Endianness In General
----------------------------
Lilliput and Blefuscu, the two fictional island nations in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, were at war with each other over the issue of the correct way to eat a boiled egg. The Lilliputians said that it should be eaten from the little (sharper) end, while the Blefuscans claimed that it should be the big (rounder) end!
Though intended as satire by the author, there are dubious merits and demerits for each approach if the issue is meditated upon, especially if the egg is a half-boiled one.
Little End Of Egg
Merit: Rests on a stable base
DeMerit: Hard to insert spoon
Big End Of Egg -
Merit: Easier to insert spoon
DeMerit: Could topple more easily - spillage
There ain't no such as a trivial thing! Everything has a purpose and there is a reason why things are the way they are. The issue is even paid homage to in the field of computers - there are such things as Little Endian and Big Endian computers!!! *** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness
Bananas - End To End!
----------------------------------------
A similar question, perhaps one with more tropical relevance, is - at which end should you peel a banana from?
There are two ends for a banana, when it is removed from a bunch - the end with the stalk and the end with the blackish button (don't know the word for the whatchamacallit, the buttonish thingy).
I had always peeled a banana from the buttony end. But then somebody pointed out that he found it unusual that one could choose to do it this way. I asked around and found out, to my surprise and shock, that many (most? ) peel from the stalky end!
Rationale unbuttoned
----------------------------------
It made perfect sense to me, peeling from the buttony end. The button was, in my book and practice, the logical peel-point; what else could it have been meant for? The button was, for unbuttoning! It was as clear as a "Tear here" marking for me.
What's more, if you did it this way, you could use the stalk to hold the banana while you ate it. logical, to do it this way! In fact, the longer the banana, the longer you need to hold it and the more logical this methodology is.
Justifying the Stalkers
-----------------------------------
But there is no rhyme without reason, is there? There had to be an explanation why so many practitioners of the Other Way existed. You've got to put yourself in the other guy's shoes, and find out why and how they fit him fine...
Peeling the banana from stalky end is also not without sense, when I thought about it further. Especially if the banana is of the shorter (plantain) kind. What happens is that when these short bananas are removed from the bunch, they break off at the base of the stalk, at the start of the fleshy part. So, when thus removed, the banana is already open; the proto-peels , they don't have to be created, unlike in the unbutton-methodology. So, the Stalker just has to extend those peels, pulling each one. Perfectly natural!
The Stalker methodology can used to advantage with longer bananas as well. The stalk can be used effectively as a peeler. Peeling with the stalk, there's no confusion: just pull tangentially to the curve of the banana, with the unbuttoning style, you need to take a decision as to which direction to peel!
Also, I observed that many of the Stalkers, with shorter bananas, used the button to pop the banana into their mouths. Press button to eject and ingest, was their operative motto. Buttons are to press?
Another point in favor of the Stalker methodology, with longer bananas, is that you can use the stalk to lock and protect the banana just in case you need to pause and resume your banana-session later! Tennis-players do this in between games.
Stalker Hegemony
----------------------------------
The world (mine at least) seems to be full of Stalkers! In the two years since the question was popped (Banana Endianness TBD) at me, I have braved many "What the #%*#" stares and worse for surveying people's banana-eating techniques, but have still not come across a natural Unbuttoner! Existential doubts have sprung up within me... Lilliput 1 - Blefuscu 0?
- Thomas Jay Cubb
Showing posts with label Literary?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literary?. Show all posts
Monday, May 18, 2009
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
quipamenducious
quipamenducious
Adjective: quipamenducious (koo`pa`men`doo`shus)
n. quipamenducity
- Lacking breadth of view, tolerance or open-mindedness
- Having a rigid and stubbornly fixed view of the world
2007, from Skt. koopamandooka “frog-in-the-well” from ancient Indian parable about a frog stuck in a well.
archaic: quipamenducacious
Friday, April 28, 2006
Hag In My Seat
(To RIP)
When traveling by train, people generally avoid the side-lower berth in sleeper coaches. Even if you are only of average height, your feet don’t fit within the berth’s frame when lying down. In order to sleep, you have to embryonize yourself, curve into a banana.
Even so, your feet will jut out and the people – vendors, beggars, passengers, who not - walking by will brush your feet as they make their way through the passage. Slumber is well-nigh impossible with hot kettles and cold bottles grazing your toes, however fleeting the contact may be.
People would give anything for a good night’s sleep and hence they give a wide berth to the lowly side-berth unless they’re elderly or extremely short. However, given a choice, in spite of the discomfort that it entails, I always take the side-lower berth. Call it a quirk of mine, but the side-lower berth does offer some definite advantages:
(Ir-rationale)
a) In hot weather, you can open the windows before sleeping. It’s a pleasure sleeping with the wind blowing on your face and cooling the length of your body.
b) You can keep your distance if your co-passengers are gasbags. If they are interesting, you can always talk of course. You have the best of both worlds. In the six-seat/berth compartment, you are stuck; you have to put up with whomever you are put up with. Also, if you choose the side-lower, you have only one co-passenger whom you absolutely must bear.
c) You can sleep with your head pointing whichever direction you choose- either in the direction of the train’s motion or against. I hate traveling backwards.
