rantlust

Posted by riyer on July 24th 2007 in Animals, Health & Fitness, Life, Nature, Thoughts
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The other day while riding downhill on my bicycle, averaging speeds above 35mph, I happened to notice that a squirrel had been struck, perhaps a few moments before I passed it, by another cyclist or a car. The squirrel was not dead, it was struggling and writhing, its head almost entirely severed and it lay there dying. It probably died long before I reached the bottom of the mountain. Note that I captured all this in a fleeting moment - there was a brief instinct to brake and help put it out of its misery but I continued downhill, my thoughts moving quickly - from the shame of not helping the miserable creature by putting an end to its suffering, to the ethics behind my inaction.

I asked myself the question what my “kartavya” (duty) was to that squirrel. What was my role in the death of that squirrel? Am I as responsible for its death as the person who directly laid the hit. What if instead of a squirrel it were a person? Is letting a person die as dastardly an act as laying a hit on that person that caused them to die? I know the utilitarian answer to that question but that is not at all comforting.

I know that if it were a person, I would have done everything in my power to help that person, but that got me to the question - what if the only reasonable help that I could offer that person was, like the squirrel, a quick death. Would I act illegally? Obviously what was supposed to be an exhilarating downhill ride was quickly filled with angst. At least the physical pain of the uphill ride was masked easily with memories of funny expressions. There was zero thrill to be had in this downhill return. I confess that I was at a complete loss, I even blew past a STOP sign, with a middle-aged man yelling sarcastically from his car “Nice Stop”.
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Posted by papi on June 06th 2007 in Internet, Life, Society
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Now everyone and his grand-uncle has a new time-wasting tool. Google street view - where you can peek through your neighbor’s bedroom window from the safe haven of your own bedroom. Just make sure the curtains are drawn and pray that the roving eye is not passing by right then. I can just see all the voyeurs putting away their telescopes and investing in high resolution monitors. Well, at least it’s not real time. Not yet.

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

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Posted by jcaldera on September 15th 2006 in Auto, Cars, Humor, Life, Nature, Politics, Random, Rants, Roads, Society, War
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A couple of days ago, in my daily commute to work, in the usual company of fellow San Francisco commuters, with the usual boredom, one of the favorite topics came to the plate: dumb people (which of course is everybody that drives except whomever is in the car at that moment - no pun intended to my fellow bloggers and (some) acquaintances).

Bear with me in this line of thought and (un)reasoning. While talking about bad drivers, we sort of link it to the Darwinian mechanisms of survival of the fittest. So bad driving is really a natural mechanism for getting rid of certain number of people, which is, we suppose, one of nature’s problems: how to keep these annoying humans for growing larger and more powerful than nature. So we tied that to the fact that nature was very clever and was savy enough to embed human kind with some “stupidity” property, which comes small or large depending on the subject, and the geographical location (don’t ask me why but I suspect it is very true). Then nature decided that is not good enough because stupidity by itself won’t get rid of many people. So nature kept trying and decided to embed the “power” property in these human subjects (or objects for the OOP geeks). And then nature came with the master plan and based on probabilities, IT thought that eventually you could have one subject with enough desire for power that would take advantage of the stupid people. Chi chin! big win for nature, mathematically speaking, and we all know nature is about zeros and ones, this would guarantee the possibility of yielding enough stupidity together to raise to power somebody stupid enough, managed by people that desire power, that would cause the destruction of a lot of people.

Of course I am not referring to anybody in particular, or any sbject in particular.

Ahh! the wonders of commuting.

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Posted by anupcs on June 30th 2006 in History, Life, Thoughts
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A curious look at important events that happened on this day in history doesn’t reveal much of earth shattering significance. After some research on the big bad Internet, I came up with the following shortlist:

• In 1520, the Spanish retreat from the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan suffering huge losses
• In 1859, Emile Blondin, a French daredevil, crosses the Niagara Falls on a tightrope
• In 1936, Margaret Mitchell’s epic “Gone with the Wind” is published
• In 1950, the US enters the Korean War officially
• In 1953, the first Chevy Corvette, a white car with a red interior, is produced
• In 1971, the crew of the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 11 perishes on re-entry
• In 2002, Brazil beats Germany 2-0 in Japan to win their fifth World Cup title in Football

And oh, I was born on this day, one and a half scores and then some, years ago. Even as a child my mother made sure this day was special for me. She used to make me invite my friends and cook for them. I don’t celebrate XMAS, thanksgiving, or any other holiday with much enthusiasm. But birthdays are important to me; whether they are mine or those of close friends and family.

