Chakras and Enemies of reasons

Posted on November 16, 2010July 19, 2020 by bach

I was watching “Enemies of Reason” of Richard Dawkins yesterday, again. In the second part he explores the possibility of Chakra’s being logical. He doesn’t, that’s why he calls them enemies of reason. His point is, If there is any logic in it, why don’t any of these chakra experts prove it to scientific community and get a Nobel Prize as bonus? For some reason they want to keep it as pseudo science and keep publishing books for those who don’t ask!

I recall we showcased chakras in opening ceremony of commonwealth games 2010 Delhi. A yogic structure rises from underground and his chakras get enlightened. Now, I feel they shouldn’t have done this; Chakra is not one of the things we should be showcasing, just like Chinese do not highlight their heritage medicine made by “tiger bone”.

An image form Commonwealth games 2010 Delhi

electricchakras

image via lifeinabedandbreakfast

..even in his dreams!

Posted on September 16, 2010 by bach

I recall this from high-school days. This was written a couple of millennium ago, obviously they had too many fearless lions roaming around. So, every poet dreamt of being and living like a lion. Who knew they will(going to) become extinct so soon, to make this irrelevant.

एकोहमसहायोहं क्रुषोहमपरिच्छदः
स्वप्नेप्येवम्विदाचिन्ता म्रुगेन्द्रस्य नजायते

I don’t know author, no internet presence for this bit (that’s the reason this post).

Non dEvanAgari attempt :

ekOhamasahAyOhaM kruShOhamaparichChadaH
svapnEpyevamvidAchintA mrugendrasya najaayate

Sanskrit Poets somehow like to compress whole sentences in single words, just because the can :-). If you want me to break it down a little:

Ekah(alone) aham(I am) asahAyah(helpless) aham(I am) krushaH(weak) aham(I am) aparichChadah(orphan)

svapne(dreams) api(also) evam(such) vida(kind) chinta(worry) mruga(animal) indrasya(king’s) na(no) jayate(occur).

Phew, that pain!

To summarise what did we learn ?

A Lion never ever thinks that he is alone, helpless, weak and group less – even in his dreams, even if he is (all those)!!

Good for him .. eh ?

I was a part of Wikipedia logo fix!

Posted on June 28, 2010June 28, 2010 by bach

Alright, here is the story. Some four years back New York Times wrote about Wikipedia logo, reporting two symbols rendered were not correct. One of them was Japanese and the other was our own Devanagari used by many Indian languages including Sanskrit and Hindi. That was the first time probably someone had a good look at the logo, including me. 🙂

It was right there! The Kannada text “wi” in logo jigsaw was wrong too. Its wasn’t exactly typo error, the vowel addition to consonant base had been slipped in all these three cases to make it meaningless. Right, after blogging this I went for a long hibernation, from internet world, that’s what polar bears do.

Meanwhile, Team Wikipedia took NY Times article very seriously. Of course they did, the question raised was “if Wikipedia cannot get their logo straight, how accurate rest of the information are?”. Team Wikipedia left a comment on my blog asking for more information, which I couldn’t provide on time.

These guys say it is Kannada, and what’s more they say “it does not make [sense] at all”. They gave two suggested replacements; I can’t find the first one (might be U+0C8F, ಏ), the second seems to be U+0CB5 with combining U+0CD6 (I think? The combining character looks more like a U+0CEE in their image, but that doesn’t combine; may be a font thing), which is ವೖ. I have left a note on their page asking for help identifying the character. – the discussion

Finally it was all resolved (I don’t know when) and here you go, the Wikipedia logo with all errors fixed.

Another Typo in Wikipedia’s Logo Fractures the Kannada too

Posted on June 30, 2007June 5, 2010 by bach

I know Devanagari but I never noticed this typo., never until I dug this story. Its a zig saw puzzle , with “wi” written all over its block with different languages Wikipedia supporting in their own script. NYTimes said “this time, however, they are not examples of vandalism at the user-created site but typographical errors in Wikipedia’s own logo.”. They noticed Sanskrit “wi” in Devanagari script. Someone else complained its Japaneses Katakana script is wrong too.

Some Errors Defy Fixes: A Typo in Wikipedia’s Logo Fractures the Sanskrit

The symbolism is not exactly ideal. Those on the lookout for errors at Wikipedia have flagged a few more — this time, however, they are not examples of vandalism at the user-created site but typographical errors in Wikipedia’s own logo.

read more | digg story

Well well well , its Kannada script is wrong too. They have written some similar “wi” symbol (yet strange ) in kannada. In Sanskrit logo symbol reads “rwa” (as in Nirwana ), but in Kannada it does not make sence at all.