HWR - 5

Welcome to a new edition of Haaris' Weekly Round-up where I attempt to clear out all the links I had been meaning to put on my blog as far back as an year. Let's get down to it:

1. Even as the protests and media discussions push for justice, newspapers continue to be littered with more cases of abuse of women. Outraged citizens can think of all that goes unsaid; all that is swept under the carpet and bludgeoned or burned with their bodies. It makes sense to have an outside perspective albeit one with a historical context of our reaction to the many evils that plague our society. 
2. One of my first blog posts had been on how language was never in a state of stasis and was constantly evolving with almost random trends in popular usage. Here's another article with many interesting examples.
3. A long and winding article on the fonts which create the right sort of impact in different situations. A personal confession: I love Comic Sans and use it in my presentations when no one's looking.
4. On to the strange and increasingly inaccessible world of pure maths. A Japanese mathematician has claimed to have resolved the Diophantine problem, a result that would make the Fermat's Theorem a consequence of the general result. The problem? The paper is 500 pages long so any confirmation on its accuracy is not coming too soon.
5. All wars have "collateral damage" and the patent wars are no exception.

That's it for now. 

Status Update

Once upon a time, I had harboured dreams of an active blog with weekly round-ups of wacky and informative links, apart from my trademark intellectual ramblings on anything under the sun. I hadn't factored in longer hours at work or the daily dance classes I took for about two weeks. The presence of some narrow minded, overly ambitious imbeciles also made the task of thinking freely that much more difficult.

Life balanced out eventually. I still put in over 12 hours at work but I'm enjoying my current project. My task is to reduce the raw material waste in production which means I'm using all sorts of high falutin words such as lean management and six sigma or doing statistical tests which are fun to learn. More importantly, I am reading again. I am currently gliding through a collection of short stories by the very talented Henry James. James isn't the kind of author most people I know would read. He is as far removed from fantasy or sci-fi as John Cage was from Bach (though not in any strictly analogous sense). The stories are complex but they would never try and alarm you unduly. The pace is steady with situations that are not extraordinary but allow the reader to sit right there with the protagonist and experience the ironies or frustrations of a rather normal life. My favourite story till now would definitely be Daisy Miller.

Sachin's retirement can mean only one thing -  my tryst with cricket is at an end. I feel truly privileged to have lived in an era which has seen so many (arguable of course) G.O.A.T's - Sachin, Federer, Messi, Armstrong, Woods, Phelps, Isinbayeva; the list is too long. That might also mean, somewhat depressingly, that we're going to have the greatest... in every generation but I'll leave that for my future self to handle. The greatest batsman of our era. Owner of the most transcendental on-drive. A man with 33 of 49 ODI centuries in winning causes. Sachin's retirement also marks the demise of the quintessential Bombay batsman and the "straight-bat". Now, we're left with a bunch of whack-a-mole hitters with very little class. It's a shame I didn't put this post up before all the cricket series of the past 3-4 months because I wanted to say it even then- India's World Cup was won because it was held in India.

I'll be back with my round-ups but here's a set I've meant to share for some time now. Random surfing on the net led me to an awesome concept of basing superheroes on fonts. It's the sort of idea I would have liked to have implemented in my college magazine. Also notable, a letter between two of my favourite artistes, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. Letters between great minds make me extremely jealous of the days long past when you sat by your desk and wrote to be read by a friend, rival or lover. Lastly, James Gleick wrote an amusing article on how auto correct tests our patience with its personal opinion on the words we ought to use .

2013 has begun and I commenced my year with a dance contest. For over twenty years, the only dancing I did was at parties. I even avoided shaking the odd leg at weddings. School went by with a strongly entrenched perception of my geekiness which was all cool and humbling but which also meant I was the last to be picked in anything too hip. Come 31st December and I was dancing away for over 20 minutes. I got in some good moves, I stumbled at times and there were technical glitches. All of that is forgiven. We, a ragtag bunch of misfits who spent a little more than 10 days preparing 8 songs, won the contest, a victory in my eyes as great as anything else I might have achieved in my ordinary life.

I couldn't upload it on Youtube. Here's the dropbox link of the first number. Remember: I don't dance.