The Story of Our TIME

Last month, after a decade-long gap if I'm not mistaken, I resubscribed to TIME magazine. After reading five issues, I have realized the wealth of information I have lost out on the last ten years by not being its weekly consumer. Such superlative reportage. That's the key: it's uninflected reporting, plain and simple. No opinions, no agenda, no ulterior motives. It is refreshing to be given the facts and then the room to interpret them per my own constitution.

That being wrote, reading these issues has left me unspeakably demoralized. Look at these two covers:

What is the point? What has been accomplished by the instigators and perpetrators? And (un)surprisingly enough, the Israel-Palestine conflict never made it to the cover. Perhaps the editors were concerned the magazine may be accused of having become redundant, rehashing the same story over and over.

Putin must surely be the most brazen celebrity in the world at the moment. That is not an error on my part. He may be a politician by profession, but I can no longer picture him walking into a meeting. "Putin swaggered into the room" is what my imagination compels me to write. Check out this gem:

Without a doubt, the state over whose territory this happened bears the responsibility of this frightful tragedy. 

That's his statement following the mid-air bombing of the Malaysian Airlines plane over Ukraine. Say what? You have pro-Russia Ukrainians fighting their own fellow citizens with weapons provided by your country and backed by your national army and you accuse the people battling your fighters to keep them from taking over their country of blowing up the plane? I look forward to reading your therapist's book.

What is your objective in behaving the way you are? Are you in denial of the global impact your ego-fueled (in)actions are causing? I believe the answer to the second question is no. You're too intelligent to be in denial. Here's my request: let it go, dude. You're so mired in the past, you relate to people and territories and countries for who and what they were before who and what they are today. And, tragically, your steadfast refusal to join us in the here and the now has resulted in your being a relic of the past, which has caused you to become even more stubborn as you stampede your way around your 'hood obliterating any semblance of progress and harmony, which you probably perceive as threats to your rule. I encourage you to watch Rush Hour. Somewhere near its midpoint, ask yourself, "What is war good for?" You'll get the answer.

Writing of war, here's what Joe Klein wrote in his column titled "In Gaza, a Just but Bloody War":

Hamas provoked this round, and Israel had no choice but to respond.

Poor Israel. Left with no alternative. What is a righteous nation to do when attacked? Not stand idly, that's for sure. No point initiating any kind of conversation either. History, after all, is for humans to learn from. 

Don't make me laugh, PK. 

So what happened? Palestine kidnapped and killed three Israelis. Israel retaliated. And off we went. Sequels get boring after a while. And characters jaded. After a point, the performances stem more from muscle memory and reflexes borne out of familiarity than from active curiosity and understanding and a desire for exploration and investigation. Roger Ebert, in his review for Incendies, wrote:

 People who were not murderers in their nature killed others and justified it, on both sides, in the names of their gods. And when enough people had died, they no longer needed their gods, because they sought personal or tribal revenge. A season of murder by fanatics broadened into years of retribution by bystanders who take up their guns.

That is the reality of any and every war. To avenge the violent acts of a few individuals, entire countries are mobilized with the aim of the enemy's annihilation. The Director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights called "it the stupid war. It's aimless." You said it, brother. Retaliation by the attackee only emboldens the attacker, and a never-ending cycle is born. Of course, attackee and attacker are words invented in language. It's only a matter of perspective. In essence, everybody and nobody is innocent.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." For Gandhi and Mandela, the "right" thing to do would have been to react. It'd've been the "just" response. How can any self-respecting entity take "unfair" abuse silently? Hindsight being 20/20, reader, I invite you to consider: what would it have gotten them? Where would we as a people be had these leaders succumbed to their emotions and resorted to the easy route of violence? Has their nonviolent approach not brought everlasting peace (so far) as far as that specific issue is concerned? 

It would have been the human thing for Gandhi and Mandela to lash out for the sake of standing up for themselves. However, they were wise enough to know the difference between short-term satisfaction and long-term resolution. The former is brought about by giving what's given. The latter by being inclusive and initiating conversation. The brand-new threat of ISIS is a direct product of the fiasco the US has caused and been entrenched in the past ten-plus years in Afghanistan and Iraq. And ISIS' indirect lineage can be traced back to, I opine, the US' decision to abandon the Afghan soldiers in the late '80s following the departure of the Soviet army. (Watch the superb Charlie Wilson's War for details.) The US has left so many dead bodies in its wake around the world, its moral authority and standing, as cogently argued by the eminent Thomas Friedman in The World Is Flat, has consistently been declining the last three decades. 

