Application : Calibre

                                     A few years back, while there were rumours still Apple was considering options of using e-ink or not, being fed-up with having to boot laptop or a desktop to read PDFs and not being able to hold laptop in hand to enjoy reading lying on my back, I had got hold of an e-reader with the help of a friend returning from a tour in Europe,  after I had searched futilely for one in India. After shenagians to get the ereader to speak english, i had the ebook management software associated with the e-reader installed on my dekstop.Ughh, teh software started fighting me and on lookout for alternatvies found Calibre by googling (at mobileread forum) and have lived ever happily with Calibre.

• Get your own library at home with Calibre
• Conversion Galore using plugins: Calibre can help you convert your books to format your favourite reader understands (chm, cbz also included!). MS Doc support is not there, but you can mange by converting Doc to RTF, that Calibre can handle.
• Multiple Platform Support
• Multiple libraries
• Reading list using plugin
• Download your  RSS subscriptions as a book to your favourite reader periodically (use IFTT(https://ifttt.com/)  to send articles from your favourite blogs to Instapaper and download and have Calibre mail or sync the download of your Instapaper reading list article for offline reading)

News Paper : The Hindu

• Having a clear opinion and willing to persuade one to it with logic and reason
• Editorial
• Competition
• Reaping gold through cotton, and newsprint
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5s2gUWnkIY
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXLsi_Vmtw4
• 
  

Wonder : Signs

References :

1. Meaning      
• "Godel's work is to me the most beautiful possible demonstration of how meaning emerges from and only from isomorphism and of how any notion of direct meaning is  i.e. coddles meaning is incoherent. In brief it shows that semantics is an emerged quality of complex syntax" -- Metamagical Themas by Douglas R Hofstader
• "Modeling simple neural nets with a computer shows that these structures  automatically learn. One type of simple neural network is the three layer back propagation perceptron. This has an input layer, equivalent to the sense organs of an animal. These 'nerve cells' are connected to the next 9or hidden) layer which does the 'learning', finally the hidden layer connects to the output layer. A neural network is not like a computer because it cannot be programmed. Instead it is trained and tested repeatedly, until it has learnt. This is done by providing an input and informing the network whether it has produced the correct output. Based on this information, the strength of connections in the hidden layer is adjusted automatically by the network, because of the arrangements of learning rules programmed into the perceptron. This process is repeated until the training is over and the network can then be tested to see how well it has learnt. In the same way as humans learn from other humans, the neural network needs a teacher to tell when it is right and when it is wrong. It is important to remember that the teacher does not program the network, but only provides information as to whether the output was correct or not, Gradually the network learns that a particular input corresponds to a particular desired output. In as sense the input begins to have meaning" -- Brain a beginner's guide by Ammar al-Chalabi, Shabe R. Delamont and Martin Turner
• "You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something." -- Richard Feynman
• "..We do not feel that we really know anything unless we can represent it to ourselves in words, or in some other system of conventional signs such as the notations of mathematics or music. Such knowledge is called conventional because it is a matter os social agreement as to the codes of communication. " -- The way of Zen by Alan W. Watts
• Is all about A implies B
• http://www.arunjain.com/jokes/Shit_-_A_Bird_Story.htm
• “Every particle in the universe,” continued Dirk, warming to his subject and beginning to stare a bit, “affects every other particle, however faintly or obliquely. Everything interconnects with everything. The beating of a butterfly’s wings in China can affect the course of an Atlantic hurricane. If I could interrogate this table-leg in a way that made sense to me, or to the table-leg,then it could provide me with the answer to any question about the universe. I could ask anybody I liked, chosen entirely by chance, any random question I cared to think of, and their answer, or lack of it, would in some way bear upon the problem to which I am seeking a solution. It is only a question of knowing how to interpret it. Even you, whom I have met entirely by chance, probably know things that are vital to my investigation, if only I knew what to ask you, which I don’t, and if only I could be bothered to, which I can’t.”  -- The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
• “No private detective looks like a private detective. That’s one of the first rules of private detection.” 
        “But if no private detective looks like a private detective,how does a private detective know what it is he’s supposed not to look like? Seems to me there’s a problem there.” -- The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
• Being Amused by Apophenia : "The experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data was coined apophenia by the German neurologist, Klaus Conrad. He originally described this phenomenon as a kind of psychotic thought process, though it is now viewed as being a ubiquitous feature of human nature." Pattern Seeing
• Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records when played in reverse.Pattern Seeing
2. Understanding
• "What we want ultimately is solidity to vanish, to dissolve, to disintegrate into soem totally different kind of phenomenon with which we have no experience"  -- Metamagical Themas by Douglas R Hofstader

Wonder : Truth

• paraphrasing George E.P.Box: "All truths are false, some may be useful."

References

1. Radical honesty
2. Avoid telling the truth
3. Kural 291: Truth is that which does not cause harm -- ThiruValluvar
4. "Good men never speak the truth" : Thus Spake Zarathustra
5. "I worked out lifetime philosophies of truth and happiness in high school and early college years. I worked out a few keys for my own life but they wouldn’t necessarily work for someone else" -- Steve Wozniak

Mystery : Brain

1. "Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer" -- John R. Searle, "Brains, Minds, and Science"
2. http://discovermagazine.com/2007/aug/unsolved-brain-mysteries/

Experience: Human situation

1. read cliffhanger
2. listen to "dew drop on hot charcoal" 
3. Feels Like 
• ‘Walking along the edge of a sword,
  Running along an ice ridge,
  No steps, no ladders,
  Jumping from the cliff with open hands.’
  ~Zen verse { From How to become open to Life}

