To us, here and now, it appears thus.

My closest friends would know precisely what that means, others would have to wait for some more time

With Scott Adams chiming in about atheism and people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris taking up the pedestal as the public faces of atheism, which have long been empty, atheism seems to be the new ‘in-thing’ as it was during the times of Nitzsche and Russell. I’ve been speculating about what motivates the religious to be religious in the first place. And I’m taking Hinduism for analysis. Primarily for three main reasons. One, I’m more familiar with the Hindu scriptures and mythology than with that of other faiths. And secondly all my blood relatives are self-professed Hindus. So, I have had more real experience quizzing them about their faith.

Thirdly, and most importantly Hinduism is what one would compare to ‘Theological Anarchy’. Having no core dogma (or having multiple dogmas), no organised system of faith, no requirements or for that matter anything else. Many Hindus across the world and even across India get flared up with the same issues that are considered ’sensitive’ - things like conversion, defiling Hinduism, Ayodhya etc.. . On a more practical note, I’ve seen people both in a remote corner of Tamil Nadu and somewhere in the heartland of Gujarat feeling the same thing about those sensitive issues and identifying with one other, even though if they were ever to meet face to face, chances are that it would be highly unlikely that they would even like each other.

Why is it that Hindutva politicians like Modi and friends are able to whip up similar emotions in such a diverse cornucopia of people within India? These are what I will be trying to answer, to the best of my ability here. But, at the end, they are nothing more than wild speculations and I wouldn’t want to treat them as a final thesis on the question of religion and faith.

The most ironic thing about Hinduism, is that most Hindu’s apart from being some vague form of theists aren’t really concerned about scriptures or Hindu philosophy. Many are even ignorant of the wonderful stories, which certainly counts as great literature that abound in Hindu mythology. Further more, many are even unaware of the Hindu pantheon and the relationships among each other. Most have their favourite deities and a bunch of festivals which are universally celebrated, without any thought to the motivations or even the reasons of why the festivals exist. So, that throws strict theology out of the window. The second thing is that its not about God or Gods. Most often, the issues are not against atheists, (which is there, but never comes to the forefront) but against other fellow theists. Because, if it was just about gods, why would anyone object to accepting god, but in a different way? It isn’t about ethnicity either. Then why?

My conclusion would be that it appeals to a sense of identity. Humans, being intrinsically social animals, need identities. A group to identify with, a sense of real comfort. A sense of belonging. All you need is to give a name, and you automatically give it a form, for that is the nature of identity. A group as amorphous and ideologically disparate as the Hindus can subscribe to a common identity, only because there is one - of being a Hindu - which in essence is no more than a name. If this thesis is in essence correct and being given thus, then is there any solution to the problems of conflict that are prevalent in our times? What identities should one appeal to, for the sake of promoting the greatest good for all? Questions I desperately wish I had the answers…

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.

Source : http://xkcd.com/c149.html

No matter how many times I see this on the web, this comic never fails to crack me up.

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.

Caution: When I mean esoteric, I mean non-mainstream as opposed to things like INTERCAL or brainfuck.

The first thing that anyone who gets to know me in a professional capacity seems to find unusual about me is that I can program in a couple of languages that are very non mainstream. Things like Haskell and Smalltalk. They consider that its a rather time wasting if not an utterly useless hobby.

One thing that a friend of mine asked is that why is there even these languages in the first place as no one even practically uses it. That’s one question that I have never bothered to ask myself, in-spite of getting to play with more than 20 or so languages. He considers that languages such as Haskell are practically useless in the sense that there is almost no mainstream development going on and there is very little point in even trying to develop new ones.

Being a language enthusiast I came up with a plethora of standard reasons that language enthusiasts do. Trite boring old reasons like productivity, higher expressive power and what not. Then there were always reasons which I dish out, in a half-believing manner like how if it weren’t for Sun’s marketing muscle smalltalk would have been the order of the day and things like that. But what struck me unusual was the part of the question about what purpose if at all any, do they serve, apart from satiating the bloated ego’s of self-proclaimed language enthusiasts.

But only on some deeper thinking could I answer that question myself in a much more clearer manner. Either through short sight or arrogance I’ve never seen this angle. They are fertile breeding grounds for newer ideas, paradigms and sometimes even ground breaking innovations in the way we program (as opposed to just newer linguistic constructs). It is entirely plausible that those same innovations come from the mainstream languages, and once in a while they do - like STL for instance. But generally they don’t.

That in my opinion is the bane of any mainstream language. Mainstream languages by virtue of being mainstream have a tradition in the way which things are done. Style guides, language restrictions, limits of the runtime or other restrictions. New innovations even if they are good need a lot of pushing from within a community to gain any acceptance. On the other hand, in fringe languages like Haskell or ML there is lesser community inertia if any at all and they can easily push newer innovations, its much easier to fork into newer territories or basically explore the unexplored.

These are not just fringe languages like I’ve referred to them before, they are in fact frontier languages. They are usually at the edges of current paradigms and sometimes they just fall over the edge flat without ever coming up with anything new. On the other hand sometimes truly interesting ideas come out of it. Many a time, these ideas are incorporated into older, more mainstream languages. But once in a while, there comes an idea or a philosophy that’s associated with a language that’s so different, ground breaking and amazing that it simply is not possible to do the back-porting anymore. Then the language has no choice but to go mainstream - case in point is that of Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

That’s what we need those esoteric languages for. That’s where these language enthusiasts come in. They are the ones who will discover the next big thing. That’s precisely the need for esoteric languages.