Look at the epic disaster in Ferguson, MO. Admittedly, I don't know all the facts. The case does not seem to be as clear-cut as the Eric Garner death. Regardless, it's hard to imagine how an unarmed teenager with no history of violence would be a grave threat to an adult on-duty police officer. In any event, no point speculating. The underlying theme here is emotions boiling over without pausing to examine the facts and understanding the persons involved. We as a people have programmed our psyches to conveniently categorize the players as victims and aggressors and swiftly resolve incidents so we may resume watching Netflix without taking the time to really study the matter and its causal motivations. 

We live in a frighteningly litigious society. Suing our fellow humans is a knee-jerk response to any conflict or disagreement, be it real or perceived. One of the most prominent examples of this is the woman who sued McDonald's following the spillage of hot coffee. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Where is the room for understanding, for empathy, for conversation, for forgiveness? Where is the chance for humanity to shine? Where is the benefit of the doubt? Litigation is an American pandemic. 25% of the world's prisoners are in the US, which has 5% of the world's population. Teenagers who committed nonviolent crimes are serving 20-, 30-, 40-year sentences. Here's another sobering statistic: 98% of Americans are within 10 miles of a gun dealer. Compare that with 71% being within 30 minutes of Emergency Care. Shameful.

We have become so consumed with furthering our agenda, peddling our self-serving ideas, protecting our territory and property. We have become exclusive, no longer welcoming and tolerant. I fully realize illegal immigration and terrorism are real problems. However, tackling those issues with sense-numbing force will accomplish nothing, as has already been proven. What is missing is the creation of the appropriate context around these realities. All these ostensibly disparate issues hampering America are tightly intertwined on a subterranean level. Initiating communication between various caretakers of the US, recognizing each other's points of view, listening with the objective of understanding as opposed to responding, establishing a common ground, getting a good look at the big picture to understand how the various pieces of the puzzle fit are some of the things that are the need of the moment. Pulverizing one's way through issues only exacerbates them, it doesn't eliminate them. 

Being empathetic, kind, open-minded when tackling the realities of our world is what will lead us eventually toward true solutions. The world is too interconnected today for us to have the luxury of operating with an isolationist, piecemeal mindset. Every problem facing us today is multifaceted. None of these problems is easy to solve. At the same time, none of these problems is unsolvable.

Let's regain our greatness. Onward and upward.

Thinking About Software

One of my longtime friends from Mumbai, Harshu, has been e-mailing me links over the past few months of new entries he writes in his blog. Although my illiteracy in computer programming is not something I'm proud of, I found my attention captivated by the clarity and simplicity of his writing as well as his passion for coding which comes through in his posts. My curiosity got the better of me and I ended up reading his entire blog (which, reader, I highly encourage you to do; as written, you need not understand programming to appreciate it). I was so impressed upon reading it that I felt compelled to blog about it. So here we are.

A few words about Harshu: we have known each other since we were in elementary school. I don't remember ever not being friends with him. Don't you love the kind of friendships that have endured over so many years and so many miles you are unable to recall how they began? Funnily enough, we never lived in the same building, never went to the same school, and barely had any mutual friends. But somehow, through some cosmic alignment, we have always enjoyed a healthy relationship built on affection and respect. When I migrated to America, we stayed in touch via e-mail; when he moved to the US to pursue a Master's degree at the University of Cincinnati, we were in touch through phone calls; and now that he's living in the Bay Area, we periodically call each other to catch up. Although we have never been the kind of friends (not yet, at least) that know everything that's happening in each other's lives, there's no warm-up required for us. The communication just flows. In the past, when we saw each other after a handful of years, there was an obvious comfort we felt in each other's company. 

The overall impression I got after reading his whole blog is how proud he is of being a software developer. Indeed, he calls himself a software craftsman. That is so refreshing! Some might find that to be self-important, etc., but anybody who is remotely aware of the role software development plays in today's world will allow him and his ilk that luxury. Besides, how is he not a craftsman? Is he not spending his time creating rules and guidelines for a product to function in a beneficial manner? By that logic, he is indeed involved in a creative endeavor on a daily basis. He is unapologetic about the fact that he plays a crucial role in today's society, that the work he does impacts virtually every aspect of our lives, the way we live, our lifestyle.

His first entry, written in February, 2011, gives a great indication of his intellect and his passion for software development: he pursued a project outside of his regular job because he--key word--cared about a particular endeavor. And it snowballed into him landing his current job in California. The main lesson is that if you feel an emotional connection to your work or any given activity, you're more likely to dive into it and, in all probability, excel at it. As an aside, I downloaded the StumbleUpon application on my phone and although I am yet to spend much time on it, it seems to be fascinating. Again, made possible because of programming!

