i am switching back to blogspot.
http://shamkashyap.blogspot.com

Rudra: The Aryan Crusade (Sophomore Album) i i i i (4/5)
The second album from the vedic metallers Rudra enriches the new genre in metal with another solid release. The fans of Rudra will not be displeased with this album but it takes more than a couple of patient replays to understand the difference between each song and appreciate the uniqueness of each.
Aryan Crusade has lesser fusion of Indian and western instruments when compared to their previous album but a couple of songs have the tabla beats all through them. The intro off course is a classic carnatic violin piece. I did not miss the Indian instruments that much since the tunes and riffs are inspired from indian music. The Sanskrit verses are also a bit rare. I wanted a few more.
The lyrics of this album are more aggressive than their previous release. They concentrate more on topics like religious hypocrisy and conversion. The album also includes a poem by Paramahamsa Yogananda which suits the mood of the album.

Aryaputra Rudrapatni and Amen are typical thrash/death metal songs with catchy riffs and growls. The hymns at the ending of rudrapatni add a dramatic touch to the song. Similar effect is in Amen where 'amen amen fools of god...blinded dogs' give the same feeling. Kathir's voice is kind of monotonous in some songs but it does not come in the way of enjoying the songs. A bit of variation in vocals would not have done any harm though. The highlight of the album is Shiva's merciless drumming. It’s wonderful to hear the indian beats in some songs with such aggressive drumming. As usual the guitar leads are short and fast. Hymns to thee has such a good rhythm that I just can't forget 'the guru of gurus.. Preacher of atmavidya' , a definite highlight of the album.
One more unique thing about this album is the sudden change of the tempo of the songs. The super fast double bass pummeling continues but the vocals and guitars slow down suddenly and change pace unexpectedly giving a beautiful effect. Anantarupa and Maleovalent Creed use this to maximum effect. Burn at stakes is an addictive song with amazing tunes and leads. The spoken vocals add to the creepy effect of the song. One of the slow songs in the album, Atmavichara has the best starting riff in the album. (It is hard to differentiate songs since most start in a similar fashion) It continues with a great rhythm and is helped by some typical rudra lead pieces. The lyrics and the Sanskrit verse chosen for this song are beautiful and can be regarded as one of the best songs of the album lyrically. The only negative comments I can think of are the monotonous growls similar song structures and very typical lead pieces in most of the songs. But it is also true that even though the structures of most of the songs are similar, each one is unique in its subject and riffs.
All in all a very good album... again essential to any vedic metal and rudra fan.

Date:	2004-09-27 12:57
Subject:	SatyAgraha!!
Security:	Public
Mood:	peaceful

http://www.thatskannada.com/column/ravibelagere/270904sharmila.html

Incredible detemination Sharmila,
An inspiring ray of light!!!

Date:	2004-09-27 03:29
Subject:	sleepless
Security:	Public
Mood:	exhausted

nidde bartaa illa
sleep not comminggu X-(

Date:	2004-09-24 01:30
Subject:	Image test!
Security:	Public
Mood:	bored

Winter is coming!!!

Date:	2004-09-24 00:21
Subject:	starting my radion again!
Security:	Public
Mood:	sleepy

i started broadcasting my radio again. i am currently playing a mix of carnatic, hindustani, a bit of bollywood, sandalwood (kannada film songs!!) bhavageetegaLu (mysUru mallige) a lot of technical metal like cynic, death and opeth and some brutal death like suffocation and nile. you shall find a rare pop song too

i vary the genre according to the current playlist. but you can get my radio station by searaching for 'Sham Radio' in http://www.shoutcast.com

if anyone listens to it, please send a small comment here so that I know someone's been there. Also, if you have any song requests for specific types of songs or albums, (within the hood of musical interests) you can send that too and i can play that for you.

Date:	2004-09-12 13:11
Subject:	maisUru!!!!!
Security:	Public
Mood:	nostalgic

This is what makes me proud of where I come from.

