My cocaine

The Dark Knight Rises

D-day or should I say TDKR-day is finally past. The movie which I had waited for what
seemed like eternity. Honestly, I haven’t anticipated as much  for any movie for a long time. Probably the last time I was so excited was when the Harry Potter books were hitting the shelves. The Dark knight rises is grandiose and  action packed. Call it high expectations from the prequels, but I felt the movie was a letdown. With a cast which had the likes of Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy and Morgan Freeman- the movie had so much more potential. If you haven’t watched the movie stop reading now. Here come the spoilers.

The movie begins with a fitting introduction to Bane as he escapes from a plane with a physicist. The scene made me sit back with anticipation, convinced that the rest of the movie would be replete with plots and twists which would awe me. Sadly I wasn’t, for two key aspects which were predominant in the prequels were missing. In Batman Begins, Nolan builds Batman’s character-which is definitely absent in Tim Burton’s Batman and others – one of the things which set the stage for a serious Batman series. In the Dark Knight  there is a similar emphasis on Harvey Dent and the Joker’s character. Batman’s struggle with his guilt as the Joker kills innocent people adds a human element. And so does the student-mentor relationship between Ducard and Batman(Batman Begins), Alfred and Bruce Wayne, Rachel and Harvey Dent etc. In TDKR, Alfred still plays a key role as he tries to keep Bruce Wayne from donning the cape out of concern. Blake, as the cop who believes in Batman and Selina Kyle as Catwoman who is ruthless when it comes to getting what she wants add life to their characters. Bane’s screen presence is menacing and so are his dialogues.(when you can discern them! I probably got only 20% of Bane’s dialogues in the whole movie. That was the most frustrating part for me. But Bane’s first confrontation with Batman when he breaks his back is spectacular. ) But that was it for the human elements. Gary Oldman was definitely underused spending most of his time in a hospital bed.

The second aspect of the prequels was the suspense and surprises which Nolan threw in. To be specific The Dark Knight kept you on an edge with its twists. TDKR on the other hand is one big action movie. Where’s the suspense? Bane has a nuclear weapon and takes over a city (It kind of reminded me of Transformers with bridges and buildings blowing everywhere and a nuke in the midst of the city) and the rest of the movie is a wait for Batman to come back.  And the final confrontation with Bane begged for more. A fist fight and then Catwoman blows Bane’s head? I think the Joker added a vital touch in the Dark Knight but the movie had it’s own merits even if it weren’t for him. The problem with Bane is there is just one thread to his plan which doesn’t add much suspense to the plot. And the twist at the end where Miranda turns out to be bad wasn’t much of a twist. It made Bane seem more useless. But I loved the end which shows Bruce Wayne alive in Florence.

There were some scenes like Batman climbing out of the prison after going through a grueling  healing phase- reminiscent of Batman Begins where he has to train with the League of shadows, Batman’s first appearance where the cops surround him and the appearance of the Bat.

Having said all this, I am watching this movie a couple of times at least (not just to understand Bane). It is by far the best movie of this year. Probably I just had too many expectations thanks to the prequels, raising TDKR to mythical heights in my head. I am glad Nolan brought back Batman the way he did- dark and serious. It added so much depth to a character who was treated by audiences as a cartoonish cape wearing nobody whose skirmishes with villains were comical to say the least. Thanks Mr.Nolan!

 

Too much time and too little to do

Been killing time with stuff like this. Tried creating this imaginary Facebook conversation.

—-This is not a forward!—

On a scale of infinity

Life is a chain of events. I am sure all of us must have looked back at events in our life and wondered if we could have predicted them. To rephrase this, if you were asked to predict what you would be doing in a year or so from now (in fine grained detail) and asked to bet your iPhone on it, would you take the bet? Probably not. You could squeeze your brain for every ounce of creativity and come up with a myriad probable paths for your future, but rest assured that “real life” although not dressed in a red coat and riding a sledge pulled by flying reindeer, will deliver surprises much bigger. To quote Conan Doyle from one of the Sherlock Holmes stories- “Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.” I remember one of my friends who writes here- I came I saw I floundered , had a similar view. I didn’t give it much thought then. The more I think about it now, the more I am struck by the vastness in which we exist and without which life would be predictable and devoid of such variety. Without digressing much and exposing my poor Physics know-how, I would like to draw your attention to Quantum mechanics and the theory of parallel universes. The former states that a particle can take an infinite number of paths at each point in it’s history and the latter conjectures that there are an infinite number of universes encompassing everything that can possibly exist (So you could be a dictator in one, a singer in the other etc). With an infinite number of possibilities it is no wonder that we can’t foresee our future. I find comfort in this fact. For to know your future would mean that you know what you can and (more importantly) can’t do. I would rather be surprised to meet an old friend rather than to greet him/her with a “I know I would find you here” smile. Or, twist my leg trying to skate rather than not trying at all knowing that I can’t- which brings me to astrology. If astrologers could indeed predict what or where I would end up in a few years I could carefully orchestrate my life for the next few years to make sure that the prediction doesn’t work, which would mean a fail for astrology!