His third entry, written in August, 2011, shows his love for software development and his humility at being relatively new at it. The fact that he spends "quite some time after work thinking" about his profession tells us how consumed he is by what he does for a living. I clicked on the hyperlink for Cal Newport's blog and read all the entries on the homepage. What I found most interesting is the way Cal (and, I'm guessing, Harshu) insist on maintaining a healthy work-life balance on a day-to-day basis. Although they are immersed in their work, their lives are not defined by it. They do not let what they do at the office dominate what they do--or not--at home. A significant amount of importance is given to doing less; the emphasis, however, as always, is to do whatever you do very well. One of Cal's posts which I found not only immensely intriguing but also urgently pertinent is titled, Don't Ask "What Are You Good At?" Ask Instead "What Are You Willing To Get Good At?" On deeper thought, I found that to be totally valid. At the dawn of one's professional career, one may not be good at anything. But certainly there will be things one has an interest in and would be keen on investing more time and effort into them in order to become good at them. As I myself am at a crossroads currently as far as what to do with my life, I found this advice extremely sensible and valuable. Filmmaking is what I'm interested in and willing to become good--great--at. I initially disagreed with Cal's disagreement with the maxim, "follow your passion." However, upon reading his blog and doing some critical thinking of my own, I realize the truth in his disagreement of it. I believe one should follow one's interests, an activity in which one likes to be engaged for hours at a time; as Cal writes in the aforementioned blogpost, "passion will grown along with your skill."

Harshu's fourth entry, written in March, 2012, mentions a very important truth of life: learning by doing. Of course, one does not always have the luxury of indulging in trial-and-error work, but a healthy balance of theoretical learning and practical doing is essential for succeeding in any field. When I started writing my first feature film screenplay in 2009, I had neither had any formal education in writing screenplays nor had I so much as dabbled in it. However, piggybacking off the previous paragraph, I was willing to invest time and effort in that activity to become good at it, and I was willing to learn by doing. Just as building a game in a programming language unfamiliar to him was satisfying to Harshu, so was finishing my first full-length screenplay satisfying to me. Once the initial interest and hunger to learn is there in a field, it is only a matter of time before Harshu, myself, or anybody else builds/creates/develops something that exceeds their own expectations. The concept of deliberate practice, advocated by Cal Newport, makes a lot of sense and it is something I will be adhering to henceforth. 

His sixth entry, written in January, 2013, elaborates on his belief of being a craftsman. Of the three essentials he lists for progressing as a craftsman, I found the last one particularly key: "The tenacity to work hard through the not so interesting parts." How true! Although I partially disagree with Harshu that "you need to satisfy your work rather than rooting for some dream passion" (depends on the career one is engaged in and the career one wants to engage in; if both are the same, then there is no issue), I opine that once you have found, at the risk of being redundant, an activity you're willing to become better at, then "[s]atisfying the work that is given to you is a stepping stone towards building expertise and thus uncovering a deeper satisfaction of the work that you do." On the whole, in fact, this blogpost is so well-written, I want to provide a link to it right here. Great observations, my friend. (Check out Roger Ebert's review of "Jiro Dreams Of Sushi".)

In his eighth entry, written in April, 2013, Harshu writes about randomness and the influence chance has on our lives more than choice does. If there's one topic I couldn't agree more on, it is that. As a necessitarian, however, I believe that everything that happens in life is preordained. What may seem to us mortals as random or chance or, the worst, luck, our scripts, so to write, have already been written by the Almighty. What seems to us as an "accident", good or bad, happened exactly as it was meant to happen. Because we as humans do not have the view of the larger picture, we consider it as luck, when in fact it is our destiny. But I realize this can lead to a never-ending debate about determinism versus free will so I will let it be. Consider, however, all the events that needed to have occurred for Harshu to take the wrong exit, not least of which is the inception of the Super Bowl. 

As I wrote in the opening paragraph, Harshu writes in a clean and unadorned manner. That, in no small measure, got me thinking of my own writing style. As someone who wants to make a career as a screenwriter, am I wont to employing "SAT words" where an easier word could have been equally effective? Using big words is fine, I suppose, but not if it is unnecessary. Using verbal legerdemain to make a statement easily comprehensible or, conversely, making complex sentence constructions for the sake of poetry and humor is not the same as being a literary show-off; all style, no substance. As a software writer, it is understandable that Harshu's prose is functional and within one's vocabulary range. But, nonetheless, it has me wondering, as an English-language writer, about the prudence of following a principle I learned as an undergraduate student: "keep it simple, stupid".

On the whole, much like my friendship with Harshu, I have found his blog greatly enlightening, and I look forward to getting a notification e-mail whenever he posts his next entry. Supreme work, buddy.

What The Law!?

