Rack Your Brains!

A census taker approaches a house and asks the woman who answers the door “How many children do you have, and what are their ages?

“Woman: “I have three children; the product of their ages is 36, the sum of their ages is equal to the address of the house next door.”

The census taker walks next door, comes back and says “I need more information.”

The woman replies “I have to go; my oldest child is sleeping upstairs.” Census taker: “Thank you, I now have everything I need.”

What are the ages of each of the three children?

Chain Letters and their Empty Promises

The following article really had a major effect on me. It can be found at the following URL:

http://www.expandyourmind.com/myths/

Have you ever received an e-mail chain letter promising good luck if you just merely pass along the letter?  Or how about the one where Bill Gates promises cold hard cash if his “e-mail experiment” reaches x-million recipients?  Oh - and how about the ones that claim bad things will happen if you don’t forward the e-mail to your “10 closest friends?”Well, I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but an electronic text file sent through the Internet has NO bearing on the good or misfortune in your life, no matter how much you want to believe it.  Let’s take a closer look at this phenomenon; logically.In case you are unfamiliar, there are a couple types of “chain letters.”  The most common, are stories of dying children or poems about life, granting you luck, love, and wealth, if you merely send along the message to a prescribed number of people.  Another classic is the facade of being involved in some “experiment” to see how many people send and receive the same letter (sometimes with financial promises).  Both are equally ludicrous.

These chain letters are deliberately feeding off of human nature’s desire to believe that fate exists outside of them.  Chain letters continue to be cluttering the web for the mere reason that some people actually believe them!  If no one ever did, chain letters would be no more than a part of history.

Compounding the problem, there is an associated guilt that we feel when we don’t comply with something that “might” be true.  For example, “but what if there really is a little girl dying in some town in Kansas,” or “what do I have to lose from sending this e- mail - maybe I really will receive a $1000.”

SO, what’s the problem with sending them just for fun?  I’ll propose a couple of reasons.  First, the belief in a chain letter that is untrue feeds the weakness of gullibility.  If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

Second, sending them to friends and colleagues diffuses the deceptive nature of the false information.  Burdening and/or frustrating other people with this annoyance is discourteous.  Most people I’ve spoken with poke fun of chain letters, yet I still receive them with the “maybe it’s true” appendix from many of the same people!

Think for yourself, and analyze if something really makes sense to you.  Don’t let the guilt implied for not sending the letters to 5 or 10 people get the better of you.  Chain letters defy any sort of logic; however, they magically capture a certain kind of wishful thinking that is a part of human nature.  Harness the strength of expanding your mind, thinking for yourself, and not accepting things just because they are said so.

A suggestion: if you get a chain letter forwarded to you that actually has interesting content (a poem, joke, etc.), copy and paste the message into a new e-mail composition, but DELETE any reference to the necessity of forwarding the message, and any ridiculous consequences for not complying.  And if you don’t do this as suggested, you will suffer from great unhappiness for the next 6 months and give birth to a goat within the next 6 years (just kidding - see! - isn’t that preposterous!).

If you can prove that you or someone you know has received good luck or bad, financial success or burden, or been cured from a terminal illness, by direct relation to an e-mail chain letter, please let me know and I’ll remove this section from the site immediately!  Honest.

If even an ounce of common sense and logic is applied, chain letters will become transparent.  Think twice before sending (or even reading) a forwarded chain letter.

My Favourites from Reel Life (Part III)

Continued from:

1. My Favourites from Reel Life

2. My Favourites from Reel Life (Part II)

It’s been some time since the last blog! Let’s continue the journey.

Casablanca

Had to mention Casablanca eventually! Might as well do it now. Very good movie. You can call it the mother of all Love Stories and you would be right on the money. It is almost the yardstick on which love stories ought to be rated.

One look at the protagonist Rick Blaine, and you know that nobody other than Bogart could have pulled it off! Ingrid Bergman is the epitome of beauty and sensuality in the film. Man, does she light up the screen! Some very tight direction by Mr. Michael Curtiz and you know you have a winner here.The city of Casablanca here is almost a character on its own, surprising, considering the fact that the entire picture was shot in the studio, except for the sequence showing Major Strasser’s arrival, filmed at Van Nuys Airport!The story is powerful but a little cliched, considering modern sensibility, but one has to remember that this was the time (the movie was released in 1942) before cliches were invented, in a matter of speaking!The film is also known for it’s contribution of quotations and one-liners to popular culture. Here are some of my favourites:

1. “Play it once, Sam, for old times’ sake.”

2. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

3. “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

4. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” (THE BEST ONE!)

For people who like keeping score here is the Oscar recognition given to the picture as per Wikipedia:

• Academy Award for Best Picture – Warner Bros. (Hal B. Wallis, producer)
• Academy Award for Directing – Michael Curtiz
• Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay – Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch

It was also nominated for another five Oscars:

• Academy Award for Best Actor – Humphrey Bogart
• Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor – Claude Rains
• Academy Award for Best Cinematography, black-and-white – Arthur Edeson
• Academy Award for Film Editing – Owen Marks
• Academy Award for Original Music Score – Max Steiner

Last but not the least I would like to mention two of the actors in supporting roles: Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre

Very good performances by both and it must be mentioned here that they worked successfully together in many a classic movie and also that they were both pioneering character actors in Hollywood.

I’ll end the review with one of the highlights of the movie, the song As Time Goes By sung by Dooley Wilson (playing the character of Sam).

To be continued…

My Favourites from Reel Life (Part II)

Continued from My Favourites from Reel Life (Part I)

Without further ado, I would now like to mention my favourite films, in no particular order:

Chariots of Fire

This was an absolute treat to watch. I have seen the movie only a couple of times, and it’s been a long time since then, but as with all good movies it has left a lasting impression.

Chariots of Fire is a British film released in 1981 and is based on the true story of British athletes preparing for and competing in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four, including Best Picture. The title is a quotation from the hymn Jerusalem which is a setting of a poem by William Blake.

Great films are those where a couple scenes stay with the viewer long after the story and characters fade in one’s memory. This movie is no exception. The Trinity Great Court run at Trinity College, Cambridge, which involves running around the court before the clock finishes striking 12, and the scene where Eric Liddell (one of the protagonists) tells his sister (who worries he is too busy running to concern himself with their missionary work) he feels inspired: “I believe that God made me for a purpose… (the mission), but He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure,” come readily to mind.

The film is also special for me because of the theme tune of the picture by Vangelis, which comes up in the background score several times during the course of the film.

Rather than raving about it, I would like my readers to draw their own conclusions about this particular theme. Check it out below!

To be continued…

My Favourites from Reel Life

I have been a movie buff for quite some time now. Movies are great media for the simple reason that while imitating life they portray larger-than-life characters and incidents. I had my awakening into moviedom somewhere in the middle of the nineties, back when Cable Television in India was ruling the roost surpassing, by far, anything that had existed until then. Before Cable TV all we had were a couple of channels (a third one emerged a bit later, I think) from the Doordarshan stable, which was and still is India’s National Broadcaster. I would imagine that the TV remote was defunct back then!

Well, with Cable TV came the only decent and dedicated movie channel on offer at that time, Star Movies. It was around that time that I became hooked onto some very good (and some bad ones, I might add) cinematic fare. Once that happened Hindi movies started to look pretty ordinary. Please don’t get me wrong, I appreciate good cinema in whatever language it is presented in, but somehow at that point in time Hindi movies were very amateurish with the least attention given to the script.

Fast forward to the present time and we are in the middle of a cinematic revolution in India, with some very original concepts, terrific technique and very good presentation. I think people in India would agree with me when I say that a large share of the credit for this revolution must be given to Laagan, a breakthrough film from every point of view.

For me, any talk of cinema is incomplete without mentioning the maestro of Bengali cinema, Satyajit Ray. You know, back when I was a kid, people close to me used to comment that his cinema, while being very thought provoking and cerebral filled with analogies and allusions. But for me, Ray remains this master story-teller who will draw you into his canvas and make you empathise while at the same time thoroughly entertaining you. For the uninitiated I would recommend Parash Pathar (The Philosopher’s Stone), the Apu Trilogy (consisting of Pather Panchali (Song Of The Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)), Kanchenjungha, Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) and the Feluda and Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne films.

To be continued…

What an Imagination, Mr. Lennon!

If ever there was a single example of artistic expression that encompassed humanity in general and the “brotherhood of man” in particular, this is it.

Yes, I’m of course talking about the song Imagine by John Lennon, from his 1971 album, Imagine. For me, the song is a cry for sanity and sensibility more than a longing for Utopia, as it is widely considered to be. From a purely literary point of view, the lyrics is pure genious.