The beauty of life lies in it’s inconceivable expanse- both in space and time. If ever you thought human beings and earth have a special role, the vastness and by extension the probability of much advanced life forms existing will humble you. And more importantly, if you are faced with a problem, rest assured that someone, somewhere and at some point of time in our 50,000 year odd history must have grappled with it and probably solved it and so you are not alone when you face problems on this third rock from the Sun.

A study in contrast

I can hear my laptop fan whirring as I type this. Its a quiet place, the one I stay in. Quiet people going about their quiet business just like all the apartments here (here=USA). And me having no business after coming back from work should have blogged a lot. But I lazed. If ever there was a pool of laziness then I must have swam, dived and snorkeled in it.

I have been watching movies though. After successfully ignoring I am Legend for months I finally gave in and decided to watch it yesterday. I don’t mean to boast but I usually get it right when I say movies suck before they release. I knew I am Legend would suck before it released and boy did it suck. All it needed was a Jawbreaker to suck on. Well, an exaggeration probably, for there were moments in the movie when Will Smith wasn’t conversing with the dog which made it faintly interesting. But frankly the movie lacked depth and a firm story line. If ever I had any lingering doubts about the movie after watching it, they were blown to smithereens when I turned on Donnie Brasco immediately. I couldn’t have chosen a more contrasting sequence of movies to watch. A ridiculous post-apocalyptic drab about a man and a dog in one and an intriguing story played by two true legends in the other. Hail Al Pacino and Johnny Depp!. And I fervently hope that I don’t see Will Smith as the last man on earth again.

Ah. And now I get to write about someone who deserves a post dedicated to him. One movie which I avoided watching was Sherlock Holmes. I have read the short stories, the novels , memoirs, you name it. And I have read these multiple times. I still remember the first Sherlock Holmes book which I read as a kid- The Hound of the Baskervilles (I was pretty confused at that time because of the number of times the Baskervilles guy was killed). In writing Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle created a fictional legend like no other. Here was a man endowed with supreme faculties of observation, capable of deducing events long after they happened, a boxer, a swordsman and a violinist. And yet there is this enigma to Holmes, a degree of eccentricity and aloofness which reassured me that he would solve the case. Some lines from the books are unforgettable like the “You’ve been in Afghanistan, I presume”  in A study in scarlet (where Holmes deduces Watson has been in Afghanistan from his tan and stiff arm) and this one’s my favorite at the end of The Sign of four– “For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there still remains the cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched his long white hand up for it.  No movie or series had ever done justice to Holmes. It couldn’t. He was and still is larger than life. Besides, the Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr was supposed to offer a totally different perspective on Holmes. So I vowed never to watch it. It would be disrespectful to Holmes. But hey, I couldn’t resist it when it was staring back at me when I browsed through my hard disk everyday. So, I watched it. And surprisingly I enjoyed it. There is no resemblance to the Holmes from the books except for a few moments in the movie when Robert Downey Jr throws clever lines. But it entertains (with plenty of humor thrown in). So, yeah sorry about that Holmes.

In keeping with my tradition of stringing together unrelated stuff, I have to write about how my fascination with cars is gradually nearing an end after coming here (here= California/USA). Cars are everywhere. They didn’t joke when they said Aliens would mistake cars to be earthlings if they were to look at this place. Back home, a Honda Civic was a dream, a Camry would get ogled at and a BMW was revered. Every 3rd car at my office here is a BMW, a Civic cuts a sorry figure and a Camry doesn’t deserve a second glance. Except for a convertible here and there, no car stands out on the road. As indistinguishable and non striking as  swarms of ants with the occasional Queen ant eliciting a sigh.

The Alligator, Okeechobee and the silence of the ‘H’

This is something which is way off the timeline. I had a backlog of things to blog about and being lazy and of the procrastinating type, well I procrastinated. I have tried my best to condense some interesting stuff from the first 4 months of my stay here in Gainesville into this post.

So we are called the Gators. We who go to the University of Florida. And not surprisingly you have “Gators” attached to anything and everything- from drinks, to your ID card and yes even your health insurance. And it is for good reason. Although it might sound like an exaggeration, most bodies of water in Florida supposedly have some Alligators in them. That by itself is not something which would freak you out. So Florida is a hot, swampy place and a conducive home for Alligators. But what would freak out an Indian for sure is to see people swimming in a Gator infested lake. Oh yeah, there are some nets below the water. But jeez, you have Alligators a few hundred yards away. In India, if a lake is known to have crocs, the lake would probably be surrounded by a fence, the fence itself wouldn’t have seen any Human within 100 yards of it and then you might catch a sign somewhere down the road leading to the lake warning you of crocs. This being my fragile background, I was simultaneously struck by thoughts about my family, my health insurance and my last day in office as I frantically tried to paddle my Kayak (which was entrenched in some weeds) away from a Gator which was lying motionless a few feet away. I resolved never to go into that lake again (and broke that resolution once). I have been told that Alligators are not aggressive, at least not in the least as crocs. But hey, Wikipedia says The alligator is notorious for its bone crushing bites. Be that as it may, it’s very interesting to see this difference in attitude between Americans and Indians (maybe I am generalizing here) towards Gators/Crocs (for all practical purposes they are the same to me). As an example, my friend has a lake behind his house and he casually throws in that it has Gators in them!

