Post-modern enlightenment

‘Do you believe in God, and religion, and the afterlife, and things like that?’ someone asked the pretty young girl-about-town.

‘Nah...,’ said she, ‘who believes in all that rubbish in this scientific age?’

‘Well, what do you believe in, then?’

‘Why, lots of things! I believe in Macburgers, and my credit card, and my hair dye, and Britney Spears, and Wal-Mart and Nokia…’

‘And suppose these things fail you sometimes?’

‘Well, there’s always my boyfriend who tells me I’m looking good even on a bad hair day, and daddy’s credit card to fall back on, and Apple to do wonders in the mobile phone industry if Nokia falters! Then there's a new multiplex coming up in the neighbourhood. Who needs more?’

Read this one before?

I was given the following article years ago, but it is, I think, still completely relevant, and some of it is wickedly funny. Some of my readers are sure to have read it already, but I’d like others to laugh over it too. I am sorry that I haven’t been able to trace the author.

IF MICROSOFT MADE CARS

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way
computers have enhanced our lives, read on.

At COMDEX recently, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry
with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with the technology
like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got
1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release
stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be
driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a
new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would
have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut
off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue.
For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre such as a left turn would cause your
car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to
reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable,
five times as fast and twice as easy to drive, but would run on only five
percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be
replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning
light.

7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and
refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned
the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced, car buyers would have to learn how
to drive all over again, because none of the controls would operate in the
same manner as the old car.

10. Oh yeah, and last but not least . . . you'd have to press the "Start"
button to turn the engine off!

Humorists in short supply

It may be I'm getting short-sighted, but I have been having this strong feeling that the world is becoming, despite all its vaunted progress, a 'rum sort of place', as P.G. Wodehouse might have said. I don't expect a Jerome K. Jerome or a Sukumar Ray to be born every other day, but given the fact that so many different kinds of 'talents' are jostling with one another on the world's stage, from fabulous tennis stars to awesome software developers and fund-managers and cocktail-mixers, where are the people who can make us laugh (if you leave out the determinedly pedestrian sort, like Mr. Bean or our home-grown Mir)?

Lovely!

Almost a decade ago a pretty young thing walked into my drawing room for admission to my tuition, and said, 'Good evening, Sir, I'm Lovely'. Feeling mischievous, I replied, 'How nice! and what's your name?' which struck her speechless for a moment (and who knows, she might have been a mite affronted, too). Of late I have been hearing of a 'Lovely University' somewhere up Punjab way, and I am told it is not short of students...

Aesop's raven and 'science' today

There was this editorial in yesterday’s newspaper about how we ought to reflect upon the recent scientific ‘discovery’ that apparently Aesop knew what he was talking about when he wrote, almost 2,500 years ago, the fable about the crow filling a pitcher with pebbles until the water came up to such a level that it could drink.

Whoever wrote that editorial was not only a sensible person with a good sense of humour but also somebody who knew what the state of ‘science’ is these days, and how seriously we ought to take everything that scientific research claims to ‘discover’.

Much of what science is actually re-discovering is what used to be called plain common sense derived from long and well-digested, well-remembered experience – the kind of wisdom that old men and grandmothers used to pass on to their young, before they came to be derided as ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘out of touch’ by people who were sadly deluded by ‘the latest’, which is most definitely not always the best. It would be a nice idea if we could grow less snooty about our ‘knowledge’ and more open to the wisdom of the ages. As I have said in my other blog before, being informed or even being knowledgeable is not the same as being wise, and what this world lacks today, even more than wise men, is respect and attention to wise men. It is not a sign of progress that one needs a PhD today to say things that any granny who had never studied beyond high school knew even three generations ago, nor should a doctor or accountant or lawyer or engineer give himself airs about being wise just because he has mastered some saleable skill or the other (skills which often benefit the man who sells it far more than his customer!). So long as one has not digested and internalized a book like say the Panchatantra, one is at best a fool with a few degrees to his name, and this world is being dragged by the scruff of its neck towards disaster by such learned fools. Those interested may read the scathing remarks made about ‘experts/specialists’ in John le Carre’s The Russia House by a man who was a specialist himself, an atomic scientist: ‘...when this world is destroyed, it will be destroyed by the superior ignorance of its specialists’ is what he said if I remember correctly.