Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: random ruminations
From: skumar@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Date: 27 Sep 92 20:38:23 EDT
Organization: Wesleyan University


                                                           Sat., sept. 26, 1992
                                                            10:10 P.M.( EST)
I am sitting at the sci. liby reading Marvin Minsky's book "The Society of Mind
"and I happened to gaze ot through the glass wall beside me; and I saw a
 reflection of my self- stting wth legs crossed, tousled hair & spectacles. I
 realized, all of a sudden that I was 22 years old and I have done nothng of
 consequence inmy life. As I say this my subconscous mnd fghts back- so I never
 WANTED to do anything great, I was content to lead a sub-ordinary existance-
 a small job, earn enough to survive decently etc. etc.

what have I learnt? what have I read? What skills did I acquire in my totally 
meanngless existance? What am I worth? What is ANYONE worth? 

Galois died when he was 19 ( or maybe 21). God knows why this popped into my 
head . This is a recurring thought. As Jags said Why do I have to compare
 myself with Galois(!). Why not a simple guy like Prashant Shenoy ? I don't
 know.

What do I want to do with my life- If I lived my life all over again what would
 I do? Will I change it? Other than the regrets of not learning Topology, C, 
drving or cooking- What cribs do I have?

Will.... Paul Simon's song is echoing in my skull...mmmmm...Let me listen...
I can't make out. I think it is something like " Who'll be my role model?"
or "rest of my lfe is..." or "call me al.." or am I mixing up. There it goes 
again in the empty cavern I call my MIND.

What would I....
Do I beleive in absolute morals? Am I against homosexuality? As Calvin said 
" What do the candidiates say about the palaentology,they cant ignore the   
    dianosar vote". 

Do I make sense? Will She or won't she? 
What is truth? Is it absolute, timeless....
Decepton in adverstising... What crap?
There goes Deanna (my prof). Other than going round and round in little circles
and comming up with pithy generalizations- what have these Psych's done?
Someone sad correctly " Academic scholarship is about dispute. Mediavel
 scholars argued about how many fairies could stand on the head of a pin.
 a dspute not fully resolved till now." ( Who said that?, some Kline, I don't
 remember the name of the bookbutit had an interesting cover....yup! it was
 Psychology exposed!)
Saying some fart to UG's who want to earn credits for a degree. Med-School
 jaanahai kya? or MBA perhaps ? Who cares?

Barac-Cikoja was telling me about the little mongoose and I told her I was only
 too aware of the Cartesian theater dilemna. I am a non-dualist, if nothing
 else.labels! labels! 

Who cares for metaphysics? What is Truth- anyway. We discussed this issue over 
a whole night at IIT. Several other nights too, but what came out of it?
 NOTHING!After all we strt outwith some axioms- Is life as I once said ( I was
 joking then) - a stochastc process? Is there or, as mathematicians put it,
 " does thereexist" freewill? Whaat, Saar?

Do you think I am insane? Maybe Iam schizophrenic, heh? Well, Psycholoogists do
 not agree on the meanng of schizophrenia ether. Did I hear someone mention my
attitude problem? Well I quote ( some stupid American T-Shirt) " I love my 
atttude problem!". What is that supposed to mean? Verbal diaohrrea.

I'm talkng too much.
"Paritranaaya sadhunaam.." . Now that is irrelevent bs. But it just popped 
into my head. Cat and Shakespeare. 
Maybe I should become a journalist, or a writer perhaps.
Could I get into a Englsh dept. somewhwre pleease? I'm serous. I have grand 
plans of doing a research on literature avalable on Jack the ripper murders and
synthesize a sci-f novel on that theme. I hat sci-fi. Will I? Won't I? Will she
?Won't She? What bs.

I had a plan ( a good plot, I thought) for a novel set in Amritsar and Bonne 
when I was 14. I discussed the possibilty of vsting A'sar to study the locality
before startng to write- My uncle, as usual was supportive. What happened to it
?I don't remember....... Versification- ha!