I have read and seen a lot of Thanksgiving Dinners on TV and often wished that I could have one too. Well I did have one! My first All American Thanksgiving. Thanks to my friend who had me over to his place for Thanksgiving. I did think it would be kind of weird before I went, because it is supposed to be a family affair mostly. But it turned out to be alright and an awesome experience at that, sitting at a neat table with a carved turkey being the center of everyone’s attention. That was Thanksgiving. And then there was Okeechobee. Okeechobee is a county in southern Florida. No, I didn’t exactly go there, but I couldn’t resist using that native American name. I went to West palm beach, Okeechobee being on the way. At West Palm beach you can see the Atlantic ocean and you also get to see unbelievably huge mansions connected to the beaches through tunnels!

I have always thought my English was decent and one of my stronger points. I was in for a rude shock when I stepped into the USA. Half the people in the Atlanta airport couldn’t understand more than half the things I said. On my first day in college I was searching for a place called the Institutional Review Board and not being able to find it, I ask an American woman. And she looks at me for a minute and says- “The instituuuuuutional whaaat?. Son I can’t make a thwing of wot u are sayin”. In some cases the way Indians pronounce words are wrong and in some cases they are just different. For example I got my way through 16 years of education in India with no silence on the ‘H’ in Honor. After a heated argument with my American friend, I had to agree that it was silent. Not so with words like Infinite which is pronounced as Infiknit here. It’s just a different way of pronouncing. There are differences in some terminologies too. You never say queue, you always say line. You will be looked at weirdly if you say you are going to a hotel to eat. You go to a restaurant to eat. A hotel is synonymous with our lodges. Other differences not necessarily associated with words- I have hardly seen people untying their shoe laces here or wearing long socks, its mostly anklets. And for the first time I realize that it makes a lot of difference when you say you want to take a bath and when you say you want to take a shower. Finally, for the love of God, Cadburys is associated with only easter eggs :). Its Hersheys all the way here!

The Onion quotient

There are algorithms out there which can write research papers some of which have also been accepted. There are also ways to extract topics from documents by analyzing the semantics of the content. Now what if I gave you a bunch of stuff from the Onion news? You would probably be able to figure out that it was fake and then again you might not. (Once I shared a link from the Onion believing it was real) So, what then should a machine do if it is asked to summarize or extract a topic from such a document? Does it come under the purview of intelligence to detect satire and humor? Anyway, me and my cuz are working on a speller (software that can correct spelling errors). So below is some gibberish which I conjured and has absolutely nothing to do with what we are doing. At a glance you can say that it is nonsense. But how should and how would a machine interpret it?

Since the beginning of time (or rather when early man started writing) correcting spelling errors has been one of the most insurmountable problems that mankind has faced. So perplexing is this problem that it has occupied the minds of many for centuries- philosophers, linguists, mathematicians and billboard sign writers. Over the centuries, there have been many who have come tantalizingly close to solving this problem and ended up solving more simpler problems like the theory of relativity or the DNA model. We believe that Leibniz had an entire page of misspellings before him which somehow blossomed in his head into an idea that became known as calculus.

Our research has also shown that most if not all of the puzzling problems and events have underpinnings in spell corrections. The Pyramids at Giza for example were built by aliens, our study shows. A minor application of our algorithm on the misspelled Egyptian hieroglyphs at the Valley of the Kings makes it crystal clear. In a master stroke our algorithm solves both science and proves mythology by answering both the extinction of the dinosaurs and the existence of wizards. A powerful spell was accidentally misspelled by a wizard causing the end of the mesozoic era. From the time paradox problem to procrastination, it answers all. We claim that string theory is nothing but an extension of our algorithm with the different dimensions being the permutations of the words. Finally, our algorithm deals a coup de grace to all other approaches to all other problems by answering the question- “the answer to life,the universe and everything”.

We propose a novel approach to spell correction based on a quasi random distribution of hip hop culture in a Hilbert space. A socio-anthropic metric is used to normalize the misspelled word. The entropy of the resulting distribution is then mapped to a fractal representation of a possum’s brain. If you still think this is worth reading then do so. This approach was a result of much fine tuning which resulted after we came across the unique way in which Master Yoda conversed. Thanks to him, we were able to refine our algorithm to deal with ngram corrections.Further information on our speller will be made available soon, once we start getting results from the Large Hadron Collider.