I more or less continued this tradition of big parties until about a few years ago when most of my friends decided to have progeny and settle down. Bummer. For I have had quite a few memorable birthday parties. The best of the crop was in my former apartment when about thirty people showed up and dunked me in the swimming pool. I was drunk and fully clothed. It was after midnight. I had only moved in a week before that day and the managers of the complex weren’t pleased. I was promptly served with an eviction notice the next day.

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Posted by dharpe guje on June 10th 2006 in Blogs, Life, Rants
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When pondering difficult situations, I try to get a perspective of where a particular problem ranks relative to the problems of the world. Most times you conclude that your problem in the grand scheme of things is not that big, even when the problem might be really impactful to your individual self. Bottomline the perspective assures you that the world has its fair share of problems, so you have to deal with yours just like everyone else. Fair enough. (Read more…)

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Posted by jcaldera on April 12th 2006 in Games, Life, Rants, Sex
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I consider myself a casual gamer. I mean there are times when I can spend a lot of time (note that lot has a different meaning for a parent of an infant) playing a game, and then I can go about months without touching the PS2 controls. I certainly know people that spend many more hours than I do attached to their preferred gaming environment.

If you by any chance are a reader of Wired magazine, you might have read this month’s set of articles about gaming, latest trends, and where is it going. Or as it has been in the news lately over and over, I am sure you’ve heard about the many cases, especially in Korea, where people die in real life over marathon games and such. NPR issued as story not so long ago about how much money the virtual worlds are generating in real life. A search in EBay can give you an idea how much a weapon in World of Warcraft can cost you in actual US$. One of the articles in Wired tells the story about this person that paid $100K for a virtual space in a virtual moon in a virtual world. Stupid?, well, this person *made* in revenue about $250K the first year, and it is expecting to gain about $2.5 million next year.
And I wish this was the weirdest of the stories, it gets more bizarre. Issues are starting to rise about child pornography, as in these games you could impersonate a child and have virtual sex with an adult. Some of these games have extremely realistic rendering of actual child characters. It goes on and on.
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Posted by john on March 29th 2006 in Life, Random, Society
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A fascinating insight into how modern conveniences have influenced social behavior even at death is the following trend reported: Apparently more and more people around the world are asking to be buried with their cell phones. According to a market research group called The Future Laboratory, this practice started in South Africa and has rapidly spread to countries like Australia, Ireland and the US (why are we not surprised that the US is on any of these lists anyway?). The South African trend started with superstitious beliefs that an enemy’s witchcraft could result in one being buried alive and so after waking up from the spell, it would be a rather practical thing to find a working cell phone handy in the coffin! But I’m not sure whether one could get a decent signal going from six feet under in a concrete tomb and there are always those damn drained battery issues to worry about.
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Posted by anupcs on March 22nd 2006 in Life, Television
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“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book” - Groucho Marx

For the first time since 1984, I will be living in a house without a television connection. Today morning, after mulling about it for a week with the spouse, I called and canceled our satellite TV connection. No more “Survivor,” “Amazing Race,” “Naked Chef,” “Simon Cowell,” and most importantly, no more Donald! We have been emancipated.

This was a big decision and we were wondering if we should experiment for a while by not switching on the telly for say, a month. We realized that this wouldn’t work and we would eventually go back to switching it on and sneaking a glimpse of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, at the very least. So, the decision was made to stop it completely. We haven’t been watching that many shows anyway this year but this total blackout will ensure more candlelit dinners, reading, music listening, and other productive activities. Or so, we hope. Last year, I read more books than any other since leaving high school and I hope to read more this year. Now only if I have the courage to walk away from broadband at home.

Stay tuned for more updates as we cope with this drastic lifestyle change.

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