Manifesto: Rasigan

Manifesto

1. Rasigan
• "..the only meanings we take away from cinema are the ones we ascribe to it, during our very personal viewing experience." -- Lights, Camera, Conversation... - Analyse This
• "..belong to the Authorial Intent school, deeming that the author decides the meaning of art, whereas I am a card-carrying subscriber of the Reader Response club, which shifts the responsibility of gleaning meaning from the person who creates art to the one who experiences it." -- Lights-camera-conversation-the-awakening-of-unconsciousness/
• 'I wonder what Shakespeare in Heaven would think of this analysis? I can imagine his saying something like “Interesting idea! I never thought of my sonnet that way, but I guess his way is one of many interesting possible ways of looking at it.” My point, of course, is that Bucke’s analysis is interesting irre- spective of whether or not Shakespeare really had this in mind.' -- Who knows a study of Religious consciousness by Raymond M.Smullyan
• "Ultimately, perhaps it's more enjoyable for the full intentions of the author to remain unknown during the reading of the book." -- Is Alice in Wonderland really about drugs?
2. Kalaingan
• "..one must also consider intention when distinguishing dance from other patterns of movement." -- Stretching beyond idea
• "In a way, it doesn't matter," says Browne. "I don't think Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland to be interpreted. He wrote it to entertain." -- Is Alice in Wonderland really about drugs?
3. Values for Judgement
• "Scientists have known for some time that what we consider beauty is mostly looking normal. Beautiful people have more averaged faces, their faces and bodies have fewer deviations from symmetry. This underlies a lot of the more variable appreciation of beauty which depend on fashion and culture. This suggests that what we think might be an exceptional trait, such as beauty, may actually be the result of lacking major deviations from normalness." -- Nonconformers Need Better Social Skills
4. Experience of the work is what matters!!
• "The term "recognition" is commonly used to describe the point in a story when all of a sudden we understand what is going on, and by that very process understand ourselves." -- The Hour Between Dog and Wolf by John Coates
• "Ah! Books give you sentences which you can roll around in the mind, throw in the air, catch, tease out, analyse. But in whatever way you handle them, they widen your vision. For they are essentially Idea-creating, in the sense that Coleridge meant when he described the Idea as containing future thought – as opposed to the Epigram which encapsulates past thought. Ah! Books give the impression that you are opening a new account, not closing an old one down." -- Vernon Sproxton in introduction to the book "MiSTER GOD, THiS iS anna" 

Love: Radha & Krishna

• "Radha is not Krishna’s wife. Yet without her image, Krishna is never complete. She inspires him to play the flute. Without her there is no music. In some traditions she is considered Krishna’s aunt. In others she is married to another man. In most she is older than him. Thus the love of Radha and Krisha defies all social norms. Their meeting when they are surrounded by a circle of dancing milkmaids, the Maha-Raas, always takes place at night, outside the village in secret. It represents the desires of the heart that unfortunately have to be denied or repressed or sublimated by the demands of the society. Though denied, repressed and sublimated they exist, And Krishna acknowledges their existence." (Myth - Mithya by Devdutt Pattanaik)
• A milkmaid called Radha

Sculpture: Nataraja

Nataraja

1.  
• The rise of a global icon
•  Two pages of poetry (atleast it feels like it to me) in the books "The tell-tale brain: a neuroscientist's quest for what makes us human" by Vilayanur S Ramchandran
• "Although Ramachandran’s nine laws are intended to explain why artists create and why people enjoy viewing it, I enjoyed section on metaphor mainly because of his enthusiastic description of the Nataraja, a 12^th century Indian sculpture of the cosmic dance of Shiva. Ramachandran writes:

  But the sculpture is much more than that; it is a metaphor of the dance of the Universe itself, of the movement and energy of the cosmos. The artist depicts this sensation through the skillful use of many devices. For example, the centrifugal motion of Shiva’s arms and legs flailing in different directions and the wavy tresses flying off his head symbolize the agitation and the frenzy of the cosmos. Yet right in the midst of all this turbulence – this fitful fever of life – is the calm spirit of Shiva himself. He gazes at his own creation with supreme tranquility and poise. How skillfully the artist has combined these seemingly antithetical elements of movement and energy. . . ." -- http://thefprorg.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/karereview-of-ramachandrans-the-tell-tale-brain-a-neuroscientists-quest-for-what-makes-us-human/

2.  
• Nataraj: The Dancing Shiva
• An Explanation of the Shiva Nataraja, or Dancing Shiva 

Music: IR

Illayaraja

Reality: Aeham

1. Aham Brahmasmi
2. Absolute_(philosophy)
3. Iam that Iam
4. Ego
• Lose your ego, Find your compassion
5.  
• "The highest spiritual experiences feel, see, hear, taste, and smell at the same time wihout conscious differentiation. " -- The Shamanic Synesthesia of the Kalahari Bushmen
• "He was sweeping the garden one day and a stone flew up from his broom and hit a bamboo and went "tock". That wonderful sound. And at that moment he heard the sound as if for the first time and his whole universe opened up. " -- MUMONKAN CASE # 5
6. Where am I
•  "Who shoves whom around inside the Careenium ? or What is the Meaning of the word 'I' ?" 
• The Self Illusion

Poet: ThiruValluvar

ThiruValluvar

1. 
   
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirukkural
• http://pm.tamil.net/pub/pm0153/trkrlpop.html?q=projectmadurai/pub/pm0153/trkrlpop.html
• Instability
• #336
• #339
• The possession of Self restraint
• #127
• #129
• 
  
• #169
• #4
2.  
• 
  

Author: P.G.Wodehouse

P.G.Wodehouse

1. 
   
• "In many ways, Wodehouse achieved what Flaubert aspired to do: to write a novel about nothing." -- The genius of Wodehouse
2. 
   
• http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/w#a783