Logic

If you read the first chapter in a book on ‘Introduction to Logic’ or attend the first class in the first year of a logic course, you learn about these notions. Almost one of the first things you learn is this: there is a fundamental asymmetry in the transmission of truth and falsity from premises to conclusions. Truth is transmitted from premises to conclusions but falsity is not; falsity is transmitted from the conclusion to premises but truth is not. (In both cases, we assume that valid rules of logical inferences are used.) That is to say, if your premises are true and you use valid rules of inference, then your conclusion is also true; if your conclusion is false and you use valid rules of inference then at least one of your premises is false. However, the other way does not hold: you could have false premises and yet draw true conclusions. The falsity of your premise does not make your conclusion false or the truth of your conclusion does not make all your premises (or even one of them) true. This is the nature of drawing conclusions in deductive logics. Because this is the first thing you learn in your logic course, I have also formulated in a simple language.

-- S.N. Balagangadhara

Some quotes - Jerome K Jerome

Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it. Also like the measles, we take it only once. One never need be afraid of catching it a second time. The man who has had it can go into the most dangerous places and play the most foolhardy tricks with perfect safety. He can picnic in shady woods, ramble through leafy aisles, and linger on mossy seats to watch the sunset. He fears a quiet country-house no more than he would his own club. He can join a family party to go down the Rhine. He can, to see the last of a friend, venture into the very jaws of the marriage ceremony itself. He can keep his head through the whirl of a ravishing waltz, and rest afterward in a dark conservatory, catching nothing more lasting than a cold. He can brave a moonlight walk adown sweet-scented lanes or a twilight pull among the somber rushes. He can get over a stile without danger, scramble through a tangled hedge without being caught, come down a slippery path without falling. He can look into sunny eyes and not be dazzled. He listens to the siren voices, yet sails on with unveered helm

-- On being in Love, Idle thoughts of an Idle Fellow


We are all inclined to adopt a similar standard of merit in our estimate of other people. A good man is a man who is good to us, and a bad man is a man who doesn’t do what we want him to. The truth is, we each of us have an inborn conviction that the whole world, with everybody and everything in it, was created as a sort of necessary appendage to ourselves. Our fellow men and women were made to admire us and to minister to our various requirements. You and I, dear reader, are each the center of the universe in our respective opinions. You, as I understand it, were brought into being by a considerate Providence in order that you might read and pay me for what I write; while I, in your opinion, am an article sent into the world to write something for you to read. The stars—­as we term the myriad other worlds that are rushing down beside us through the eternal silence—­were put into the heavens to make the sky look interesting for us at night; and the moon with its dark mysteries and ever-hidden face is an arrangement for us to flirt under.

-- On Vanity and Vanities, Idle Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow

We wish to become rich men, not in order to enjoy ease and comfort—­all that any one man can taste of those may be purchased anywhere for 200 pounds per annum—­but that our houses may be bigger and more gaudily furnished than our neighbors’; that our horses and servants may be more numerous; that we may dress our wives and daughters in absurd but expensive clothes; and that we may give costly dinners of which we ourselves individually do not eat a shilling’s worth. And to do this we aid the world’s work with clear and busy brain, spreading commerce among its peoples, carrying civilization to its remotest corners.

--On Vanity and Vanities, Idle Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow


Are we laboring at some Work too vast for us to perceive? Are our passions and desires mere whips and traces by the help of which we are driven? Any theory seems more hopeful than the thought that all our eager, fretful lives are but the turning of a useless prison crank. Looking back the little distance that our dim eyes can penetrate the past, what do we find? Civilizations, built up with infinite care, swept aside and lost. Beliefs for which men lived and died, proved to be mockeries. Greek Art crushed to the dust by Gothic bludgeons. Dreams of fraternity, drowned in blood by a Napoleon. What is left to us, but the hope that the work itself, not the result, is the real monument? Maybe, we are as children, asking, "Of what use are these lessons? What good will they ever be to us?" But there comes a day when the lad understands why he learnt grammar and geography, when even dates have a meaning for him. But this is not until he has left school, and gone out into the wider world. So, perhaps, when we are a little more grown up, we too may begin to understand the reason for our living

-- Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got."

-- Three Men In a Boat

My name...

"What am I after all but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own name? repeating it
over and over;
I stand apart to hear—it never tires me.
To you your name also;
Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in
the sound of your name?"

-- Walt Whitman

Good Will Hunting

"So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you... I don't see an intelligent, confident man... I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you're a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You're an orphan right?"

Kadapa

కడప అంటే దేవుని గడప. వేంకటేశ్వరస్వామి ఉన్న తిరుపతి కి గడప. ఇదీ ఆ జిల్లా పేరు వెనకనున్న కథ. కానీ ఇప్పుడు కడప, కడప కాదట, వైయెస్సార్ జిల్లా అని మంత్రిమండలి ఏకగ్రీవ తీర్మానం చేసిందట.

సరే తిరుపతి, వేంకటేశ్వరుడు అట్లా ఉండనీ. యోగి వేమన, వీరబ్రహ్మం, ఈరో పెద్దయ్య, అన్నమాచార్యులు, అవధూత స్వామి లాంటి వారు నడిచిన నేల. దాని పేరిప్పుడు వైయెస్సార్ జిల్లా అంట!!

Just like the Greeks and Romans, the Indian race is slowly headed towards extinction! These spineless retards and punks deserve no less treatment than complete annihilation!!

"...a race of dotards, you lose your caste if you come out! sitting down with an ever-increasing load of crystallized superstition...and what are you doing now? promenading the sea shores with books in your hands, repeating undigested stray bits of european brainwork, and the whole soul bent upon gettin a thrity rupee clerkship...is there water enough in the sea to drown you, books, gowns, diplomas and all?"

-- Swami Vivekananda

'De mortuis nil nisi bonum'

'De mortuis nil nisi bonum' - so goes an old adage, meaning 'Of the dead, speak no evil'. That is understandable, why would one want to talk ill of the dead? I mean, whats the point?

Death seems to take people by surprise every time it occurs. It is as if such a thing has never happened before, not in human history!! Well, not all the deaths are treated in the same way, though.  Not less than 1.2 million people die every year all over the world due to road accidents and India's contribution to that figure is a chilling  1.14 lakh per annum. This number is higher than the number of people that die in terrorists attacks in any year.  But unlike terrorist attacks, the road accidents are not so glamorous. 'People don't talk about them at parties' - As Jack Nicholson says! Well, why would people talk about such inconsequential topics? Where is the masala, I ask. There is no religion, there is no heroism, no Jihad, no a superior sense of morality. Why would people talk about it?

Media lionizes and glamorizes some deaths. Politicians, movie stars, cricketers, actresses. A mediocre actor suddenly becomes the greatest actor of the century. An anti-national, criminal politician suddenly becomes a hero. Media praises the rich for *being rich*. Glorifies politicians for *doing their duty*, praises an actor for *Acting*. Because thats what media is all about. It is business. They need a purple cow to sell. They want people to talk about their 'products'.

FUCK media!