Again " Who'll be my role model, Oh yeah,...". Why does ths pop in to my mind
often. "pop into"? or should I use "pop out of"- or pop out of into - What a 
mess. Semantics, pragmatics, I hate psycholinguistics! Are you sure? A few days
 ago you were planning to apply to the MIT Language and Cognition program. What
bs. Well, to hangon in the US- You'll have to stick to some school somewhere!
OK Boss! OK! I am not in the leat interested in flunkng out. SO REST ASSURED.

Spinoza's Ethics. Yet another regret...... Why, Why didnt I opt for Phlosophy 
ofthe Mind? You sure? It could be boring to study it for a course. ( COURSE- a
foUr letter word! KORS is how it is pronounced, is'nt it?)
punctuation. punctuation.

The monkey hacking on a wordprocessor mightvome out with better prose. Brian, 
the super-hacker. Is it spelled Bryan? Why not e-mail minsky@theory.lcs.mit.edu
and ask? Boy! Will he be cheesed!

Kaam dhaam nahi...
"Paritranaaya sadhunaam...." relevence boss! relevence! kuch bhi shloka kidhar 
bhi..... NO VERNAC PLEASE!
What is the spelling of palaentology? Dictionary! Help!
" The whole problem with science is that you have a bunch of empricists trying 
to describe thingsof inestimable wonder"- Calvin again!
" Om sahanau bhavatu
sahanau bhunatu
sahaveeryam karvavahe ; tejasvinaavati tamastu; maa vidvishhavahe; om shanti!
shanti, shanti."
"Who'll be my role model ....." again!Yup!YUp! I like taht, yup!
archie and mehitabel. tujour gai- spelling may be incorrect.
"Om pooranamadah.........poornamaeva avashishyate." infinity and the mind. Who 
cares for Patanjali, the old fool!

My mind has gone blank. Sounds seem exaggerated. The liby is so quiet. I can   
 hear the shuffling of pages and naught else...
Red Exit sign, red color of the sky with setting sun..... 
           Om tat savitur varenyam
           bhargodevasya dhi mahi
           dhyo yo na prachodayaat
Is'nt that how the hymn to Sun God goes? I am sorry, my sanskrit is poor, that
is an euphemism! In Satyajit Ray's Aparajito there is a scene in which Apu   
falls asleep in the class as the prof. teaches figures of speech! Why the 
exclamation point?

Archie. Archie, the vers libre poet. Mehitabel, the cat who was cleopatra.
 Wonko- the guy who loved dolphins. Characters created by curious, some would
 say,......mmmmm....what? forget it. Are they real? do they exist? " in flesh
 and blood do you mean?".Then, I have to say no. But what about Napolean? Does 
the dimunitive megalomaniac- long dead, still exist? Why choose him- Why 
Napolean as the example? Who cares. who?

Can I issue books out of leisure reading section?
What a question! We are discussing life here( and death too shouted someone 
frombehnd my skull). Shut up. shut up.
that remnds me of Bmal in bog. Forget it. It will take me too long to xplain.
and it is not imp. 
tell me. tell me.

RED carpet. red flag. marxism.CCCP. Soyuz sovietskego sotsialestescheskaya
rrespublika. Too bad noone will ask this long form in quizzes any longer and I
could jump up and say "I know that! I do! I do!".

a penchant for explamation points. no Freudian analyses pleease.< censored >

Anton Chekov. The Idiot. These words keep popping up( yup! up! that's right,
upis the word one is looking for- not into out of or in - up!)
Nbd. Nandu? ( another tale. quite long, will have to remain unexplained.).
 Therewas a book called " The unexplained mysteries of the world " at IIT
 library. Nanal had issued it. It ahd a nice chapter on spontaneous human
 combustion. Nice work maan!


Could this be submitted to some mag? who'll publsh this drivel! It won't cost 
you anything, boss. You justhave to print this out. Imagewriterrrrrrr. This 
boss! boss! reminds me of our friend archie, not that red headed dumb cartoon,
our pal the vers libre poet. This again brings us to the topc of existance and
reality!I am reminded of the idea in the book Infinity and the Mind about
the world of thoughts. A set of all thoughts- past, present and future. A
similar interpretation was given to Patanjali's hierarchy in S. Kak's Patanjali 
and Cognitive Science. Heavy name dropping! Oh, yeah. I am not apseude boss
and I am not quoting Sartre and Camus. And as my friend Ravi says- Peace!