See this article by Dr. Niranjan Vanalli,
http://www.ourkarnataka.com/Week_end_sepcial/cultural.htm

its such an addictive place.. the places i love the most:
1. serene banks of kukkarahaLLi tank
2. the beautiful university campus,
3. the big lonely houses of jayalaxmipuram,
4. the buzzling saraswathipuram and kuvempunagar,
5. the homely streets of agrahara and chamundipuram
6. the stylish cows on kalidasa road in ontikoppal
7. kalamandira, rangaayana
8. ballal circle..

compared to mysore bangalore is nothing folks!!! mysore rocks!!!

I wish I never left this place :-((

Date:	2004-08-29 15:18
Subject:	Swagath 2004
Security:	Public
Mood:	calm

The India Student Association at K-state held Swaagath 2004 for the new comers of fall 2004. The event went on well without major glitches.
I personally am satisfied with the way things went.. job delegation was good. there was very less confusion and i guess most people did not have much problems with the organizing of the event.
for once, my committee listened to my words. (probably thats why I am content )

We made a few safe choices this time. No questions to new students which made them feel more comfortable. The events were small and eventhough we could have done it faster, we did it safely taking time and not screwing it up. Arrangement was almost perfect and there  were no surprises.

The advantage with swagath is, there are always a few new students who make the crowd extremely noisy.. ex: one postdoc guy started off very shaky and people were all set to pull his leg but then he started talking about his achievements that made people drop their jaws in appreciation.he had done so many things that people just clapped without commenting anything. there was one almost abcd girl who saved herself some boo's by criticising her own amru accent.. man she had travelled so much, I just could not keep track of it.. then there was a pakistani punjabi student who did not reveal that he is from pak but when his intro wasn't amusing enough and people started to pull his leg revealed his nationality and scored a few dialogues about unity between India and Pak that people had to nod in appreciation.. and one guy said his hobbies included watching porn.. whatever it is.. his audacity was too much i would say.

the ending antakshari too went on well.
all in all, people got lots of icecream to take home and got to know lots of girls to go behind!!!

my house is a mess now. my blanket gone, pans burnt in the kitchen after yesterday's potluck and a bunch of vessels to wash!!

my economics classes are going well.. and i am really surprised that their graphs have so much information in them.. very rarely do our computer science graphs have more than 2-3 things to say.. these graphs in economics tell most of the things about the entire economy!!! one thing i am finding out is economics is not economical. profs coolly ask students to buy such costly texts which are not even available for reference in the library.. this is not fair!

Dr Weisman gives so many examples of microeconomics playing part in our daily life.. the economics of college football, the economics of telephone companies, university admissions etc etc.. he scares me off sometimes with the complexity of economics. come on, this is my first class!!
history of economic thought is so interesting.. starting from the city states of greece where everything was so easy for them.. (it you are making laws for only about 100,000 people. you can think of utopia, comment boldly on the stupidity of democracy and how communism are aristrocracy are more democratic than democracy.. life was too easy for them)
some 'invisible hand' always keeps the market in correct shape!!??
the fact is they neglect all things human. first thing is that not all humans are rational. and with such simplified models, you can not justify the results. you have to account a majority of it to this invisible (collective human) hand!!



 

Date:	2004-08-20 10:21
Subject:	Will Durants story of Philosophy
Security:	Public
Mood:	excited

One of the most engaging books I have ever read.  I hate to compare it with the pulp fiction I have read, but I remember myself glued to this book as I did with Jugari Cross and Godfather. (If you are wondering what Jugari Cross is, its a Kannada novel..  a great one at that)

I am afraid that this book is going to take most of my 'working time'

Current plan for reading:
Story of Philosophy, Will Durant
A History of economic thought, Charles Staley
Mahadarshana, Devudu
Hindudharmasaara, Lakshmipuram Srinivasaachaarya

Date:	2004-08-16 14:49
Subject:	Shekar's views on Independence... I almost agree with everything here
Security:	Public
Mood:	depressed

Jai Hind,
(Hey..this is mail about Independence day..let me show some patriotism..once may be twice a year),

We had a pretty good Independence day function here in Manhattan, KS. The chief guest, highly respectable and established professor in his field, correctly reminded everybody about the reason for celebrating Independence day. He also talked about a small list of achievements we, as Indians, should be proud of and equally small list of things we, as Indians, should be ashamed of.

