Tipping my hat to David Caruso

(Joke was mine. Just thought of doing it with the Caruso Meme. Sorry)

An Idea of India

What is the meaning of India? What is the meaning of patriotism? We are taught in school to love our country, to be patriotic. That 'spirit' is instilled in all of us from a very young age. I don't recall a single person telling me what constitutes 'loving your country'. There are many viewpoints that I've come across, including,
-> Protecting the heritage and culture of the country is love for the country
-> Protecting the spread of foreign influences is love for the country
-> Shooting down (figuratively) people who criticise India is love for the country
-> Preserving local languages is love for the country
.
.
.

You get the drift. The problem is, I can't seem to agree with any of this. I don't really care for India's culture and heritage. I don't care so much for languages. I do argue with people who unnecessarily criticise the country, but I agree that this country is deeply flawed. I'm all for the spread of foreign influences. Do I hate India? I don't think so. I just can't figure out what it is about India that I love. There is so much cynicism everywhere. So much 'chalta hai'. So much 'it's somebody else's problem'. What do I love? I don't really know. I do know that it is a hopeless, unyielding love. But why?

I have no answers. Until I do, maybe I'll look at the lakhs of people who died for the idea of India. I don't know what their ideas were. But whatever they were, they were worth dying for. While I look for my own idea, maybe I'll manage with the fact there were once ideas worth dying for.

Messenger of the Gods

I have seen Mercury, the messenger of the gods. (The faint dot forming a right angle with the two bright ones (which are Jupiter and Venus))

Click on photo to see the three planets together.

I has another fractal!

A Barnsley fern, this time. It's not very obvious because of the complexity of the pattern, but it is indeed a fractal. You can just about begin to make out the self similarity in each of the fronds. Click on the image for a better view of the fractal nature of the fern.



That's a natural looking leaf. Generated through maths. How cool is that?

My first Fractal!

A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away), I wrote about fractals and chaos theory on my blog. That was here.

Years on, I finally learnt how to make a fractal myself. And here it is, my first fractal. It is what they call a Sierpinski Triangle.

*The author is now playing 'I'm so glad' by Cream in his head*

Quiztronomy is back!

Red? Yellow?

This is going to be a pretty small post - just a musing. Been working with photoshop a lot lately, and I've noticed something. The range of colours that lie between purples and cyans is defined as blue. The range of colours that lie between yellow and cyans are defined as green. Both of these ranges are fairly large. However, when it comes to Red, the range is very small. A little one way and you get pinks. A little the other way, and you get oranges. Same with Yellow - a very small range of colours is yellow. I'm talking only about these four colours because RBY are the three primary colours, and RGB is a popular method of colour representation.

Any ideas?