Patriotism and Treason

Patriotism is not just loving your country, it's thinking twice before you do something, whether what you're about to do is in the best interest of your country. So when an obscure and over the hill media man decides to get his fifteen minutes of fame by baselessly accusing a member of the Sri Lankan Cricket Team of corruption in the middle of the World Cup, it's the exact opposite of patriotism!

If an inquiry, a "wimasuma", can be initiated to reveal this so called journalist's hidden agenda, and the obvious conclusion is reached, I wonder whether he can be charged with treason? Regardless of whether the Sri Lankan team and the players who have been unjustly accused have the strength of character to carry on playing unaffected, harm has been done, not only to the two players or the team, but to every cricket loving Sri Lankan here and abroad.

Let the punishment fit the crime!

Sri Lanka Awaits You....

I've been getting a bunch of posts on Facebook with clips from this campaign, but there was no way to watch all of it in one place and in sequence. Since it seems to have been created as the travelogue of a fictional visitor that looks like Lindsay Wagner (big fan of '6 Million Dollar Man' and 'Bionic Woman' as a kid) I think it would be cool to watch the whole thing in sequence.

I'll try to keep this page updated with all the clips I come across; please do comment if you come across one that I've missed and I'll add it in the right place.

Self Deception

More than a year back I wrote a post ,more a rant actually, about astrologers and quacks and took a stab at trying to explain their success in this day and age because I really couldn't understand how such a large number continue to thrive and make money here in Sri Lanka. I'm fine with a witch doctor still getting some respect in a tribe that has decided to 'not change with the times' but we have the highest literacy rate in South Asia!

Today I discovered a person actually giving a pretty good explanation for our gullibility on TED; it's apparently built into our wiring!



For everyone who has seen the 'I want to believe' poster on my own wall, I was a huge fan of the x-files and sci-fi and fantasy continue to be the genres that I watch and read almost exclusively, but it stops there!

Academy Reverses Decision - Avatar Awarded Best Picture!

In a bid to salvage what little credibility they can, after monumental past mistakes such as overlooking ground breaking movies like '2001' and 'Bladerunner' and realizing the terrible mistake they made after a night of heavy pre-oscar partying, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revoked their previous decision and awarded the best picture Oscar to 'Avatar' this morning.
- ONN

Video Lectures on Mobile Communication

If you've been developing software all your life, learned about hardware and networking because they were 'related' but thought of mobile technology as 'interesting but irrelevant to my work', you've probably been looking for a way catch up from around the time you realized phones were starting to replace PC's.

I generally go out any buy myself a book when starting to learn anything new, but came across a pretty good series of lectures on YouTube, the first of which I thought I'd post here, for people who prefer to 'wait for the movie'.



Besides the fact that I now have a great way to supplement the book I'm reading, this video makes me happy for a few other reasons as well. First, it's good to see YouTube being used by educators, who probably don't have the funding to set up a program like MIT OnLine, but want to reach out and help people learn anyway. It's also great to see material coming out of the sub-continent, where we have problems and advantages unique to our environment when adopting any technology, that would be addressed in a curriculum originating here. Finally, based on the number of views, I'd say forty five thousand more people now know something more about wireless communication, thanks to Dr. Bose!

Accessing the channel directly will save you time looking for the parts of the series:
Electronics - Wireless Communication

Rocking in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has always had a fairly vibrant local music industry, with each generation producing it's own 'revolutionary' musician, setting a trend and taking the industry forward. I'm referring to people like Clarence Wijewardena who brought the electric guitar and pop music into Sri Lanka and B&S who made Sri Lankan rap and hip-hop mainstream here.

Unfortunately I'm not aware of any local bands that made a serious attempt to take rock music to where pop and rap/hip hop are in Sri Lanka; something I've been waiting for because I honestly prefer rock and would like to hear it playing on radios other than my own. We've actually got a large number of great rock bands here, but the problem I think is that none of them actually did what was necessary to go mainstream; sing in a local language. There are thousands of English rock songs a Sri Lankan can listen to, sung by musicians hailing from Canada to Australia, so one more won't make a difference, regardless of the fact that it it's sung by a Sri Lankan. What made the difference with the trend setters was that they gave the people a new style of music in our language!

Nemesis, a local band I've been a fan of for quite some time are taking shot at this. They've taken the effort to put together a great song, accompanied by a video that does justice to the music. All I have right now is the trailer, but going by that, I think these guys have the best chance of taking rock mainstream here yet! Don't just take my word for it though, watch and decide.

Avatar - Worth Every Cent!

It was definitely worth the eight hundred odd Rupees I spent on four tickets and I was obviously not the only one who thought that way, because at the end of the movie there was a very spontaneous and very loud round of applause! If you're wondering whether clapping at the end of a movie is a Sri Lankan tradition, it's not; I've been watching movies for close to thirty years now, and this is the first time it's happened. Of course people applaud a good performance at a live event like a cricket match or a stage play, when the performers are actually able to hear the appreciation of the audience for a job well done, but I think this was just a 'thank you' to all the people who made it possible for us to spend almost three hours on Pandora, and the fact that Mr. Cameron and team couldn't hear us clapping was immaterial.

Will it get a permanent place on my favourite movie list like Contact, Blade Runner, The Matrix and 2001? I'm not sure; guess I'll wait a few years and see. The idea of Eywa was pretty cool, like the sentient ocean of Solyaris or Foundation's Gaia but with some actual pointers on how it could conceivably occur somewhere. The Na'vi will also keep me questioning what environmental factors could have influenced a few of our ancestors on earth to make us like them instead. I think it's mostly the questions a book or a movie ask that keep me going back to it, but in this case it could just be to relive the audio-visual experience!

A the start of the movie I told Sharm that I still remember how it felt to see the Brachiosaurus stand up on it's hind legs to pick a few leaves off a tree right at the start of Jurassic Park (incidentally at the same theater, just 16 years ago) and was hoping this would be just as good. In Avatar there were so many moments like that, I have to say it's without a doubt the most amazing movie I have ever seen!