--From the Recycling Bin-- Part 5/10
Jose Thekkumthala
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- FROM THE RECYCLING BIN -- Part 5/10 -
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[ I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the kind souls
who came forward both inside and outside the ack to compliment me
on this series of recycling; To them I say: I always fall short
of words in expressing my gratefulness.. ]
o----------------o-o-------------oo------------o-------------oo
If we were to reverse the Thermodynamic Arrow of Time, we would get
back to the pioneer days of ack, when life was not that turbulent or
chaotic. Then it started having a life of its own; a refreshing sweep
of energy was unleashed and the entropy in the cosmos started rising.
"Mareenamma" Dictionary
-----------------------
The famous dictionary "Meriam-Webster" has been working hard ever since
ack was born, putting in overtime to keep pace with the rapid
developments in the ack theatre; so much so that she was willing to
change her name in favor of "Mariamma-Webster", to reflect the power
we ackers are weilding in the evolution of the universe. This name was
later on modified to simply "Mariamma". More often than not, we found that
we have to fall back on our Mariamma and open her up in order for us to
understand the great writings appearing in ack. She(Mariamma) introduced
the word "ack" to mean the process involving reading or writing in ACK;
she introduced the work "acker" to mean the person involved in acking;
she introduced the word "ackress" to represent the female species of the
above kind. Most recently she shed her name in favor of "Mareenamma" and
Mareenamma, in turn, coined the word "writress" to denote the female
species of the writing kind.
The Birth of Ack-baby
---------------------
In the good old days of ack, when the ack-baby was crawling around in a
diaper, all of us were free of a care in the world. We know there is
always a night after the day, that there is a sunset before the onset of
the night, that the sun always rises in the east and sets in the west.
There was a deterministic flavour about anything and we could add one
and one and claim the answer was two, for sure. This carefree disposition
put us on the top of the world and we could hold unending dialogue
about anything and everything.
The birth of the ack-baby was celebrated far and wide and the joy was in
the air. Ack-baby started prattling in the world of newsgroups. This baby
was soon to be the mother of all newgroups. This birth triggered a dialogue
that could have gone for ever..
Then it happened..All the famous ack-writers went bankrupt! They simply
ran out of topics of discussion. Ack was in real danger of an infantile
death. It was the time for all the good men (and women) to come to the
help of the party(ack). Well guys, ack had come to some sort of a stalemate.
There was an impasse; there was a standstill. Indeterminism silently
started creeping in.
A scarcity of ideas
-------------------
One day in this period of confusion, I was eavesdropping to my own thoughts
and gathered that all that was needed was an idea, an idea spiced and seasoned
enough to appeal to the lion's share of the ackers, an idea that would wake
us up from this Rip-Van-Winkle-like slumber, an idea that would resurrect
ack, an idea that would rattle everyone and hand in an additional lease
of renewed life.
An idea, that is all that I needed! An idea to munch on; an idea to give
prop to the mother of all newsgroups, ack; an idea that needed to
take up wings and fly high. I knew that I could move the world with an idea.
I needed an idea to take the world through a train of thought. That
thought-train would resuscitate ack and transform itself into a platform
of unending series of discussions!
Some Schools of Thought
-----------------------
When this crazy thought-process almost put me to sleep one day, I realized
that things are not all that bad, after all! I looked around and realized
that there were some schools of thought lurking in the corridors of ack.
They were "stay-cool" philosophy of Paul and "peace!" religion of Ravi. I
realized that there is more to them than meets the eye!
"Stay-cool" Philosophy and Second Law of Thermodynamics
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No sooner I could not help thinking that there was a flaw with the
stay-cool philosophy than it dawned on me that this contradicts one of the
most fundamental laws of nature, the second law of Thermodynamics! Paul
became sensationally famous as "cool-activist", "prophet-paul" and
"KaliYuga Antichrist" for propounding his philosophy. If the entropy were
to decrease in the universe, I would have sympathised with his philosophy.
"Peace!" Religion and Arrow of Time
-----------------------------------
If we were to make friends with the Classical General Relativity and Quantum
Gravity, we would realize that life was not meant to be easy, after all!
Peace seems to be more and more elusive as cosmos evolves. The naked truth
about the universe is that it is evolving into a state of thermal equilibrium
or, in other words, complete disorder. The concept of KaliYuga is very much
in order: a period characterized by complete anarchy, deforestation, ozone
layer depletion and recycling bins! The only way to attain peace would be
to go back to the roots; to reverse the cosmological, thermodynamic and
psychological arrow of time! (For details, ask Stephen Hawking).