While mentioning the reason for celebration, he said, "the most beautiful word in English dictionary, 'freedom', became meaningful for us, Indians, on this day".

He also said that we are the largest democracy in the world, whose Prime Minister and President both are from minorities. Both are well qualified people to do their jobs since both have got PhDs in their fields.

He mentioned that China has almost as stronger economy as US and if they can do it, we can do it.

Last thing he mentioned, which got the most claps was 'Indians are the happiest people on earth'.

I was thinking simultaneously.....
[I am sure almost everybody thinks of these things...being a pretentiously-aware and diversely-thoughtful well-educated middle class guy, I also thought like everybody else] .

We got our independence...did we get freedom? For us, does freedom mean freedom
- to break traffic rules whenever we can..
- to accept/give bribe without even bothering our conscience..
- to exploit the exploitable  (read whatever you want, poor/unemployed middle class/me/you..)
- to call names to the politicians and every other public figure..
- to switch opinions/blames/responsiblites once 'our' party is in/out of power..
?
Are we really free in our minds or now we have an unknown ruler..not one country but a whole another culture..culture of politicians/culture of criminals/culture of west/ culture of money.

So we have a President and PM from minorities..elected democratically (??????) !!! Need I say more?...and Yes, the largest democracy...largest in size..largest in size of uneducated and uninformed voters...largest in size of can-be-bought voters..largest in size of independent-but-not-free voters...largest in.....................

I was talking with my Chinese officemates, they said you better not protest against the govt. in China (we were talking about the Asian Games held in Beijing which adversely affected the local economy but gave political boost for China on world forum), you could be shot on the spot; no questions asked. But then he goes on to explain how one cannot reach great heights without expense of something. How it does NOT make sense to let everybody have all the freedom...and how it is waste to feed who are not worth any sensible service to the community. He said, to build a stronger economy as well as stronger military status, to become a formidable power in world politics, it( freedom(life as well) of some) is a very small cost to pay.

Can we do 'anything' if China can? (I can't help adding one word here..Olympics)

Happiness...Indians are the most happy people on earth!!!..why? Is it the best country to live in? (Whatever your answer is; it doesn't really matter..Are they really happy?..might be a better question to discuss as well..).
I think the so called "happiness" of Indian people come from their ability to be ignorant.
To be able to ignore
the rapes/murders/crimes we read in papers daily,
the contradiction of lifestyles seen in every other four-road in cities
the corruption we live in our daily lives,
the hatred towards communities/castes (beautifully it exists in both directions) etc.

How can a human being ignore these things so easily?..may be a gift to us, Indians, from our all-forgiving and all-accepting culture..our great philosophical leaders like Buddha, Gandhi...who taught us to be happy in whatever we have...be satisfied..do not ask for more!
Yes! We follow them; don't we? We do not ask for a clean governance, we do not ask
for any explanations, we do not ask for disciplined daily life...
we are so great...we do not even ask about any of these things from ourselves!
We are the happiest people on earth, we Indians !!!

Date:	2004-08-10 08:16
Subject:	Dependency
Security:	Public
Mood:	cynical

One thing we notice about indian graduate students (pigs: poor indian graduate students in general)  in kansas state university (any us university in general) is the way indians always stick together.

Live together, eat together, read/copy together...

