Father McKenzie, Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear, No one comes near, Look at him working.. Music fans will recognize these lyrics from the threnody “Eleanor Rigby”, one of The Beatles’ most haunting tunes. An oblique elegy to the mysterious namesake, the song is a poignant paean to loneliness, anonymity…
Category: A2Z
Y for Yocto
Nope, no click-bait here: Yocto is very much a real word with a real meaning. So if you read no further, at least you can walk away better armed and prepared to score handsomely in your next Scrabble game when that relatively rare, coveted Y-tile (4 points!) lands on your letter rack. But if you’re…
X=X+1 The Master Algorithm of Procrastination, and Hope!
Artificial Intelligence seems to be taking over the world. From #FakeNews to Machine Learning, it seems like the day is nigh when algorithms and robots will do most of the thinking and working for us, leaving us to do…exactly what ? X=X+1 is a very simple yet powerful logic construct in the field of computer…
W for Write Me a Letter
In some ways I can relate to those born almost a hundred years ago. That generation found themselves traveling by horse-and-buggy (or bullock/camel cart, depending on the continent!), watched in amazement as the automobile , and then the airplane were invented – and finally as both went mainstream. Even better, most of them experienced the…
V for Venice
The winged lion in golden yellow at the center of the red flag is resting its paw on an open book. Pax tibi Marce evangelista meus – Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist – says the inscription on the book. St. Mark is everywhere in Venice, including on the Consiglio di San Marco, the flag…
T for Tomorrow
Tomorrow, she will talk to him and explain that it was all a big misunderstanding. Right now, she was too exhausted to think any more, simply tired and ready to go to sleep. It was a mistake anyway to try and pack in a meeting with him at the end of such a long day…
S for Sometimes
Over time we get conditioned to ignore the banalities of daily life; and sometimes we look for a deeper meaning behind the picayune. Someone cuts us off in traffic, and we feel that they are out to “get us”. Someone doesn’t return our call or email and we are convinced they are snubbing us. Heck,…
R for Random : Life ?
Flying, in a sense, is the ultimate freedom. Sitting in an airplane seat and looking out of the window, soaring above imposing mountains, vast plains and toy-sized buildings, gliding among and over clouds, all elicit a measure of liberty that very few experiences can parallel. To defy powerful natural forces of wind and gravity and…
Q for Quidnunc
Ok, so if you actually know who can be called a quidnunc, chances are you are either a bona fide logophile, or you have seen the eminently forgettable movie “Love Happens’ which despite starring Jennifer Aniston and having words like “quidnunc” and “poppysmic” liberally sprinkled in, sadly failed to impress logophiles… or anistonophiles (yep, just…
P for Please, Mr. Postman
The Postman Always Rings Twice. Even on Saturdays ! Or so feels the United States Congress, which today thwarted the beleaguered United States Postal Service’s self preservatory proposal to stop delivering mail on Saturdays in an attempt to stay financially solvent. While the political palaver is likely to continue for months before any resolution is reached…
O for Ozymandias
“I met a traveler from an antique land”, so begins the sonnet by P.B. Shelley penned almost two hundred years ago. In a few short lines that follow, “Oyzmandias” brutally underscores the inevitable decline of great kings and the powerful empires they build and the inconsequentiality of things in the “long term”. In travels across…
N for Numbers
It all begins the day we’re born. Our life is ruled by numbers. Various permutations of random juxtaposed digits, that shadow, trail and chase us every day of our life. Your birthday: a series of numbers. The time you were born, and how much you weighed as a newborn – more numbers. And it doesn’t…
M for Money for Nothing
How much land does a man need, anyway ? Whether you feel that Tolstoy’s famous short story was a cautionary tale against the evils of capitalism or simply a thinly veiled paean to the socialist way of thinking (though sometimes a good story could be, you know, just a good story !) the obvious moral…
L for Love, not Like
Thanks Facebook, for bastardizing a fairly picayune but ever-handy word that formed the staple of quotidian vernacular and a handy favorite among commonly used words in my (and I suspect, your) vocabulary for years. “Like”, I used to like you but now I’m not so sure.I still can’t help but fall back on you, in…
K for Kodachrome®
Think of a company that invents a sizzling new technology that fundamentally changes the way people view information from far-flung places and then figures out a way to translate this technology into tools that put something once-esoteric into the hands of the masses. Now imagine that the founder of this company is a dropout from school…
J for Joe DiMaggio (where have you gone, anyway !)
A nation does, indeed, turn its lonely eyes to you. Well, Joltin’ Joe has long left us and gone, but our eyes still turn. Somewhere. Anywhere. But away from the caustic, vituperative drivel that passes off as dialogue and discourse in this election year. If you have turned on the TV or listened to any…
I for iThink
While iThink may sound like a nifty innovation coming out of the famed, recently bereaved, Cupertino company, it isn’t. However I cannot deny that events in the recent days have caused the thinking man to don the thinking cap again, perhaps on matters more somber than picayune. iThink about how life is temperate and tempestuous,…
H for Happiness
I hope you did not come here looking for the perfect recipe for happiness. Really, if it was so easy-if happiness could say be bottled up as an elixir- there would be lots of bottlers hawking the magic potion. And if happiness could be boxed up in a neat little package, numerous companies would be…
G for Grass is Greener…On the Other Side?
It is not just a cliché, is it ? The grass apparently indeed appears greener on the other side. I know of single people who wish they were married, and married people who wistfully remember their bachelor days. You know busy executives with lots of money but no time who are looking for ways to…
F for First Things First
The allure of being #1 is undeniable. After all, it’s the winner that stands highest on the podium, takes the largest trophy, makes the most money and has the fawning attention of the fans and media ever eager to watch and report on every move a winner makes. But what does it take to be…
E for Everyday Matters
Is life worth living ? It depends upon the liver. This William James quote was one of the earliest examples of puns that I learnt in Grammar class. (I said earliest, not classiest). The liver, the person living the life, as opposed to the organ in the human body responsible for protein synthesis and detoxification,…
D for Doggie Tales
I have never owned a pet. Not even an imaginary one, though in my younger days I admit I thoroughly enjoyed the exploits of Tintin’s fearless partner Snowy, or admired the fiercely protective demeanor of Buster in End Blyton’s Five Find Outers series. Over the last few months however, I have had the pleasure of…
C for Clarity
MAD magazine may not be an obvious place to seek philosophical inspiration, but Alfred E. Neuman ( better known for “What me, worry?”) once had an astute observation in print that caught my eye. He declared that: “Most people don’t know what they want, but are they pretty sure they don’t have it.” Admit it…
B for Best
Come to think of it: we are quite picky in that we generally always want “the best”. We want to live in the best neighborhoods, wear the best clothes, drive the best vehicles our money can buy, eat at the best places, watch the best movies, and so on. I mean, really, how many times…
From Aeaea to Zyzzyva
The dictionary. The encyclopedia. Mystery books by Sue Grafton. What do they all have in common ? Something quite basic, some would say even boring: they are all organized alphabetically. Sounds like a technique as good as any I suppose: not much thinking involved, and a fairly universal, common, neutral way to sort through a…
the thinking man 