I soon realized that "stay-cool" and "peace!" are two sides of the same coin!
They are at odds with the blatant realities dictated by fundamental laws of nature.
An idea at last!
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However, this interesting set of ideas sweeping ack gave me an impetus to
write on. An idea presented itself to me! Out of the clear blue, in came an
idea streaking towards me! Why don't I write about the characters of this drama?
And also, about some other ackers who were active writers at that time.
I realized that if we so much as even once paid close attention to ack activities,
we could always keep on writing.
So, folks, here is what I wrote once upon a time! A slight rehashing was in order
and that has been attended to.
So, guys, while Prathapan is busy trying to correlate KASERA and CHAIR, while
Jacob Thomas is busy making stupid computers recognize human voice (let us
hope he will teach those dumb ones English with Malayalam accent), while
Sateesh (WhoAmI philosopher-scientist-historian) is busy teaching us history
lessons and while Sudha is busy enlisting support for women in Science and
Engineering, let us take some time off and read about "To ack or not to ack"!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ +
+ TO ACK OR NOT TO ACK +
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+ by +
+ +
+ Jose Thekkumthala +
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NOTE: The flames on this article will not be entertained.
They will simply be sent to the Canadian Arctic, to
heat up the ice caps there. We do not want to stay cool.
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The flame war between Mathai and Ravi as to who should write whose
biography is interesting in itself and significant in the broader
context of rattling the dormant ACK. As for me, I thought that I
would fish in the troubled waters. I would be a self-proclaimed
biographer and write the portraits of the net-writers of ack.
While the biography war is raging, I am contributing my humble bit
to write about the characters of this interesting drama.
Those of you lucky enough to read "The Psychology of a Net-Writer"
already know that the impression we form about a net-writer from
his writing would be totally wrong.
Therefore it is with a dubious heart that I set out to get this
enterprise underway. This project of writing the portraits of
the ack net-writers was probably not a sound idea considering
the very high probability that my predictions would be wrong.
However, we can only make a try; the rest is in the stars.
So, here goes:
NJAN
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Famous for writing very short articles (like one-lines), mostly
in response to some other articles in ack. These one-lines are most
often characterized by good humor and at times by an overdose of
mind-boggling insult! How come he does not write more than one line in
his articles? Is he afraid of his pen running out of ink? I would be
happy enough to send him some BiC pens. In fact, here is one -- I am
sending this through the net.
Is he trying to imitate the most famous one-liner, Ronald Reagan?
(As an aside, let me tell you that my astrologer told me that the
achievements of Ronald Reagan's presidency and the California
governership would go down in the history books as a one-line.
His achievement as a Hollywood actor would go down in the books as
one word or even a letter or, worse still as a bit. He made these
predictions as I recently visited Kerala and he based these
predictions on the migratory pattern of crow to the arid land
between the Eastern Ghats and the Western Ghats).
I see Nancy Reagan sending an approval smile through net. That blip
you just now saw is her smile riding high on the net.
If Njan keeps up this trend of one-lining, he has all the potential
to become the future president of the United States. Good luck to
him.
How in the world did he proclaim himself as Njan? Did the University
of Colorado hold a special convocation to confer 'Njan' degree upon
him?
Before I started my career as a net-writer, I had a dream -- that was
to call myself Njan when I net-write. When I opened the doors of the
net and set my eyes upon the ack-lady, I was appalled to see that,
by some devious act of the Providence, somebody else was parading the
networld masquerading as Njan. My dreams were
shattered. After that, I thought of calling myself 'Nee'. But then
I gave up this idea at the inception itself, since I became prone
to frequent attacks of Identity Crisis.
Currently I am looking for a nickname. I am turning my attention
to Indian mythologies. I could not find anything worthwhile in the
Greek mythology. If everything fails, I will start calling myself
MahaBali.
Incidentally, his recent book entitled "Principles of One-Lining"
has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The amazing
thing about this book is that it has only one line, including a blank
line!! If Njan receives Nobel Prize, he will be the first Keralite to
do so.
I let loose agents from V.I.A. (Vayanad Intelligence Agency)
to track down this one-man enigma and discern his whereabouts. Is he a
graduate student, is he a post-doc, is he professor or is he the
resident-janitor of the University of Colorado?
