First impressions of “Notes to myself”
Well, not expecting anything earth shattering from the book, I must say I wasn’t disappointed – the book didn’t live up to its reviews. I thought Hugh Prather was trying too hard to put meaning into every word.
I thought, instead of letting the meaning and the thought choose the word, the word’s trying to mean something. He was trying to force fit meanings into every word – like he had to be profound in every comma and full-stop.
But a few awfully good quotes – “The key to motivation is to see how far I’ve come, and not how far I’ve to go” – “Now that I know I am no wiser than anyone else, does this wisdom make me any wiser?”
Crackpot Theory #58
In this post, I proposed a theory that religion and its greatest obsession – that of unity, is actually a look back at Evolution.
According to the Hindu Scriptures, Vishnu takes on 10 avatars to save the world from evil.
The 10 avatars are – 1) Matsya – the fish
2) Kurma – the turtle
3) Varaha – the Boar
4) Narasimha – the half-man-half lion
5) Vamana – the midget
6) Parasu-rama – the axe man
7) Rama – the (well…) Ideal man
Krishna
9) Budha
10) Kalki – (yet to arrive)
My contention (not all mine – i heard somebody saying this, and I badgered my way into the discussion to listen to the whole thing and argue back and forth), is that the 10 avatars show the evolution of life on earth – from aquatic fish to terrestrial man – getting more intelligent and more powerful each time.
Crackpot Theory #57
Let’s for a moment assume that UFO sightings and alien abductions are true. My theory is that, far from abducting humans as research specimens, they are abducting us to preserve us as a species. The idea is to have a few of us humans left alive, in the unfortunate case we knock each other off and wipe out the species.
The End
My end, when it comes, will be one horrific, painful death. I shall in most probability, die of a fatal road accident. Probably crushed between two huge MTC Buses.
But I shall continue to ride the way I do now. You see, death is not something I am afraid of. I love the living. But Death is the other possibility I haven’t explored yet. I might like it.
The Scian Melt
The 7th Fortnightly Scian Melt, a roundup of posts about India and Science is now on at The Scian.com
Do check it out.
Random post to keep my membership to the cartel alive
February 2 this year was Ayn Rand’s 100th B’day. And as a honorary member of the Cartel and a libertarian, here’s my obligatory post on Ayn Rand. I shall follow it with a little explanation of what to me is libertarianism.
Ayn Rand, no doubt, has influenced me. I loved a few of her books – Fountainhead, We the living (interminably long read though it was). Some I wanted to disagree with – Capitalism – The Unknown Ideal particularly (got a bit preachy it did).
But in the end, I doubt if I would have been able to defend my beliefs as well as I do, against a father and family, blind believers that they are in Government control, and against friends and wellwishers who seem to think I am out of my (normally sane) mind.
But I have, and that is due in not small measures to Ayn Rand’s books, and my subsequent reading up. For that I shall always be grateful.
That concludes my homage to Rand.
Prakash writes what Libertarianism is all about, to him. He calls it total self-ownership.
To me though, libertarianism can be concluded in one phrase I have often said, to friends and co workers.
Nobody influences me. I influence nobody.
Imagine, for a moment, what that means, if followed in spirit and letter. You get to live your life the way you want, without interference from anyone. You would not go around shoving advice, especially bad, on to others (that alone will make life on this planet simpler and better) and no one does too.
Of course, that means my job as a copywriter is throws out of the window. In which case, I shall take up cultural anthropology.
Mad”Al Capone” Man?
Is MadMan really Al Capone’s twin seperated at birth? Check this out.
Funny man! Funny.