Roger Ebert's review of the documentary West Of Memphis brought to my attention the infamous case of the West Memphis Three: three teenagers accused of murdering three young boys in West Memphis in the summer of 1993. Hyperlinks to the reviews of three other documentaries were provided in the West Of Memphis review, so as I usually do (because Roger Ebert is worth reading more for how he writes than what he writes about), I read the reviews of all the three documentaries: Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. As is clear, they are a series of documentaries about the same topic. In fact, they are a series of documentaries chronicling the case of the West Memphis Three.

My curiosity was sparked by the review of West Of Memphis, and by the time I finished reading the reviews of the three Paradise Lost documentaries, I was transfixed. I immediately checked YouTube for the four documentaries. I was unable to find West Of Memphis, but to my great good fortune, all three Paradise Lost documentaries were available in full. I recently got the chance to watch all three documentaries in succession, and during my viewings, I was, in no particular order of chronology or degree of intensity, sad, angry, depressed, and grateful. I was grateful because the three teenagers, now men in their late 30s, were correctly found not guilty during a belated retrial and released into the free world. I was sad, angry, and depressed for a number of reasons: three innocent young boys had been so sadistically murdered; three innocent teenagers were not only falsely accused of the crime and arrested purely on suspicion bred by the way they dressed and talked and the kind of music they listened to and books they read but also wrongly imprisoned--including one being on Death Row--for almost two decades; details of the deaths were shoved down the teenagers' throats via egregiously leading questions and then systematically extracted out of them, especially from the teenager later revealed to be mildly mentally retarded, in the form of "confessions"; an entire community and legal establishment could be so consumed with rage and fear as to be blind to the truth of the matter in order to demonstrate a facade of pathetic revenge and ruthless justice. 

Remarkably enough, and I confess I was a bit surprised when I considered it, the chief police officer on the case and the prosecutor at the trial are not bad people. They do not have a personal vendetta against the three teenagers. Viewed objectively, they are simply doing their jobs. They seem to be good, smart, competent professionals trying to do the right thing based on their frame of reference. The parents of the three young boys, understandably, have nothing but hatred for the three teenagers. It is chilling to hear the words they have to say about the accused and to watch the determination and matter-of-factness in their eyes while saying those words. 

My purpose in writing this entry is to express my ambivalence about law. Of course, law is a necessary component of society that helps maintain decorum, but at what cost? The arbitrariness of law is what I am afraid of, the paradoxical irrationality of it. Were the arrest and incarceration of the three teenagers driven by logic or emotion? In the previous paragraph, I wrote, "The parents of the three young boys[...]". I could have written, "The parents of the victims[...]". But now that the West Memphis Three's innocence has been proven, were the young boys that were killed the only victims of this painful saga? What must it be like for the three teenagers to have spent the prime of their lives imprisoned? According to Wikipedia, they are spending their days learning to drive, enrolling in college, etc. Who has to pay the price for "justice" being administered so swiftly? Not the officials, certainly.

Perhaps one can consider the whole situation in a detached manner by accepting it simply as a bad roll of the dice. But what about the upholding of the truth in an impersonal, clinical way? If officials we have empowered with our trust to do the right thing are swayed by the sentiments of an overwhelming majority of the very public that has empowered them, why do we need the officials? To upkeep a pretense of law and order, right and wrong? I remember reading a book titled Mean Justice some years ago, and it shook me to my core. Perhaps in my days of innocence and belief that nothing so outrageous could occur in America, I was shocked that an obviously innocent man could be so relentlessly and single-mindedly pursued by the law that he himself became convinced of his own guilt. It is giving me goosebumps just thinking about it. Who's to say it couldn't happen to me? If personal demons are driving professionals supposed to display rigid adherence to facts, then what remains?

I don't know if I'm coming across as cynical about the law, but I am certainly skeptical and not a little discouraged. And scared. It is downright frightening to think of the hate, prejudice, selfishness, narrow-mindedness, and myopic instinct for self-preservation we have within ourselves. Instead of regarding the world for what it is, we regard it for what we think it is, what we want it to be. There is nothing in the universe scarier than a human being.

Collaborating is Loving

"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence." - H.L. Mencken

In the days before the ubiquitous "Share" option we see on every digital article we read, video we watch, and thought we express, there was the Chain E-mail. You remember those, don't you? "Forward within the next 60 seconds for success in Life, Love, etc."? It was almost ritualistic for us to click "Forward" as a reflex and send it to all 200 of our contacts lest we end up being less fortunate than the person who sent us that e-mail. 

We may laugh at the silliness of it now, but I think those e-mails were symbolic of something significant: the human need for social interaction. "No man is an island", wrote John Donne. "We are wired to connect", writes Daniel Goleman in Emotional Intelligence. Think of Tom Hanks' character in Cast Away becoming buddies with a volleyball, and his pain when he loses it to the ocean. We depend on human relationships, no matter how superficial, for survival. 

