About some Alien words

I was thinking about some alien words like license, copyright and plagiarism after seeing a post and comments following in this rearset blog that I visit.

Plagiarism in our life probably started in school when we first copied English and math assignment from our best friends. Then we copied our senior’s project work and that was copied by our juniors. I enjoyed Hindi movies that were shamelessly copied from English (including the scripts). I grew up enjoying songs with tunes and lines copied f rom other languages.
We grew up reading pirated novels sold on footpaths. Then came the computer revolution. We joined the revolution with pirated OS in our new computers. Heard unlicensed songs downloaded from internet. We watched movies on pirated dvds/vcds which could be rented from every other shop around. We played pirated computer games.

Probably we cannot stop copying. It is human nature. And this definitely comes as a proof for “Darwin’s theory”. Humans have inherited this ability to copy or I would call it disability to avoid copying from monkeys.

Also note the license info I added on my blog. But of-course on a lighter note, who the heck would care to copy contents from my blog?

Electronic Forgetting

Forgetting things is such an important part of our life. If I was not forgetting things I would still be remembering the scientific names of those rare plants which I mugged up in 12th standard. I would still remember the phone numbers that don’t exist now. I may even remember what I had planned to do this day 4 years back.

Now my memory is extended from the memory I carry inside my head to the electronic memory of my computer and mobile. I always wish for software that remembers only the information that can be reused and clears the rest. Now I do the “electronic forgetting” manually once in 3-4 months.

Just like on a lazy rainy day I sit alone in my room browsing through those bitter-sweet memories, today on a rainy day I sat in front of my computer going through my electronic memory. Sorting, deleting or restoring a few memories. And somewhere I found these.

Forget me in your gain
Remember me in your pain
I am not the mighty ship which can sail your life
But am the humble needle which can stitch your life

Mind-Wander Marks

At school hostel we had two hour study time daily. Talking, discussion and all other extra-curricular activities were bared during this time. Teachers were entrusted with the “Mission Impossible” read as: make students use this time to study.
One of my beloved teachers on “Mission Impossible” was perturbed by the fact that people day dreaming were the hardest to detect and correct. I also noticed, what makes things worse is that there is no bookmark during dreaming, i.e. daydreams always starts from the beginning instead of starting from where we stopped. From school to college then to work the show has changed but the show stopper has remained the same.

Day dreams often are like the “Mirror of Erised” mentioned in “Harry potter and philosophers stone”. Dumbledore explains to Harry “It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts........ Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible"

Our teacher too gave us a “funda” about wasting time. He felt a lot of useful time is spent in day dreaming. As a remedy every time our mind drifted from studies we were to draw small vertical line/mark (like tally mark) on the paper and get back to study. I call it mind-wander marks. It is noticed that the frequency of lines drawn goes down exponentially. It is quite an innovative idea for ones like me, who have nomadic mind. Actually it is wrong to call it lack of concentration, but rather call it excess of concentration on activities other than what we are doing. As the situation changed from controlled environment of school to less controlled environment of home and work, theory was extended by me for external interferences too.

Once again day before yesterday, it was a day when I could not afford to waste time and the “mind-wander marks” reappeared at my desk and it was september 5th “Teachers day”