Things I hate in these apartments:
1. the desi apartments stink from a mile of masala food. I would not mind of a single smell coming out of a house, but the entire building stinks because all the apartments are cooking different smelly food and they all mix up and an obnoxious odor prevails throughout the building.. YUCK!!!
2. The owners of these complexes know that new indian students ARE going to take these apartments no matter how messed up the apartments are. I have seen apartments with walls cracked, restrooms dirty and taps clogged but unrepaired for years. Same broken furniture being used for decades...nearly fatal and unsafe for human living!!
3. too many people live in too little space. indian hostels are way better. small apartments housing too many people, there is no privacy... there is nothing called peace.. people just keep coming to your house and taking whatever they find in your refrigerator.. any book they can find and any cd they get their fingers on...
4. truly our mentality sucks..

within all this, love blooms. the same old story.. next door girl smiles at your silly comment. you act more silly. she laughs.. others that are not interested are thinking 'what a jackass!!' and eventually your 'blade' reaches epic proportions. walking together all over the campus, eating together at every restaurant in town and talking over the cell as if you are going to get separated the next moment... cooking together at the guy's place (they wont allow the jackass in the girls apartment!)

what a life!!!

Thus spoke the president of ISA.

Anyway, I have discovered that leadership is something so personal that we often tend to forget so. If you are a leader of a team, you have your intentions, the teams intentions. Everytime you make a decision as the leader of the team, if the teams goals are unmatched with yours, how do you feel?
lets say you want to bring new enthusiasm, a sense of pride and patriotism to your fellow teammates. You want to screen a sensible patriotic movie. but the team's goal at that point is different. the team's goal is to increase the audience. so you have to put what the audience want. and what do they want? a movie just for enjoying one of those feelings that you hate. a feeling that you do not want the community to feel.. a movie that stands against all you want the community to stand for. you give up your personal goal to allow the team to enjoy to get their co-operation in harder times ... what kind of a loss was it? it is a personal loss to the so called leader... at any point in the decision making process, its you against the world, your ideals and what people want..as you go on making compromises, you turn into a follower of the group.. this fact consumes and clouds my decision making process. i deliberately want to differ and defend my opinion just to prove that i am not a follower.

this vicious cycle comes to an end when i agree that there is nothing called a team. there is only good and bad and both are in me. whether it feels good or not, i have to go for what is inherently good. what comes with a honest and benovalent motive... and at that point you do not see groups of people to talk about your decision. the decision is already made and it is correct!!!!

Enlightenment at the heat treatment workshop
I had the privelage of presenting my software at the mini heat treatment worskhop at KSU today.
I am amazed by the amount of discussion people have on any subject in this country. Be it a usefull thing as heat treatment or be it a derogatory discussion on president bush's credentials.

Anyway, I was told that my talk went on well.. eventhough I forgot how to express my thoughts in english and basically did some 'noun slaying'

Ex: " The rate of absoroption of heat of steel is so high during this period that it shuts off the increase in ambient temperature by overcoming its absorption rate making steel hotter than ambient air in the process saving energy and giving it later to ambient air when energy supplied reduces in quantity making a false belief that the initial gust of large quantity of energy is used to raise the temperature of ambient air...."

when all I wanted to tell was, 'during the initial stages of heat treatment, steel gets heated up faster than ambient air. Hence, raise of temperature in ambient air is not proportionate to the amount of energy supplied. when the amount of energy supplied is reduced, the steel which is already overheated gives out heat to maintain ambient air's temperature"

I struggle to put my thoughts into words in real time. this either makes my talk too dramatic or makes an impression that i am deliberately making it undecipherable. I myself would not understand some things i say... i just put some relevant keywords and hope the listener gets what i have in my mind.

the reason i can think off is probably paying too much attention to the presentation and too less for the talk itself.

I met Dr. Mike Olexa who has done some amazing things in his life. I met Mr Ken Sheppard who loves working so much that even after retiring, he has no plans to slowdown. I am sure Dr. Subi will be mad if he does not find some thing to work on when he retires. His vision and hardwork is matched by a very few. I think I shall be happy with myself if I can achieve even 10% of success these people have had in their careers.