In retrospect, the Chain E-mail was simply a less-than-ideal way of staying in contact with people, staying on their radar. Although no direct correspondence was happening, receiving it from a geographically distant cousin told me he/she was all right, and it told the same about me to whoever I forwarded it to. This indirect method of staying in touch gave its own satisfaction, because whenever I did see that cousin after however many years, it didn't seem as if we had been completely clueless about each other's lives. If he or she is forwarding me e-mails on a regular basis, they can't be doing that bad.

Today, of course, there's the "Share" button. Whether it's this blog entry, a movie trailer on YouTube, or a Harvard Business Review article, anything and everything can be--and is--shared. As you must have already experienced, that is both good and bad. Good because it allows me to include others in the emotion I am feeling upon reading/watching/writing something, and I hope to bond with them over that emotion. And bad because people with too much time don't have my Feed in mind before they start flooding it with minutely updates of their Farmville score. This time last week, for instance, I was following 200-plus Twitter accounts. As of this writing, I'm following 155. To paraphrase one of my favorite quotations, "Share because you have something to share, not because you have to share something."

Again, what the "Share" button symbolizes is our need and desire to connect with our fellow humans; to include and engage with them in the emotional experience we're having. Why does watching a movie, a concert, or a game give us such a high? Because we are sharing a similar emotional experience with our fellow humans, even though it is entirely possible we don't know anybody present there on a personal level. 

In our professional lives, we share experiences by collaborating with our co-workers on projects, assignments, tasks--anything goal-oriented--and then we include (or exclude) them in the emotions we feel about the results. In today's Internet-driven world, everything is about collaboration. This sentiment was initially brought to the general public's attention by Thomas Friedman in his landmark book The World Is Flat. I finished reading it today and couldn't stop marveling at his prescience in describing events which would come true within a decade after the book's publishing (2005). The book's point is technology is empowering people across the world, allowing more people than ever before to have a shot at success, and growth and progress will be achieved through increased collaboration to go along with the ever-present competition.

So did the "Share" button rise out of the zeitgeist of collaboration? Why do we suddenly feel the need to broadcast our thoughts and beliefs and passions and emotions to the world? Because we can? Can it be that simple? Was it only a matter of the convergence of the proper channels for us to unleash our personality on the public? Or was it only a matter of time before the appropriate tools enabled our virtual behavior to become similar to our real-life behavior where we share our feelings with the people we care about? Perhaps it was not a case of a sudden need to broadcast ourselves. Perhaps we were only obeying our natural instinct as humans--to connect--although on a much larger scale. The Internet enabled us to share, to collaborate with people we have never met, to include them in our lives, for better or worse, irrespective of nationality and ideology.

With that in mind, I come to the idea of love. As a ~26.5-year-old, I've had my share of first- and second-hand encounters with love. Or, rather, "love". Because, really, what is love? There's no defining love. We all have a notion of its definition, of its "true meaning", and the sooner we stop kidding ourselves, the better off we'll be. I'm no mathematician, but if there ever was an undefined variable, love is it. I'm no cynic either, but what I know is there's no comprehending love, there's no understanding love, there's no explaining love. Nobody but it decides when it wants to come and go. 

That is the understanding I have come to as of this writing. But, sure enough, in the past, I've tried to straitjacket love into my fantasies and ideals, being too immature to realize what abject failure awaited me. Up until about five years ago, in my quest to discover love's meaning, I arrived at the conclusion that love is friendship. It seems like a no-brainer now, but I had seen both myself and my friends struggle with "loving" someone in the absence of friendship. It's simple, really: friends are people you hang out with, spend time with, have fun with. If you don't feel like doing all that with the person you're dating, how can you "love" them? But gradually, I realized friendship is not all there is to love. Of course, you have to be friends with the person you love, but love cannot be synonymous with friendship; there's a reason why you're friends with more than one person (hopefully) and lovers with only one (hopefully). Anything goes in friendship, it is a laissez-faire economy; love is more formal, more exclusive, which is the way it should be. 

So after discarding the love-is-friendship mantra, I arrived at this understanding: love is comfort. If you're able to feel comfortable in someone's presence, if you have the freedom to be yourself, then you know you love them. Roger Ebert advises, "Never marry anyone without first taking a three-day bus trip with them." I agree. Text messages and FaceTimes and Hangouts are great, but spending time with the person you "love" without any ostensible way out is the real deal. However, my love-is-comfort theory met a surprisingly swift demise. Spending time with my friends made me realize I feel extremely comfortable in their company, which does make sense because I love my friends. But I am referring to the exclusive kind of love, not the distributed kind. Having the freedom to express my feelings, acting like a complete goofball, I could do that with my friends because I was comfortable. But if that's the case, love cannot be defined by comfort, can it? It has to be bigger than that. If I feel the same amount of comfort with one person that I do with my friends, there's not much special about that one person. 