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.

From the moment I got hands on my new digital camera, a Canon Powershot A530, I’ve always wanted to take it out into the wilderness to give it a try. So far all my experiments have been in well controlled or at the least, a partially controlled environment, that was till today.

Today I had the unique experience of doing some trekking on the outskirts of the city and managed to give my camera a test drive. And to say the least, I am happy to report that it came out with flying colors and some cool shots without any problems at all. But this post is not about the photos. Its about the experience of taking photos in the wilderness, or at least the semi-wilderness that I ventured into today.

The day started fine, a lazy Saturday with great weather and no clouds. When I came to my senses after waking up and seeing the bright sky, I was cursing myself for missing the golden hour in the morning. The golden hour in the morning is sometime after dawn (around 6 or 7′o clock here) where the sun isn’t too bright, the air isn’t do dusty and the weather is just right for clicking all the great shots you ever wanted.

Without loosing hope, I dressed up, strapped on my camera and headed out into the wilderness. You can always count on public transportation to get you there and that’s what I did. After landing near the outskirts of the city, I walked for sometime randomly on the highway between Ahmedabad and Gandhi Nagar, until I found what one could call wilderness, or at-least semi-arid shrub land with a smattering of trees on the edges and a nice green ceiling cover further inside. This is kind of rare in the burgeoning urban sprawl that has mostly destroyed such areas. I guess I was just lucky to find it.

One thing that I learned today, and which I should have already thought about is the importance of good shoes. The wilderness is swarming with bugs and many-legged slimy creatures from hell of all sizes, shapes and colors. Many of them are narcissists in their own way that they leave a potentially allergic trail of acids and other odd oozes. You wouldn’t want one to leave its trail on your feet. So I had to not only watch what I step on, as in the undergrowth there is a lot of things that you can step on, but also be cognizant about what is trying to step on me.

The second important thing I learned today is that when you are in insect territory using the flash is not such a great idea. These insects have adapted to the natural lighting around them that a flash always gets them disturbed. Its not good to use the flash indiscriminately with wasps with nasty stings buzzing around. But some times, the flash is good and can create great lighting effects. Since you have no control over the surrounding lighting, some kind of flash is helpful but one has to be pretty careful not to get stung.

Apart from lessons in practical wilderness photography, there were a whole bunch of other things that I got to know. But lets get back, to our semi-arid shrub land. I walked around near the outskirts fearing that I might get lost, but since there wasn’t nothing interesting that really caught my eye, I started to aimlessly wander around there and sometime later, I found an amazingly beautiful yet thickly forested area. With lots of tall trees, odd flowers and some nice surroundings overall. This was literally a godsend.

The first thing that caught my eye was this bright riot of yellow and orange. A marigold bush out in the wilderness. It seemed out of place that I concluded that it was a feral. It was in full bloom, spreading its brightness all over the place. Something that you couldn’t stop clicking at. So how could I? After a few shots, I managed to wean myself of the addictive beauty of the marigold bush and started ambling around. Then I found a bunch of trees, all tall strong, with flat and bright green leaves, laden with fruits. The green top of the lone piece of vegetation in midst of the urban sprawl. I found a red flower which I couldn’t identify then, but my guess for it is a hibiscus. The backdrop against the setting sun made it just beautiful.

Only after I took the shot I realized something, the setting sun! I had ambled around this place for so much time that I had spent almost four hours clicking!. And evening was fast approaching. With my feeble knowledge of Hindi and an even dimmer knowledge of Gujarati I knew there was no way I could get home after dark. So I had to reluctantly leave this wonderful wilderness to the monotony of urban life in Ahmedabad.

Ahmedabad, for all its monotony is still a unique place which is not without its opportunities for some one with a keen eye and a willingness to click. But that’s another saga for another day!

You can also check out some other great photos of mine here.

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.

Being an undergraduate in computer science for the past four years has affirmed my belief in computer science being a true and separate science in is own right as opposed to being a branch of engineering or just applied mathematics. The more I learn about what constitutes the fundamentals of computer science, the more I’m sure of it. But to characterize it in a simple way is currently beyond my limited understanding of this vast branch of human knowledge.

Computer Science is as much about computers as microbiology is about microscopes or astronomy is about telescopes. Agreed, both the microscope and telescopes are essential instruments in their fields, yet they are not the object of study themselves, that onus falls on the field of optics. Similarly computers are vital instruments in computer science, but they are not the objects of study themselves. The systematic study of devices which can perform the fundamental function of a computer - computation, in itself is computer engineering.

Computer Science is the formal study of process and information. It is the study of fundamental limits at which discretely and unambiguously specified process (called algorithms) work. It is the study of how information is transformed from one form to another, making it more useful in one way or the other. It is the study of how those above mentioned process interact with information and vice versa. Computer Science in essence is the study of computation and information.

If we can agree that computer science is the study of computation and information, then why should we proceed calling it computer science at all. I’m sure astronomers don’t call astronomy telescope-science or microbiologists microscope-science. Why not call computer science for what it actually is? - Computational and Informational Science.

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.