The Temple Business: Fiction

Ramachandra 'Rama' Gopalan was religious and highly business minded. So he decided to start a temple. Just as industries had been called the temples of Independent India, Ramachandra was optimistic of making temples the new industry of modern India.

Rama had a clear cut idea of how he wanted to go about achieving this. He would start a chain of Lord Balaji temples all across the country. Devotees of the Tiirupati-based God were throughout the country and Rama knew that many people couldn't go all the way to Tirupati. So his plan was that if people can't go to Tirupati, he would take Tirupati to the people. He knew what he had to do. He had to first mass-produce the main cog in his business-wheel - the idol of Lord Balaji - and it had to look just like the original. But it would be done. And he would do more, even the temple itself will be a miniature version of the one in Tirupati. Also land needed to be bought to set up his temples. That he figured would not be that much of a problem. He had contacts in the real estate business. If he could not buy the land itself, he would offer co-ownership deals to the landowners for the temple built on that particular land. Rama was always fond of dreaming (he called it "thinking") ahead. He knew success would bring more opportunities. Setting up so many temples would bring its own demand for skilled labour - priests, garments for those priest and so on. He could do another Reliance - he would slowly control the entire supply chain of his business - from the temples themselves, to setting up schools for the priests practicing in those temples to setting up garment industry, specializing in making attire for religious occasions.

Tagsurf: Messages with Tags

Tagging is so much "in" these days. And I always enjoy reading about new applications that have been developed using the concept of tagging - especially collaborative tagging because they add an entirely new dimension to the idea of adding semantics to content.

The newest kid on the block is Tagsurf. I read about it on Russell Beattie's blog (via John Battelle's site). The central idea behind Tagsurf is that if URLs can be tagged (del.icio.us), media can be tagged (flickr), blogs can be tagged (categories, and now Technorati), then why not messages or for that matter any content? And why limit tags to static text, why not add an additional layer of semantics (well this will be something like meta-meta-info now) for the tags. Tagsurf allows one to use email address as tags, which will then be processed by the Tagsurf system to send the message attached with that tag to the user's message box on Tagsurf. If the e-mail address is not registered with Tagsurf, then it will be sent to the e-mail address, with an invitation to join Tagsurf.

Similarly, tags can be URLs. Then the message attached with the URL can be thought of as a comment about the URL that was the tag. In a similar manner, one could start a forum around common tags. Russell Beattie thinks it will allow people to surf forums in "x dimensions" instead of one dimensional threads as we see on most mailing lists. Come to think of it, a lot of our posts are rarely "all" about a narrow topic. Our posts always add something new. It adds another perspective to things, adds the new "dimension". Applying tags to these messages and letting users to navigate through these additional (and may be related) dimensions or topics offers a new kind of adventure.

Ofcourse, every coin has two sides. And there will always be someone who will try to misuse this system. I haven't yet gone through the details of the Tagsurf system, but one thing that I wonder about is the e-mailing part. Misclassification is what many collaborative tagging applications are trying hard to avoid. Semantics of the form that Tagsurf offers (by sending emails to content tagged with email addresses) could add another level of complexity to the entire process.

But all in all, a very novel idea - will try it out a lot more in the days to come.

Megadeth: Countdow to Extinction

Megadeth's Countdown to Extinction from their album of the same name is a great sound metal track that speaks about the irony of game hunting and about the extinction of endangered species. And what more, it doesn't even sound corny. Nice. :-)

Feynman's Rainbow

I took inspiration from Elixir, had a coffee (instant though, not filter) at 11.30 pm and started reading the remainder of Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life, a book by Leonard Mlodinow, writing about his conversations with Richard Feynman, who he met during the latter's last years. Feynman was then battling from cancer, which would finally consume him. Feynman is a legend. Infact, he was a legend even while he was alive. And any book that talks about his life, especially first hand accounts, are always worth a read in my opinion. Leonard Mlodinow had a gotten a prestigious position at Caltech for doing pathbreaking work in Quantum Physics. But he wondered if his breakthrough, wasn't a flash in the pan - a one time success that he might not be able to repeat? But as fate would have it, his office at Caltech was on the same floor as Feynman's (and right next to Murray Gell-Man's, another legend and colourful figure in the world of Physics). The author in his book, recounts his conversations with Feynman, many of which were recorded. These conversations helped the author to not only get over his "writer's block" kind of symptoms, but went further and helped him to choose the path that he felt was right for him, without having to think about how his decision might make his peers think of him.

The book is a mosaic - of transcripts of the author's conversations with Feynman; of fascinating accounts of Feynman's rivalry with Murray Gell-Man; of the author's time in the Physics Dept. at Caltech; and the space filled with a summary (in layman's terms) of the the state of Quantum Physics and of String theory during that time. That the author has done all this and still kept the book to less than 180 pages is quite an achievement. Although, one thing I would have like to see in the book was more transcripts of Feynman's conversations. Even if that would have meant adding more pages to the book. But to conclude, I would certainly like to recommend this book to anyone who knows or has read about Richard Feynman and would like to find out another side to his life, or to know what is not already known about him from earlier books about him.