So I scratched the love-is-comfort theory and began my quest once again. For the past few months, this is what I have been thinking: love is sharing. True to the human instinct mentioned earlier in this entry, once we feel compelled to include another person in our life's journey--and be a participant in theirs--that is love. Love is of different kinds: romantic, parental, filial, human, one-sided. Fair enough, we include our parents and friends and family on this journey and share our life's events with them. But the key word is "compelled". When you start feeling an unstoppable urge to share your life with a particular individual almost by default, you know they are exclusively special. No matter how big or small, if you could share something with only one person, they'd be it. When you consistently keep thinking of the same person to share something with, they're the one you love above all else.

It is said people marry because they want a witness to their lives, somebody to mentally and emotionally chronicle their victories, struggles, pleasures, disappointments. That may be true, but if you're famous enough, you can have a biographer do that. The key is to include that one special person in our lives, to give them a chance to affect you and influence you and inspire you from the inside-out. Because when you decide to include someone, that means you are friends with them, are comfortable with them, and want to share your life with them. 

At this point in time, this is my understanding of love. However, true to love's nature, I wouldn't be surprised if I have to write another entry a few years down the road updating the thoughts I have shared in this one!

An Anti-Climatic Ending

Let's leave the political orientations aside: climate change is real. Before it was merely global warming. Now it is much more. Kinda like before it was the Internet of Things, now it's the Internet of Everything.

In any event, much like my previous entry, I want you to watch the below video before I go further. 

Need I write anything? The above video is from Chasing Ice, a 2012 documentary that aims to prove the reality of climate change beyond reasonable doubt. After watching that video, anybody who needs more proof can be comfortably labeled beyond unreasonable without a doubt. Here's what Roger Ebert writes in his review:

"Did some of that melting ice later visit Manhattan in the form of Hurricane Sandy? Does melting ice cause a rising in the global sea level? Does the bathtub fill up when you turn on the tap?"

I am yet to watch Chasing Ice, but I have watched An Inconvenient Truth. That documentary was an eye-opener. How can anybody look at the images, graphs, and numbers presented in such endeavors and deny the basic truth: human beings are screwing the planet? Because of an unsettling mix of indulgence, ignorance, and arrogance, we are causing irreparable damage on a daily basis to the ecosystem we inhabit. 

2012 JEEP Grand Cherokee

Look, I like SUVs--and driving--and traveling--in general--as much as anybody. In fact, only this past summer, I was close to purchasing a JEEP Grand Cherokee. I really like that SUV. Ultimately, I didn't go through with it, and it was not because of environmental concerns. But now that I look back, what would have been the point? I am a single guy, I commute to and from work alone, how would having an SUV made my driving experience better? But what would definitely have happened is stopping at the gas station with higher frequency. 

The challenge is to not look at the debilitating impact we are having on the planet from a macro viewpoint. We have to look at it from a micro one. It doesn't matter what humankind is doing to save the planet. The real question is: what am I doing? Mahatma Gandhi has said we should be the change we want to see in the world. That is a big statement, but achievable nonetheless. I don't mean for this entry to be an exhortation on how we should live our lives. But today when I go to Chipotle and see all their packaging is recyclable, it is a good feeling.

Deepak Chopra wrote a call-to-action last year titled "A Critical Mass of Consciousness". He asked that if each of us were to do our little part toward the caretaking and preservation of this planet--our home--it would go a long way in nurturing and safeguarding its health and longevity. We are at risk of being complacent until something drastic occurs. Fair enough, as long as we become responsible and proactive after that drastic occurrence. That is the real test. But why wait? Beginning to exercise after suffering a heart attack is great, but wouldn't you rather exercise to prevent it at all?

A Clockwork New World 1984451

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed."

The above William Gibson quotation has swiftly become one of my favorites. As someone who has come of age in the US and spent a few months in India over the past decade, I have experienced it first-hand.

However, before I go any further in this entry, I want you to watch the below video. It is one of the most fascinating watches I've had in recent memory.  

Now, then, we can begin. Truth be wrote: I am overwhelmed. There are so many astoundingly astonishing developments happening all around us today, it is scarsome. Yes, I just made up that word. It is a portmanteau of scary and awesome.

Consider, for example, what the above video is about: the Internet of Things. What a startling concept! Legitimately scarsome. Imagine inhabiting a world that is so automated, so in-sync, so streamlined, that any deviation from the "norm" would be considered a threat to civil order. I exaggerate, of course, but think about the movie Minority Report. Society flowed as one in that fictional future--transportation, governance, human living. If you were the cause of any inconsistency in the societal fabric, you didn't have the luxury of being considered underdeveloped. You were considered a rogue. 