Penchant for exclamation points- noted, boss! , noted.
When Huxley ( Thomas not Aldous) was asked what he would like to ask God if he
ever met him ( He was an atheist). he answered, " I would like to ask him about
his unusual predilection for beetles.(They have the largest no. of specis)

Green, green folder. Green grasshopper. Beetles. Music. " Do you like music?"
If anyone asks me that again I'll puke. I have been asked this n (arbitrarily
large) number of times since I arrived here. After great deliberation I have 
come to the conclusion that I am "ambivalent" to music. "Take it or leave it"
as they say in the free advice in PEANUTS! 

"Who'll be my role model..."
Pacha penne maari iri
car varumbam kayari iri
kayari irinnoru beedi kudi...
An old doggerel we used to recite at school while playing. Sand. The school
playground in Kerala had sand init. Sea. ROcks. Also the nice name of a novel
by O.V. Vijayan. It is available in English translation.

As I was saying. If I die now- Who'll miss it? infinity minus one is infinity.
Nice equation. Is it correct? Who knows? Once during a Stats lab hour a chap 
called William asked me something and I replied , "Who knows?". Willie said
"Miss knows and I care.". The miss in question was Miss or Ms. ( feminists 
spare me) Shanta?. Gowri? No, It was Ms. Rama, the "new" satats lecturer.

Forgive me, I was carried away by my own loquaciousness. Atrocious spelling!
Spell check. ^C? Should I post it on talk.bizzare? Somebody might get a kick
out of this.You missed the exclamation point.

"Who'll be my role model.."

Mein shaayar to nahi
magar e- hansi, jabse dekha
maine tujhko. Mujhko
shaayari aa gayi

( I am no poet but O! beautiful one, since I saw you poetry flows through me)

Urdu maan! or is it meeaan!

Ever read any Faiz? English translations have been published by Princeton UP.

Via il gatto ballano i sorci.

spelling boss, spelling!

The point however, as Marx would say, is to cahnge it. die philosophen haben
die world.. what is german for world? Communism is dead. dead as a dodo.
The "me decade" is over. Who cries?

The world of blocks. SHRDLU. ELIZA. Pawns. The chessmaster and his moves.
Entropy. Shannon. Bits. Bytes. Bitten by dogs, mauled by cats. Tigers too! are
cats and tigers not cousins? Mehitabel. The song of Mehitabel.

Protagonist. Mr. Raskolnikoff. When i read Crime and Punishment first I came
down with fever. When I reread it the same thing happened. The book scares me
exclamation point. peace!

nested brackets, consult the manual of style. which one?

na jaayate mriyate vaa kadachi
na iyam bhutva bhavita va na bhuyah....
immortality of the soul. confusion.
Am I drunk? no boss i am a teetotaller. what a word!

it is 11:45. shall i go to 22, brainerd ave. curl up or stretch out on my bed
and, as they say at iit, crash! punctuliousness in punctuation is not one of my
personality traits, so please xcuse.

Malgudi. Swami and his friends. Where is Swami? Is he curled up in some 
mathematical hole - writing a paper on the attainability of increased milk
output frome bovines and the Birkhoff Von Neumann Theorem.

Magic squares. 2+2=3, 9+2=11=run (in hindi)
sorry, 2+2=5. but 2+2=4 in arithmetic(base10)
1+1=10 in base 2.

Surreal numbers by Don Knuth. Fine Chap. Rather like him. Also recommended is 
Concrete Mathematics by Knuth et al. At least, read the remarks in the margins.
What is RamanujaM'S NUMBER? Read "A mathematiciAN'S APOLOGY" By G.H. Hardy.
You'll know then.

" To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite
 To forgive wrongs darker than death or night
To love and bear and to hope till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates
 This like thy glory titan isto be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free
This alone is life, joy, empire and victory"

note for the ignoramuses- from the prometheus unbound by 

PUBLIC SAFTEY INTERRUPTS.....
LIBRARY HAS CLOSED
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WONKO, THE SANE                      E-MAIL: SKUMAR@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU
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Newsgroups: talk.bizarre