Things that I didn't understand about '3 Idiots'.

By now everyone must have seen the Amir Khan starrer '3 Idiots'. I have always admired Amir Khan as an actor and liked Rajkumar Hirani's earlier movies that showcased his brilliant movie-making skills. His recent release left a lot to be desired. I know that a Hindi movie is all about the feel good factor but the relevance of reason, logic and twisted truth was very unnerving. The cinematic liberties were strectched too far. Here are some critical points:

1) The vacuum tube baby scene is incredulous and practically possible;
2) The peeing, short circuit : This is one law of physics that rarely works in practice. Although salty urine is a great conductor of electricity, the current Rancho sourced from a bulb was only a few amperes.

Also, the senior shown getting the shock of his life was wearing footwear (not metal ones, I guess) that would have broken the piddling circuit anways. Also, pee usually flows out as disconnected droplets, rather than a continous stream. Basically, an impossible circuit line, which wouldn’t allow current flow.

It has been scientifically proven and tested in the Mythbusters TV show that doing it even on such a high voltage source of power as the third line of a subway train proves ineffective.

3) Joy’s final year project: The helicopter that didn’t fly: Are you kidding me! You get remote controlled helicopters everywhere! I have seen them as a kid. You get Do-it-yourself kits to make planes like that now. It would’ve been a great engineering project had the characters been studying during 1920s.

4) NASA had developed space pens( P Fisher-inventor) in the 40s and are still prefered over pencils. Pencil tips break easily and the carbon tip could float in the air and get into astronauts’ eyes. Minor irritant, but not aboard a space shuttle.

5) Farhan at the start of the movie in his voiceover says that he was born in 1978. Assuming that all the 3 characters were good students and would have passed through all classes without failing any, they would be in their engineering college from the years 1997-2001 or 1996-2000.. but certainly not beyond 2004.

So, during the years where broadband as a concept wasn’t even available in India and all of us still are at the mercy of the cable operators, how did they manage to have Airtel Mobile broadband through USB which came only in 2008-09 and how did manage the use of Reliance Big TV ??

6) ‘Dad Office’ calling on mobile in 2000: Highly unlikely!!! considering mobiles had just been launched in India in 2001!!

Bad product placement by Mr.Rajkumar Hirani.

7) How did the character played by Kareena Kapoor (studying in 1st or 2nd year of medicine) understand critical procedures of delivering a baby. Such procedures of gynecology aren't even taught at that level!

8) Rancho “Invents” a inverter that draws power from car batteries. Great! Genius!

But, what is there to invent???? Did inverters always not used car batteries????? Till a few years ago, all inverters used car/vehicle batteries, only in recent years manufactures have started marketing “Inverter Batteries” separately.

9) Finally, 400 patents in a decade!! Can you beat that! Does Mr.Hirani know how labourious it is for anybody to apply for a single patent, sitting here in India?

..I feel the movie should have stuck to the original and simple message of studying for the sake of knowledge and knowledge alone should take precedence over cramming for an examination or a degree or a job.

Amir Khan as a known perfectionist was expected to do better homework on this project.

Where are the twitters?

Sparrows are really getting rarer these days. There are more people willing to tweet on twitter than see where the real twitters have gone. They have all but vanished. Some say that they are extinct and others say that our telecom towers have something to do with it. Sparrows would never be a concern for most people because there are many more critical issues like recession, world peace and terrorism on people's mind.

I remember how as a kid I could see them at a very close distance and discovered a lot about them. I saw them pecking at grains thrown outside a kirana store or enter an empty house just to see where they could build a little nest. The sparrow was important in the scheme of things because they would survive anything or so it seems. The recent opening of shopping malls with all the foodgrains inside the store has hampered the easy food availability of these birds.

Maybe they have migrated somewhere. But in the quiet surroundings of a house, it made those twitters wonderful. Maybe we forgot to keep some small space in our house for those unfortunate creatures. Maybe we don't care.

Democracy- the only alternative?

What if you lived in 15th Century Italy and championed the cause of heliocentrism(the theory that says that the sun is at the centre of the universe)??

If one would have polled people from across Europe during that period, they would have all vouched for the geocentric view(the theory that says that the earth is at the centre of the universe). And because we the bearers of the democratic institution would have basked in it's glory and fortefied that claim. But we now know for sure that Galileo was right.

Rightfully, in questions of science, we all know that theories are discussed before being awarded it's right to become a law. Voting, polling and democracy does not drive scientific temper. This is so because the whole population is not capable enough to figure out the analytical disposition towards science. This is not just the case with science but also with art, music, technology, law and other fields of human achievement.

Then why is this different when it comes to choosing our elected representatives. We all have something against the people standing for the elections. What about those that vote them to power! Do you think that a large section of the population that can't read or write, that can get influenced by caste and religion based politics rather than economic reforms vote the right candidate to power? How can they take informed decisions when the information itself is so thinly disguised in various coatings of populism? Would that be a just and right outcome?

How can a nation where 99% marriages are based on caste and religion, where Ram Mandir and Valentine's day become major issues, where statues burn along with the city and where a film or an artist needs multiple permissions to gain rightful access to freedom of his expression?

Leave it to the custodians of democracy to see it through. We will be a witness to another jamboree of election mayhem where we hope that people take rational decisions. Lastly...as Galileo said 'the opinion of thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual'. Reasonings fail in a democracy.

List of things to do....

We don't do a lot of things that we are supposed to do. Sounds weird!!

We are supposed to exercise regularly;
supposed to not eat fatty food;
supposed to give up someking;
give up drinking;
drive slowly;
eat slowly;
walk fast;
sleep early;
talk less;
spend less;
earn more;
stop complaining;
stop nagging;
rise early.....

Wish we could do all that! I don't know if then things would have been easier but this world would have been a lot tougher and weirder.

Makeover

How can we change the world and why should we change the world???

Because the world isn't perfect;
Because we have inherited it;
Because we shall not leave it the way it was given to us;
Because we get education so that we can make changes;
Because this world is a beautiful place that should remain so.

Maybe it isn't such a bad idea to change your world. Your world might be this planet, one's country or state or city or town or locality. Everything needs a healing, a makeover, a change. We need not change the whole 'world' as such. We can change as per our canvas. Maybe by doing little things right or taking that extra effort of make it right.

Afterall.....a change is a change and it can be soothing to oneself.

Artificial Intelligence

What great fun when search engine sites like Google assimilated data from everywhere and made life simpler for us! It enabled us to search for anything and everything. We could just dive into the toolbar and search for any topic on earth. For sure we knew that we would get an answer. Answer to the questions for our own little universe.

But search is not just limited finding data or information. All the indications point to a possibility of the assemblage of a system that would answer anything. Soemthing like the modern day Oracle. It would be traversing onto the human quest for artificial intelligence.

I lost my spectacles in the morning. I must have misplaced it somewhere. But how wonderful would it be if I could just type into google with 'specs whereabouts'.
Not as intelligent a machine as that but something that can think on its own. Something can can be creative and non-biased. Intelligence is all about being creative and innovative.

So the question isn't if there could be a machine that can do all that but how soon. Till then, I will search my specs on my own.