The song is brilliant in its simplicity but is at the same time profound and thought provoking. People often spend an entire lifetime trying to come up with material like that but usually come up short.

As far as accolades are concerned, Imagine is highly decorated. Here are some of the awards and recognition bestowed on the song as per Wikipedia:

• In 1999, BMI named “Imagine” as one of the top 100 most performed songs of the 20th century.
• Lennon’s original recording of “Imagine” appears 23rd in the list of best-selling singles in the UK issued in 2002.
• In November 2004, ranked 3rd on Rolling Stone’s list of the RS 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
• On 1 January 2005, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation named “Imagine” the greatest song in the past 100 years, as voted by listeners, on the show 50 Tracks.
• The song ranked #30 on the Recording Industry Association of America’s list of the 365 Songs of the Century bearing the most historical significance.
• Virgin Radio conducted a UK favourite song survey in December 2005, and Imagine was voted into top spot, beating Beatles songs Hey Jude and Let It Be.
• The song was voted the greatest song of all time by the Nine Network’s 20 to 1 countdown show in Australia on September 12, 2006.
• Less than a week after John Lennon’s catalogue was released on iTunes, the song went up to #63 on the top 100 list.

The music video of the song featuring Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono is an intensely personal one. Personally speaking, it does not do justice to the brilliance of the song and looks more like an expensively shot home-video at best.

Check the video out for yourself and feel free to draw your own conclusions! But please don’t forget to drop a line about your opinions!

In case you want to sing along or just appreciate the poetic mastery of Mr. Lennon, the words are given below:

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one…

Hat’s Off, John Lennon. I only hope you have found what you were looking for…

One Reality

Found this very interesting article at the following URL:

http://www.expandyourmind.com/philosophy/

Read on… 

Each of us perceives the world through our own unique senses, or filters. Images, colors, textures, scents, and emotions are all unique to our own interpretation. As a consequence to this uniqueness, however, it is impossible to compare our own perceptions to others, as there is no medium to weigh the relative discernment.

For example, how can you be sure that what one person sees as red is the same hue value that another sees as red. Even if both people are looking at the same red fire engine, the hue may be interpreted differently. A fire engine is only a single color, in reality, even though it may be perceived to vary in color from person to person. When do you know that a dream is a dream? — when you wake up from it, right? But right up until that point, you have no way of knowing that you are in a dream state. It’s the relative reality of “consciousness” that makes one conclude that they have just experienced a dream.How do we know that what we perceive as human beings is an accurate representation of what really exists at all? Since certain animals have more acute hearing, sight, and touch than the human being, our limited perception restricts our ability to decode what is real. This makes it very difficult for us to decipher what is reality and what is not. The only thing we can be sure of is how we define our own reality.Reality, according to the Webster’s Dictionary, is “the state or quality of being real; actual being or existence of anything, in distinction from mere appearance; fact.”  Therefore, reality is the actual state of an object or event, irrespective of the perceiver’s subjective interpretations.On the night of June 12th, 1994, a certain reality took place, possibly involving O.J. Simpson. Although various investigators and lawyers gave conflicting “stories,” there is without debate one true reality of how the events unfolded that fateful night. Maybe only a single individual knows exactly what happened, but there is none-the-less only a single reality.This concept is analogous to practically every aspect of life. Anything can be perceived or assumed to have taken place in infinite ways, while all along, there is only one true reality. It seems that the most confusing and debated concept of a single reality, is how the universe and the human came into existence. There are numerous scientific and religious explanations for these questions, yet most of the accounts are direct contradictions to the other explanations.So, how then, do we know what is reality?

My first Blog…

     I admit it! I’m as amateur as they come when it comes to blogging (derived from Web Logging I’m told, see I’m learning already!). When I first heard about it (surprisingly it was a pretty long time ago) I was quite, nay thoroughly cynical of blogging as a medium.

     I had registered myself with a few blogs previously (one of them being my company site) and even posted some material (most of them plagiarised I must admit or as I prefer to call it, Cut-Copy-Paste). But somehow I never caught on with it.

     It was pretty recently that one of my work buddies, Amyth (TalkingTails), who’s part of the who’s-who (note the humble attempt at alliteration!) of blogging in Calcutta, (I hate refering to it as Kolkata) rekindled my desire, as it were, of expressing myself by reintroducing me to Blogging. Please don’t be modest Amit, recognition must be given where it is due.

     I hope that this time around I’ll be able to sustain my interest and keep blogging. Let’s get this show on the road!