Posts from — May 2003

Rediff features an article by Anita Bora on site counters, titled, Hits and Misses. It looks at why people are so fond of using site counters on their sites/blogs. Many bloggers are featured in the article. Yours truly finds a mention too. :-)

Check it out!

US finds evidence of WMD at last … buried in a field near Maryland

The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.
The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland countryside.

link via Metafilter

Wow!!! … its good that Maryland is not a country!! ;-)

Now don’t say they didn’t warn you about this!

Massive tsunami sweeps Atlantic Coast in asteroid impact scenario for March 16, 2880

If an asteroid crashes into the Earth, it is likely to splash down somewhere in the oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet’s surface. Huge tsunami waves, spreading out from the impact site like the ripples from a rock tossed into a pond, would inundate heavily populated coastal areas. A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows waves as high as 400 feet sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the United States.

link via Slashdot

The probability that this asteroid would indeed crash into Earth is about 0.3% which is quite low. But consider the effects if indeed the asteroid crashed…

The 60,000-megaton blast of the impact vaporizes the asteroid and blows a cavity in the ocean 11 miles across and all the way down to the seafloor, which is about 3 miles deep at that point. The blast even excavates some of the seafloor. Water then rushes back in to fill the cavity, and a ring of waves spreads out in all directions. The impact creates tsunami waves of all frequencies and wavelengths, with a peak wavelength about the same as the diameter of the cavity. Because lower-frequency waves travel faster than waves with higher frequencies, the initial impulse spreads out into a series of waves.

Errr… not very comforting, is it?!!

And now… the story of a modern day male version of Anne Frank. This only goes on to show that even though the war might’ve been unjustified to begin with, the end result has been generally good.

Iraqi man ends 20 years in hiding

Twenty-one years ago, Saddam Hussein placed an execution order on Jawad Amir for supporting an outspoken Shia cleric.
Mr Amir escaped - not into a far-off town or neighbouring country, but into a space sandwiched between two walls in his parents’ home.
He said for the whole of his hiding he never left that small, dark space and had only a tiny peephole to view the outside world.

link via Metafilter

What happens when people stop viewing movies just for the pleasure of the experience and start reading too much into the theme of the movie?! They start philosophizing about it and start drawing allegories based on the details seen in the movie.

Matrix, with its futuristic plot and ideas provided a lot of cannon for the “philosophers” who wrote reams about the coded allusions that were liberally sprinkled throughout the movie.

And, the Wachowski brothers did not help the matters either. When asked how many hidden messages there were in “The Matrix,” they once teased, “More than you’ll ever know.”

And now with the release of Matrix Reloaded, philosophers are once again having a field day! ;-)

Philosophers draw on the film Matrix [NYTimes registration required]

Now that its sequel, “Matrix Reloaded,” is out, the interpretive industry is also gearing up. After the first film, Christian allegorists leaped at the bait the authors left: characters named Neo and Trinity, allusions to Jesus and resurrection, a city named Zion. The Buddhist character of Neo’s “awakening” to reality’s veil of illusion was discussed. And academic interest grew because the film self-consciously tapped current fascination with pop culture and critical theory. Recent anthologies have included ” `The Matrix’ and Philosophy,” edited by William Irwin (Open Court), “Taking the Red Pill,” edited by Glenn Yeffeth (Benbella Books), and “Exploring the Matrix,” edited by Karen Haber (St. Martin’s Press). Even the Warner Brothers “Matrix” Web site contains a growing collection of papers by academic philosophers

And now, keeping in mind the current flavour… terrorism, the interpreters are claiming that The Matrix represents contemporary America with all its problems. And the solution or response to the ‘hegemonic’ power is said to be “terrorism”.

Similarly, in “The Matrix,” Morpheus tells Neo he must regard all inhabitants of that virtual world as enemies that may be killed; anyway, most people are “not ready” for the truth. Morpheus is even wanted by the Matrix’s ruthless agents for “acts of terrorism.”

And going one step further philosophers are also giving it an almost divine colour…

In fact we eventually learn through cryptic pronouncements of the Architect of the Matrix — its software writer, its God — that Neo is actually living in the sixth version of the Matrix. In each, a savior figure has arisen. And in each earlier case, the savior has not been able to free humanity at all. Instead, the result has been a large-scale loss of life, until the Matrix begins again, with an apparent upgrade — a new web of earthly illusions — allowing no recollections of the disastrous past.

Now doesn’t this sound suspiciously like “Yada Yada Hi Dharmasya. Glanirva Bhavathi Bharatha,. Abhyuthanam Adharmaysya. Tadatmanam Srijami Aham“, the famous verse from Bhagavad Gita (Chapter IV-7)… which translates to “Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion–at that time I descend Myself”. Hmmm! :-)

I wonder what path the third movie will take!