ICARUS
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or Paul Chemmannoor
or Atharvan
or God-Knows-What
Is he God? Only God is known by so many names.
I guess his life's ambition is to become a story-teller. Keep those
fairies busy, Icarus.
Now, for God's sake, why is he obsessed with staying cool? That beats
me. He even wrote to me once requesting me to stay cool. Did he not know
that I am staying close to the Canadian Arctic and hence I am cool?
In here we do not even need special mummification procedure unlike
in the ancient Egypt. Here, a dead-body kept in the open air in
one's own backyard will be preserved for centuries. If ancient
Egyptians knew about the existence of Canada, they would have
mass-migrated to this mummification land. They would have gladly given
up their elaborate mummification technology and settled down for
the open-air mummification that comes naturally in this great country.
Our capital would have been called Cairo and we would all be speaking
Arabic and we would be ruled by somebody like Saddam Hussein and our
oil-wells would be engulfed in a constant fire.
This great country is a vast physics lab where Laws of Thermodynamics
are challenged. While the entropy is increasing in the rest of the
universe, here in Canada it is at a standstill! In fact it is downright zero.
Canadian scientists are currently investigating the possibility of negative
entropy existing here!
The biggest curse that we Canadians can bestow upon an American is
to wish that he turn into a snow-flake.
Moral of the story: I am always cool and so don't ask me to stay cool, Icarus.
500] Stay cool, Icarus.
NJAN and ICARUS
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I have a fond theory. This is a deeply-guarded secret theory and I have not
divulged this to a single living being so far. I am going to break that silence
for the first time in my life and tell you ack readers that secret. But, on one
condition -- that you will keep this guarded information all to yourself
until the moment of your death. Here it is:
Njan and Icarus are one and the same person!! Their combined name is Njacarus.
One fine morning, Njacarus decided to replicate himself into Njan and Icarus,
got hold of two computer accounts and ever since became the net-anarchists.
Njan is masquerading as Icarus and Icarus is impersonating Njan.
One day, I would love to prove my theory.
I see Njan and Icarus stay in Boulder. Why did they stop at Boulder and not
go to Boldest? Do they lack courage? Think of our great hero, Aromal
Chekavar, Njacarus!
MATHAI CHUNDATHU
----------------
Quite romantic, this guy Mathai. His choice of sweet and old Malayalam
songs is commendable. If he is as romantic a guy as his choice of songs
indicates, then he must be getting venerated by all those beautiful
girls at the University of Oklahoma. Maybe he is like Lord Krishna
walking around with his sixteen thousand and eight girlfriends.
As we know, Lord Krishna is far more famous than Hugh Hefner; he is an
Intergalactic playboy. He not only had his sixteen thousand and eight
wives, but also managed to keep alive! Talk about surviving your marriage!!
Quite a patriotic guy too, I think, my friend Mathai is. I remember once he
tried to patronize Sanskrit and market it as the unifying link of
India. Too bad, he got flamed beyond belief by the subjects of the
great Chozha Kingdom. Smart guys from Tamilnadu were on a warpath with
Mathai, going after him with a hatchet, for sanctifying Sanskrit. One guy
even went to the extend of declaring Tamil as the national language of India.
The flames started on ACK soon engulfed SCI and SCT. The aftershocks of that
flame are still reverberating in the net.
Enjoy, Mathai, enjoy!
RAVI
----
Who is this guy? Where did this guy drop in from? I never heard about this
dude until recently. (But then I knew about the existence of ACK only
last month; when was ack born, any kind soul care to explain?)
Why is he declaring peace all the time? Is he a self-appointed one-man
commission on the world peace? Does he think that the world is waging
war on him or what? Why does he not join ranks with Maharishi Mahesha
Yogi and take up transcendental meditation as a means to establish world
peace and order? Or fly with the Flying Swamy here in Montreal and
shower flowers in the war zone?
His adolescent love-affair with IIT hopefully will mature into more
romantic involvement and a mature relationship that will eventually
culminate in marriage. ACK should be proud to give him away in marriage
to IIT. Hopefully some of us would be invited to attend the wedding.
Ravi, please write about IISc also sometime; I happen to come from there!
It is a much better institute than all the IIT's put together and Bangalore
is a much nicer city than all the IIT cities put together!
Peace, Ravi, Peace!!
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jose email: jo...@csd.uwo.ca
Dept. of Computer Science
Univ. of Western Ontario
CANADA
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