Date:	2004-07-26 20:10
Subject:	phew...
Security:	Public
Mood:	cheerful

after a delayed start, my debugging battle started. apparently, my organization was working correctly. the problem was with boundary limits.
ok.. atleast debugged this. now i can concentrate on real issues. thanks to the debugger in eclipse i rarely use 'system.out.println' these days.

Date:	2004-07-26 15:07
Subject:	Terribly confused
Security:	Public
Mood:	lethargic

I am getting really confused with my simulator now.. its simply gone out of my hands. hope everything is working the way i am assuming them to work

Date:	2004-07-26 13:04
Subject:	New blog account
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

Decided to change my blogs to live journal for a change...
i have posted some old blogs too.
i think this provides more 'personal touch' to blogging.. it has all those good features (semagic for example) that make blogging easy and fun!
my previous blog site: http://shamkashyap.blogspot.com

Cricket

cricket is such a messed up game . it creates monsters out of people. people turn into sick, sadistic, hypochritical egoistic ,,... maniacs that i have decided that i shall never play this game again.

why do humans turn to a point where all their previous hatred comes out in a way so embarassing and humiliating not only to themeselves but to the whole community?

After all, why do we play any game? for fitness and probably for fun..
but i guess there is no such thing as fun.. unless it comes at the cost of others.

this is not childishness. this is the portrayal of the innate sickness in our minds.

no wonder the british invented it.. being the masters of 'divide and rule'

cricket is also one of among the other big problems of our nation,

if one game can create such a rift between people (let alone religion/caste) aren't we crazy to still play this devillish game?

but on a deeper analysis, i guess the problem has got nothing to do with cricket. it all ends up in the player's ego, his thirst for acceptance, praise and recognition. people stoop to such low levels..
makes me sick.

let us say the world is a simulator.

world has a. man (really intelligent social animal)
b. animals (not so intelligent)
c. inanimate objects
now, based on what man percieves, he reacts.

now, is there a role called GOD? if so, what role does he play?

1.One assumption is that, God watches each and every action of a,b,c and accordingly moves the pawns in the world and gives the corresponding perceptions to a,b,c depending on the physical capabilities (sight, hearing, smell etc etc) of these objects.
2. Whether god modifies these physical abilities or not can never be known by a,b,c because the possible origin of these changes may be god/the world or one or more a,b,c itself. they only get to see the results.
3. a and b can never know whether what they perceive is right or wrong without an intelligent thing called mind. mind learns from experience and has a BIAS towards a random feeling (one might be biased towards what is termed good or bad)
4. since the mind is based on experience (which is incomplete) and is biased, it will never trully learn how things work. even if it learns everything accurately, it will never know that it has learnt everything.
5. hence, it does not matter who changes the world.
6. for a human being, its god.
7. at this point, dvaita philosophy stops. "i can not comprehend what you are. i give up. please protect me..."
8. Advaita being more egoistic, proceeds to say, if the world has to operate correctly, then, there is a hierarchy in information retrieval. god (according to the above definition) can not supersede the universe. god has to be within the universe, but under who there lay a,b,c. this is true because, god has to see what the world is and then change it according to the rules he has formed for himself for which he has to have a perception. hence there is something above him that created both him and the rest of the world. this way, there is a never ending hierarchy which we(or god) can not comprehend.
9. hence, for the intelligent mind, everything is god. its not a part of god, it IS god. the universe is not made up of lots of gods. it is made up of one god which is you which is me.. which is god (according to this definition) which is universe.
10. this helps abstraction because now, you can say, this part of god, i understand. i.e. this part of me i understand. its like god saying i understand this part of me.. but not the rest.. hence, when my mind learns, god learns. god then says, i know this PLUS what i learnt now... and i dont know the rest... and hence learning proceeds.
11. i guess this process of learning is evolution. what god is learning is GOD.

hence the saying
ahum brahmasmi (in a computational view point ;-) )

posted by Sham at 2:38 AM
2 Comments:

Swapna Bolleboina said...

