Petition for a responsible media

It is well known that we only get to see the half picture of the events happening around us in the Media. Be it the TV, the Newspapers or the Internet none of these are outside the purview of this. I would like to file a petition for the same. Please go through the contents of this petition and give me your feedback on the comments.


The petition:

We (Indians in particular and south-east Asia in general) seem to have higher emotional quotient than the rest of the people. It is evident by the fact that we are easily triggered by politics of emotions such as caste, religion. We seldom bother to have the developmental agenda in our public life. I believe, this has cost us a lot over the past 62 years after our Independence.

When such is the situation, it is the responsibility of all countrymen to bury the differences and look ahead for new opportunities to synergies our efforts. The lack of coordination and frequent spurs in the community is a result of lack of understanding of each others concerns.

While such is the situation, instances of misquoting and/or reading in between the lines have been rampant over the past few years.
Creating sensationalism is the objective of such propaganda. It could be done with all good intentions but it is common knowledge that half truth is always dangerous. It is only feared if there are vested interests promoting such propaganda. The growth of a media house should come together with it a bundle of responsibilities which is lacking greatly among the existing mass media channels.


What I would like to do by means of filing this petition is to bring it to this phenomena to the notice of honorable judiciary of India. I hereby appeal to the court to make a ruling against half truths being publicized in the Media channels.

Indeed, it is a difficult task to identify half truths. By means of the petition I would also like to draw the attention of the judiciary to provide suitable guidelines for this.

Hallmark of a Genius

I was listening to the following rendition by Dr. Balamurali (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJPOtwCPQVE). Dr. Balamurali renders it with so much bhaava that its hard not to react.

Even an untuned mind would be forced to calm down and tune into karnatic classical.

The bhakti bhaava in this rendition is so immense that it also reminds me of another such performance. This time, its Dr. Rajkumar in the movie "RaghavendraVijaya" when he enters the Brindaavana ( the last scene in the movie). The mukha bhaava on Dr. Raj's face would kindle the light of bhakti even in the mind of an atheist!

Both Dr. Raj and Dr. Balamurali are great not because of their awards and accolades but their passion and perfection in rendering what they are best at! They are so good that their work can re-kindle a dousing fire in the hearts of the masses even long after they are gone. Such is the hallmark of a Genius !!

"Saashtaanga PraNaamas"

History for Scientists and Engineers

Preamble:
Most of us (atleast most engineers and scientists!) know that a vector needs two points and a direction. Attributing time to be a unidirectional entity, we can assign vectors to represent a change. So, in principle (anybody have enough enthusiasm to take up this problem?), all that has happened between any two given time line can be expressed by a finite (or infinite) set of vectors.
In other words, the world is a state machine (i dont know if its finite or infinite) which moves from one state to the other as the time progresses. Interestingly, this state machine is self contained. Also, this state machine does not have unreachable states (have u seen the warning "unreachable code" in your programs?). Given sufficient time, it can move to any state.
With the above arguments, we can define the following Theorem:

Theorem: Change, which is axiomatically understood to be a continuous phenomenon is nothing more than a bunch of vectors in an infinite dimensional vector space!

Motivation:
Betterment is the drive that all creatures strive for, all through their lives. Change has always been with us since the absolute zero occured (say, big-bang!). Identifying change happens only by comparision. And to compare, we need atleast two comparable things!

CRUX:
The next question is, what does all this have to do with history?
A precise answer would be that, history provides a finite set approximation to the possible infinte spaces that the world assumed at some earlier point in time (possibly hundreds of years ago!). Historians are those able people who can aggregate and infer from the traces that the world leaves as it progresses in time.

We know the current space in which the world lives (this is still an ideal assumption!), knowing history helps us define vectors that can tell us where the whole world is leading to in general. It could help us define our roles better thus give a nobler purpose for life.

In pursuit of a purpose in life.

History in general, and the history of South India is my new found interest. When Shri M.Nagappa, our history teacher (also our class teacher) at the Vijaya High School(VHS) taught about the need to learn history in our 8th standard, he did it in his typical style by giving some "n" number of points for each of the topics. One of those "n" that i still remember is, that history helps you identify the mistakes and helps u learn from it.

I guess this point had hibernated in my mind long enough. The right opportunity struck when Dr.Suryanath Kamath gave a lecture on the history of karnataka during the "SuvarNa Karnataka" celebrations organised by the IITM Kannada cultural association.
In the wake of recent border issues of Belgaum, the back drop of Tipu Sultan issue which, i followed closely by reading most articles published by Vijaya Karnataka in the recent days; most of our "DIG" friends (thats what IIT(M)ians call fellow kannadigas) were charged up to dig deeper into the history of karnataka.

I'm blogging my experience of learning history in general and the south indian history in particular.