The divine invasion

Spent quite a bit of weekend reading Philip K Dick's The divine invasion. The book is clever at a lot of places, but I failed to see the overall point.

Enjoy!

The difference -- version 2

What's the difference between man and cat?

You can man a man ($ man man) but not cat a cat ($ cat cat).

P.S. Also, as was pointed out by a colleague, you can man a cat but not cat a man.

I totally love this

Who would've thought..

Ye Dosti..

Ye Dosti.. Hum nahi todenge..
Todenge dum magar.. Tera saath na chhodenge..

One of my closest (and longtime, we go back more than 8 years) buddies turns 20. Join me in singing 'happy birthday'..

The master switch

Recently finished reading The master switch by Tim Wu. A tour de force history of information technologies, beginning with telephone in the 19th century, through radio, television and cable, leading up to the present Internet dominated era. We see how each technology began with a lot of promise and openness, and ended a closed, integrated industry. That may or may not happen to Internet, but as Internet has subsumed most other networks, the stakes for losing its openness (so call net neutrality) are much higher. Lucid, highly informative and thought provoking. I think a must read for 'IT people'.

Eon

[Spoilers ahead]

I recently finished reading Greg Bear's Eon. The reason I originally picked this book was it is in SF Masters series (this was before I realized not everything under SF masters is good SF, as per my definition anyway. But this one I liked). The story begins with an asteroid unexpectedly entering the solar system, the only problem is it is missing 40% of its mass. Probes are launched and investigators discover deserted, human made cities inside the asteroid. Plus the records indicate the stone, as it is subsequently named, came from the future. As the story unwinds, more mysteries reveal themselves. But let me not spell out everything, despite the spoiler alert in the beginning.

The book was published in 1985; cold war was not yet over, and a bit of pro-americanism is apparent. Russians are mostly depiected as ignorant, suspicious or quarrelsome. And the reasonable ones say things (to an american) like, 'yes you are right, but my people will not agree to that'. That will appear quaint, but probably everything had the same flavor then (and of course we have our own flavors). As is the case with most big books (this one is 502 pages), some portions will put you to sleep. I found the latter 2/5th to be much weaker than what came earlier, but good bits keep popping up to keep you going. Overall a good read.

Enjoy!

Alfred Hitchcock

Last weekend I met Mr.Hitchcock (through his movies) for the first time. Ofcourse I had heard a lot about him, and remember watching a fragment of an interview on TV, but movies came over the weekend. Watched two in fact, and enjoyed both immensely. Dial M for murder is a perfect murder story; not a mystery, but more exciting than most mysteries manage. Rear Window is a different movie; whereas Dial M focuses on the story, in Rear Window we also hear (I think) some of Hitchcock's views on society as well (he also makes a cameo in it). Hitchcock was a master at saying much without words. Not to be missed.

Enjoy!!