    Hi,
    I really like the way you tried to put in the existence of God and then again driving your point that God is nothing but our superior thinking and is almost inseparable from nature and the creatures in it.
    But well, there are at times you realise that hings are beyond your control.We as humans have gone tot he extent of improving the lifespan and even cloning but there is some super natural power which comes into existnece when the conditions are hopeless. We call it a "miracle" in our mortal language. So there should eb someone who is superior to us.
    Well, it's good think of ourselves as part of the creator or God but it is alwasy good to know that we are answerable to some superior power. Thsi makes us more alert and tries to guard our actions. Or else humans can go to any extent o please themselves or even destroy or transform the whole universe.
    10:50 AM
Sham said...

    yes, i agree. my philosophical knowledge is limited hence i think that if we feel 'god is superior and i am nothing in front of him' it makes most things practical to achieve. this is i guess a strong arguement from 'daasa shaahithya'. they say who has the brains to think aham sathyam jagtha mithya.. rather who has the guts to say I am god..
    dvaiatha keeps things simple, easy to understand and thats why its argued that it is an easier way of reaching god. but when things get complex, its ok to leave some questions unanswered, its ok to be contradictory...
    But in the end its all on personal perspective.. how we want to view things, how we want to take things unknown, un-understandable etc

    "Thsi makes us more alert and tries to guard our actions. Or else humans can go to any extent o please themselves or even destroy or transform the whole universe."
    -- yes this is a true concern. i guess thats why even with all philosophical arguements and debates, the common man is happy when he has a guideline to follow. it provides him a sense of security; to ask for justice against things that do not follow the guideline.
    2:34 PM

Post a Comme

is being extremely abstract/ introspective all the time / too harsh on thy self a symptom of lazyness.. symptom of arrogant pride or just being amazingly senstive and intelligent?

posted by Sham at 2:35 AM
2 Comments:

Swapna Bolleboina said...

    No not at all. Being introspective is good, in fact very good but sometimes it really dictates your every move.Especailly if you try to evaluate yourself on every minute thing you do. It need not necessarily be associated with intelligence but can be associated with being sensitive. Or maybe having a different taste or an in-depth interest in certain direction.

    Absrtact thinking is boring to others but very stimulating, pleasing, relaxing and entertaining to oneself. So if one is bothered about influencing someone or conveying their thoughts then it might not work, unless the other person too thinks at the same level, but it is good for oneself to progress into a higher level.
    11:03 AM
Sham said...

    - quote "Absrtact thinking is boring to others but very stimulating, pleasing, relaxing and entertaining to oneself"

    it feels good. thats definitely true..
    but its also true that if we spend so much time on some feelings, intellectual pursuits not normally found in others, we would surely miss or neglect things which are considered necessary for being normal.

    this would create a comparison within the self about how i fit in in this society. if i was mature enough to know that there is nothing wrong with it, its all fine. but there are times when not fitting this society creates a lot of confusion/depression about one's own state of mind. (but getting positive strokes from like minded individuals really helps to overcome this)
    2:43 PM

Religious conversions and Discrimination among hindus

Religion, ego, hatred, jealousy... somehow it all seems interconnected.

conversions are an evil on the society. i agree.
but we have a worse evil looming among lower caste hindus - the caste system.

My opinion is, as long as we do not discriminate among castes, we should not blabber against conversions. agreed its bad. what about ourselves?

posted by Sham at 11:46 AM
1 Comments:

Swapna Bolleboina said...

    Yes, I agree with you completely. It seems theopinions and the bias is passed on through generations and generations. And the humiliating thing is that Indians or rather "Hindus" are recognized worldwide as people who practice caste system similar to racial discrimination.
    In fact I was shocked to know that in the schools of the United states the children are taught about the caste system in India. Moreover more number of people across the world know about caste system than about the various inventions and the great contributions of ancient Indians towards the development of mankind.
    So the west always makes it a point to paint a sordid picture fo the east and we still adhere to our old notions.
    11:30 AM