dna's corner

My ramblings. My thoughts. Your feedback. Your thoughts. Simple.

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Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Out here to make a living, live a life and leave a mark.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Hotel Rwanda

It will have the same effect on you as an earth quake would have on a building. Atleast it had on me. I was shaken. Not that what was shown in the movie was news to me. Yet each time I see or read about it, I am shaken. It has shaken quite a few people too.

But like the buildings in the western world designed to withstand shockers, I continue to wosh, think about it a bit, may be discuss it with few others who would also feel similarly and then go back tomorrow to work.

Yet may be, one day, hopefully, the shockers will stop. Or say this is it and do something concrete.

I am shamelessly copying a view on the movie from IMDB and leave the rest to you.
Review from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395169/
by Maggie


"I have no doubt that this is the only movie for the past year that can get me totally, if not 101%, emotionally involved. For other movies, I might be interacting with the story a lot , say associating my personal experiences with the characters, making judgment on them, criticizing the development of the story, ways of expression, the cinematography, acting, etc. BUT, Hotel Rwanda simply took me over as I was watching it. My emotion was going along with Paul ( Don Cheadle) all the time. The director did a great great job in capturing the feelings of people facing uncertainty, horror, ridicules, anger, death, waning faith... Family, life and dignity/integrity become the largest things in the situation. What's more is that it squarely shows the realist thinking in international politics.It honestly shows the weakness or helplessness of the UN and the non-governmental organizations. It truthfully tells how indifferent most of the international community (or individuals, which may or may not include you and me) are towards the deprivation of social justice taking place in other parts of the world. It makes you question to what extent that it is true to say what we see ( the sufferings in the world) is what we tolerate. It shows you how monstrous human being can be. It scares you how sanity would fail. At the same time, the uglier the people become, the more beautiful you find those who have managed to keep brave and maintain humanity. The movie fully succeeds in showing me the spirit, faith, and compassion that the world is dreaming for."

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Information diet

One of those days when I felt I was taking in too much and not giving enough. My head seemed to be chocking with tons of information. It was like eating junk all through the day. With a zillion websites pouring in news from ridiculous to real healthy food for thought, and a zillion blogs talking about everything under the sun, I was feeling kind of pressurized to write something just so that I would feel better. But thats the irony. Now I am only adding to the already overflowing information channel.

"We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge" - Rutherford D. Roger

How aptly said. We browse through so many new sites. We have more information than ever before. But are we more knowledgeable? Are we more en lightened about our surroundings? To me, the converse is what is happening. With some much information, we hardly have any time to think and reflect on what we learn. There is no time to ask the important whys and hows. Its like reading a novel a day. Do we measure how well read we are by the number of novels we have read or by the
amount of time we spent analyzing and understanding, reading the lines multiple times and seeing whats in between the lines? Are we trying to read because we want to know or because we want to know more than the other person?

On a related note, I hate to watch television. It takes control over the pace at which information is sent to you. Its like watching a F1 race. Images fleet before your eyes. You dont get a chance to pause that, think and then proceed. You wink, you miss it. But in reality, we wont miss anything. Because it hardly gives you any room for interpretation. It does not allow for any feed back. We can both read the same set of words and infer differently. But we typically see the same - as shown on tv. And thats like mass fast food feeding the people with unnecessary information.
That reminds me of the news program I saw on a hindi channel at my neighbours place - it interviewed a bunch of girls who managed to get photographed with Rahul Gandhi - and how now their dream has been fulfilled. News item of terrific importance that can alter the course of world politics.

Looks like news (???) sources are only going to increase. So the onus is on people to restrict the intake. May be we will soon have people being informationally obese and then going on a low-information diet?

Patient: How much ever I try, I am not able to resist going to news.google.com once every 15 minutes and spending atleast 30 min :(.
Doctor: I have the perfect solution for you. The AtKiths Low Carb diet. I have a new browser that will automatically redirect you to my site
NoNewsIsGoodNewsBlashBlahBlah.com if you spend more than 5 minutes at any news site.


:). Anythings possible. :)