics nerds.

If you’re as much a fan of data extrapolation as I am, you may want to check out his site or the desktop client. Some of the motion charts are very insightful.

Couple of examples:

1. Income/person vs CO2 emissions (tonnes/person)

2. Income/person vs Life expectancy

There’s an article in New Scientist that pretty much confirms something I’ve always suspected. If you buy into one kind of woo, the rest start looking pretty too.

Dan Kahan at Yale Law School has found that people’s views on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage predict their position on climate science too. This, he argues, is because social conservatives tend to be pro-business and resist the idea that it is damaging the planet.

I’ve noticed that acquaintances who smugly declared back in school that the moon landing was a hoax tend to belong to the same school of thought as people who think vaccines are a scam, evolution is controversial, crystals have energy and that global warming was a story dredged up hippies.

Another not-so-surprising finding that explains the phenomenon that is Deepak Chopra.

… instigators of denialist movements have more serious psychological problems than most of their followers. “They display all the features of paranoid personality disorder“, he says, including anger, intolerance of criticism, and what psychiatrists call a grandiose sense of their own importance. “Ultimately, their denialism is a mental health problem. That is why these movements all have the same features, especially the underlying conspiracy theory.”

(…)

Denialism has already killed. AIDS denial has killed an estimated 330,000 South Africans. Tobacco denial delayed action to prevent smoking-related deaths. Vaccine denial has given a new lease of life to killer diseases like measles and polio. Meanwhile, climate change denial delays action to prevent warming. The backlash against efforts to fight the flu pandemic could discourage preparations for the next, potentially a more deadly one.

If science is the best way to understand the world and its dangers, and acting on that understanding requires popular support, then denial movements threaten us all.

Also, watch this wonderful TED talk by Michael Specter.

Design obsolescence has always puzzled me. How does something that’s aesthetically appealing one day become an eyesore the next? Remember back in 1998, when the translucent candy-like iMac came out and everyone and their grandmother soiled their pants over it? It really hasn’t stood the test of time. Now compare that with the set-design for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; 41 years and it still gives off that futuristic vibe.

Gary Hustwit’s Objectified tries to tackle this dissonance but never quite succeeds. Despite that, Objectified is a very engaging documentary on industrial design. There are some very insightful interviews with leading designers including the reclusive Jonathan Ive and the brilliant Mark Newson. Contrary to what you might expect from a documentary on design, Objectified is never boring.

If there’s one thing you learn from the film, it’s that most designers share a singular albeit abstract design philosophy – “I want things I can’t have yet”.

Highly recommended.

The Catholic Church is caught up in yet another child abuse scandal. But contrary to what many of us would like to think, the church is not in its final throes of relevance. Someone in a ridiculous hat will come up with a convoluted justification and/or a half-assed apology and the sheep will forget. Before you tell me that the Catholic Church does not represent all Christians, let’s not forget that senile prick  Pat Robertson who really does believe with all his black heart that a ‘deal with the devil’ was what caused the earthquake in Haiti. Or that clown, Benny Hinn who gets away with pretty much everything save murder. Yes, I’ve heard that the lunatic fringe is never to be taken seriously but any organization that has over a billion members and has the gall to entertain the delusion that it can control people’s lives while covering up institutional child abuse and rampantly promoting ignorance, hatred and homophobia does not constitute the fringe. Any person, organization or movement incapable of telling the difference between ethics and morality does not deserve to be taken seriously. No bloody exceptions.