The key concept is that of a societal fabric: all the disparate threads and fibers tied together to create a seamless entity. No disconnection, no fragmentation. Seems almost monolithic, doesn't it? You may have figured out the sources of this entry's title. They are four of the most thought-provoking books I've read. I call them the Dystopia Quartet. Of course, Philip K. Dick's writings (one of which is the source for Minority Report)--and numerous other authors'--were terribly prescient in imagining a future ruled by machines. And that is precisely where we are heading. If one were to view the above video from a pessimist's viewpoint, it only confirms mankind's imminent servitude to technology.

I realize the tone of this entry so far has been quite gloomy. But who can convincingly claim our lives would be as convenient without smartphones? Doesn't life seem to come to a standstill without an Internet connection? If you're unable to conjure up data with your fingertips, fuggedaboutit. Being an ostensible throwback when one has taken the time and made the effort to give oneself a solid, up-to-date base is cool. Being anachronistic is not. But that only makes it undeniably clear we are at the mercy of machines. As they go, so go we. Although a popcorn entertainer, Live Free Or Die Hard showcased something truly scarsome: technoterrorism. It is entirely possible to shut a country--the world--down with a few keystrokes. And it is no longer implausible, impossible, or improbable. 

DIKW Pyramid

This surge in human-to-human, human-to-machine, and machine-to-machine interconnectivity is going to result in unfathomable bytes of data. One of the intriguing concepts presented in the video is the DIKW pyramid. When one considers it in that context, it is easy to realize the small degrees of difference between the meanings of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom, even though all four concepts aim to provide enlightenment. Although the prospect of such incredible cross-platform synchronicity and the resulting time-saving efficiency is intoxicating, it would be foolish to not consider the flipside. I guess the only relevant question is: is such large-scale synchronization making us engage more with life or making us increasingly aloof from the granular realities of it? I, for one, am definitely excited about the technological advances and the accompanying across-the-board harmony they promise to provide. But, like most everything in life, it remains to be seen how it turns out to be in the long run.

A perfect example of the rapidity of those advances is we barely have been introduced to the concept of the Internet of Things and it has already been succeeded by something bigger and better: the Internet of Everything. Clearly, it leaves nothing to the imagination. The fact that companies like IBM and Cisco are at the forefronts of these budding revolutions all but guarantees their fruition. The Internet of Everything consists of data, people, process, and things. Every tangible (people and things) and intangible (data and process) entity is going to be a node in a global network facilitating communication and transmitting details about its and its surroundings' conditions. It won't be too long before the term "off the grid" becomes synonymous with antisocial activities.

I've been considering upgrading my 2006 MINI Cooper to a 2013 one for the past few months. Although it has a good amount of miles on it, it is in great running condition. I wouldn't at all hesitate to go on a long road trip in it. But increasingly, I have begun to notice how isolated the driving experience in that car is. There's no USB port, no XM radio, no hands-free call setting, no voice options. In other words, it isn't "smart" enough. The truth is, owning an automobile today is less about the driving experience and more about the technological integration it offers. What good is it if I can't connect my mobile device to the built-in USB port and read the contents of my news feed on the built-in computer screen and compose and publish/send tweets/e-mails by speaking them and having the built-in speech-to-text software convert them?

Long story short, Big Brother is not only real, he's becoming more and more social.

Of All-Stars and Oscars

I love NBA basketball, and I love cinema. I watch both voraciously. I used to* watch both voraciously. Slowly but surely, the more the gap widens between today and my days as a college student, the less "events" which were so monumental back then matter. Make no mistake, watching NBA playoff games and new (or old, for that matter) movies was an event. Nothing else was as critical, as urgent. The way things stand today, the last full movie I watched was in November (the one before that was in June), and since two weeks ago, I have stopped watching sports. That sounds drastic, but it's true. I can hardly think of a bigger time-suck than sports. Like millions, I love Roger Federer. The San Antonio Spurs are my team. It is pure joy being a witness to greatness. If a person or team you like wins, it makes you feel good about yourself. But the truth is, regardless of whether I give them my time and attention, Federer and Tim Duncan will be millionaires. If I don't, there's no guarantee I will become one, but at least I'm giving myself a chance. However, the more crucial point is, no matter how many times I watch Federer serve or Duncan make an off-the-glass field goal, I won't be able to pull off either of those moves unless I actually practice them. Kobe Bryant didn't become Kobe Bryant by simply watching Michael Jordan.

