escape velocity

Indian weddings conjure a colourful pomp in the minds of many whites. Well, if we can isolate these as North Indian weddings, even folks from the South are amused by their buddies from the North (who can be obnoxious show-offs). And, when we pay attention to the attention that our weddings get, we play along. “welcome to the great Indian wedding carnival”, “our idiosyncrasies outdistance even plate-breaking Greek customs (which I still think are a cool way of…letting go)”, “come see a dozen malnourished musicians wearing extra-large red costumes and lead grooms mounted on old white horses to their wedding venues” ….well, there’s more. But amidst all this chaos, there still is sanity and order. Bundle together a thousand Indian wedding guests in a venue, and amidst all the power-play, you will see harmony . Now, this is ‘amazing’ not ‘amusing’ about Indian weddings. What are amusing to me are infact white weddings in the West. They hardly have any guests in comparison, and when it comes to organising a dinner for say 40 people, they have hundreds of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and ‘thens’ in their guest list that they need technological solutions to optimise their intelligent efforts. Check out ‘Perfect Table Plan’ at (http://www.perfecttableplan.com) to see what I mean (whites will find this normal, but my kind might find ‘this’ amusing from where we stand). So what does this software do!? It uses genetic algorithms help arrange people to sit together in an event like a wedding. You see, white people (I am talking to my folk) tend to plan their events (like a wedding) in weird ways, where guests who dine are seated in a specific arrangement, and this whole excercise has to accomodate people who want to sit together, or people who do not want to sit together, or even people who have a dozen people to be arranged to be with each other, and so on. This makes me wonder, do countries like India really need software to help make their lives better? Maybe our lives are much simpler and smarter that we don’t need many complicated solutions to problems that aren’t existing in our part of the world.

It’s funny how Europeans and Americans (whites) make a fuss about the holocaust with a nice moral platitude on one hand and don’t seem to mind importing cheap toys and electronics to clothes and machines made in a country who’s democidal regime has been responsible for over 75 million deaths in the last 50 odd years. This is almost four times the number of people who perished in Germany during the world wars.

And then, there is the lip service ‘Oh Google, ah Google, Google the devil, Google the schmuck that conformed to Chinese censorship demands et al. No one bothers about all the other American and European companies who lick communist rear-end exhausts to get their foot into the region, and use cheap labour for their personal gain and competitiveness. But, when it was Google’s turn to be yet another greedy American company out there, everyone started yapping about it.

And, now when Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin states that his company “had compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands” and seems to communicate that in a way that seems regretful, papers around the world seem to have found their ‘aha…’ moments!

Google’s made a mistake, they are re-evaluating their decision, or atleast they are saying that they are. On the other hand, there are still the Ciscos and Microsofts and Yahoos still doing business with the Commies. What about them? Are they holier than thou (Google)? Or just plain smarter! Having said so, it would have sounded more sincere if only they(Google) had not time dthis statement alongside news that the Chinese government has decided to ban their global site altogether, and also the whole debate on Net Neutrality in the US.

Meanwhile….

Marketwatch.com’s Frank Barnako states Google guy stumbles in D.C. as if it was something to chuckle about. Wired.com’s headline goes Google Wrestles With Conscience. Monsters and Critics headlines shout Google admits mistake on China`s demands.

Check out the new Google Spreadsheet signup page-. This page gives some good information about the service including a few screenshots.