Movies, on the other hand, can be learned by watching. Of course, one cannot claim to be a filmmaker without making a film. But the reason watching movies is less a waste of time is because unlike a drop shot or a "bank" shot, which are tangible actions, cinema is more about the intangibles: angles, light, words, mood, themes, performances. And intangibles are easier to pick up in theory than tangibles. If one harbors ambitions of becoming a filmmaker, they have to keep watching movies to constantly keep themselves up-to-date with the medium. If one harbors ambitions of becoming a professional sportsperson, they have to keep watching their sport of choice...until they're, for example, 15. After that, if they aren't already playing, watching is a waste of time.

Quentin Tarantino is one example that comes to mind when I think of someone who became a filmmaker by "simply" watching--devouring, absorbing--movies. Of course, that he was able to amalgamate his myriad influences to create his own brand of cinema is a testament to his uncanny genius. Look at his filmography. Every single production is unique. You cannot say a certain Tarantino movie is like so-and-so movie. The titles of his movies itself are proof enough of his one-of-a-kindness.

Which brings me to the Oscars. I used to watch the awards ceremony religiously. As far as American cinema is concerned--and, probably, world cinema--it is the award to win. I always thought they were the most trustworthy and legitimate awards, given only to the best. Not the most popular, not the most famous, not the most financially successful, but purely and strictly the best. But as I matured as an individual and looked back at lists of nominees and the names of individuals and films that didn't win during certain years, I became curiously detached from my holier-than-thou view of the Oscars. Martin Scorsese not winning Best Director for Raging Bull? I'm a Robert Redford fan, and Ordinary People was a solid debut for him. But from purely a directorial standpoint, it's a no-contest. 

It's more difficult when the "best" director or actor is not so obvious. The Silence Of The Lambs is one of my favorite movies. I have watched it numerous times. It is a masterpiece. To adapt a book so faithfully and retain the story's intangibles--the macabre nature, the gruesome nuances, the uninterrupted sense of dread--is filmmaking at its best (pun unintended). But what are the criteria used to determine Jonathan Demme did a better job of directing that movie than Oliver Stone did with JFK? Along with Schinder's List, JFK is possibly the greatest movie I have seen. Let's ignore the debatable historical accuracy of it and look at it purely as a film, a work of art. I have watched JFK more than five times, and it is probably the most compulsively watchable film I have seen. I cannot take my eyes off it. And, mind you, it is 200 minutes long. 

Let's consider Best Picture winners. The Departed is one of my favorite films. It is awesome! But how is it better, as a film, than, for instance, Babel? Or, to put it another way, in what respect is Babel a lesser film than The Departed? It is confounding. Last one: Sean Penn in Mystic River. Riveting, gripping, fierce, etc. All valid. He was a force in that film. But how was Bill Murray in Lost In Translation or Johnny Depp in Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl any lesser? 

Similarly, I was a regular consumer of the NBA All-Star game. It was great. All the league's superstars on two teams, pitted against each other. When else were you able to relish the sight of Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and Shaquille O'Neal teaming up to defend against the relentless forays of Allen Iverson, Vince Carter, and Jason Kidd toward the basket? It was tremendously exciting. But, for me, the experience began diluting when Shaq, at the peak of his dominance, had to come off the bench because the fans voted Yao Ming as a Western Conference starter. Say what? Charles Barkley, blunt as ever, put it best: "This only proves the fans don't know anything." Since then, the game, and the preceding shenanigans constituting All-Star Weekend, has become progressively dramaless and insipid. 

The trouble is the lack of consistency in selecting the All-Star players. Should the teams comprise stars, regardless of their team's record, or players that are playing like stars that season when one looks at their team's record? In the 2013 game, for instance, Kobe and Dwight Howard are two of the five Western Conference starters because they are superstars, not because their team is winning. On the other hand, players like Tyson Chandler and Paul George were picked because their contribution to their team's success has been immense, not because they are stars. Granted, Kobe and Howard were picked by fans who want to see the biggest names, and Chandler and George by NBA coaches who want to reward players affecting their team's success. But there's another twist: Kyrie Irving was picked by the coaches to reward his stellar play on a losing team. So what is the criteria really?

I am an advocate of Jeff Van Gundy's proposal: only players on teams with winning records should be eligible. The fundamental issue with selecting All-Star players in basketball is one is forced to select individuals in a game that is not about individuals. So the primary question is should the NBA All-Star game reflect the spirit of team, unity, cohesion, or celebrate individual accomplishments to appease commercial interests even though it is against the core theme of what the sport of basketball represents and demands: teamwork?

I haven't given up entirely on NBA basketball and the movies. I still follow various NBA- and cinema-related accounts on Twitter to stay abreast of the latest happenings as much as possible. And I certainly haven't given up on cinema as a whole; movies are transcendent works of art, and there is much to relish in any given effort. All-Star games--and sports, in general--and Oscar ceremonies, however, need to become much more consistent in the former's case, and much less important in the latter's. Sports may be about competition, but cinema has to be about collaboration.