Plus, every time you make a booking indicating your preference as side-lower, it being so unpopular, you get what you asked for. Who can say that there is no joy in that? Hey, somebody actually granted you your wish!
So there I was in the Bangalore-Trivandrum Express. Sure enough, I had gotten my very own side-lower berth. I had dozed off almost instantly after settling in; it had been a tiring day. I woke up refreshed after a good night’s sleep, the cool night-wind had energized me. I found that many of my co-passengers had gotten off on the way.
(The Encroacher)
From a station on the way, an old woman with her son and his family boarded the train. They chose to sit in the six-seat cubicle on my side. Thankfully, they left me alone, one of them could’ve opted to sit on the other half of my berth, you see.
The train chugged on, and after a while, I left my seat to take a dump, leaving behind my bag and novel, “booking” my seat. Even so, when I came back, I found that the old woman had crept into my seat. Encroachment! Infringement! In sharp contrast with me who would’ve taken the seat of my preference given a choice, she had taken it given a chance!
She seemed harmless enough, the praying, God-fearing, grandmother-type, with big gold earrings the size of bangles dangling from her ears. The rosary in her hand would’ve made her seem saintly to some but to me, she was a scheming demon in white. The white witch was not going to vacate; she seemed oblivious of me - lost in thought, engrossed in prayer. I quietly sat on the other half of the berth.
(Do unto others as others do unto you)
I didn’t protest aloud but I did keep shooting lethal looks at her, my eyes glowing with indignation and irritation. For a while, I shifted around trying to force her out through subtle, surreptitious changes in the position of my legs, pulsing, nudging but no, no way she was budging. She was a Mountain Of Faith, confident that she would be forgiven her trespass against me.
Some time later, after futile minutes of desperation, I decided to hunt around for another suitable seat. Trudging along the coach’s passage, I detected a side-lower berth that had been left unguarded by its owner. I seized the opportunity! I sat down and when the rightful owner, a young man, returned and saw me there, I thought I could see glimpses of me in him. For a while, he and I played me-and-encroacher-grandma.
He started behaving almost identically as I had previously. Perhaps it was normal - just human nature, or maybe comfort-loving-selfish-young-urban-male nature, that made us behave like we did. What hardships had we ever known, born into a pacifist world of plenty? Here we were, pettily fighting for a mere seat. Enlightened, after a while, I smiled a knowing smile and ‘surrendered’. I walked away.
(Thought experiments)
I returned to grandma-taunting. I would appeal to the encroacher’s conscience telepathically: Get up! Get up! Respect the boundaries! Why were wars fought in your day? The prime reason… Moved by the injustice, and convinced of my innocence, I was shaking my head so much that it could possibly have been classified as an audible vibration. But older people have a higher threshold of hearing and hence my mental remonstrations failed to inspire remorse in the old lady.
She continued counting the beads on the rosary. Couldn’t she see the futility of that? You can keep doing that for an eternity and not have a clue as to how many. Infinity is a circle… Maybe God was listening to her prayers…If she wanted to stretch her legs, Let There Be Space! I climbed to the upper berth and I lay back reconciling myself to my fate.
For some time, I read my book with an occasional glance down at the old lady who, by now, had settled into a conscious trance, evidenced by her rotary rosary. I also resumed my stare-athon, with the old lady’s son this time, hoping that he would get the message.
Amongst other nefarious schemes for an ouster, of varying subterfuge, I thought of starting a conversation with the man in which I would cursorily and casually throw in the anecdote about the Arab and the camel – the one in which the Arab shares his tent with a camel and ends up being kicked out – with an occasional chance glance at his mother for good measure. That could get the idea through.
The parabolic parable was not to be, though; one just could not predict how people would react to their mother being called a camel! I’ve seen fights break out and heard that men have been killed for less. I could possibly have scraped through with my feathers unruffled in the probable scuffle with my quick-and-ready rejoinder: I was not an Arab, of course not! But cool logic tends to evaporate in the heat of rage; I decided not to take the risk. Thus scheming and plotting coups, unable to concentrate on my book, I nodded off momentarily.
(Hand Of God)
When I opened my eyes, sure enough, I fixed my gaze, leaning over, to my seat of contention. It was…empty! There for the taking! I looked to my left and saw the old lady, sitting with her family again. Thought can move mountains.
Joyously, though not ostentatiously (I think I managed to keep my rapturous glee down to a smirk of smug satisfaction), I descended down to my berth (mine!) and lay down. I even managed to read my book.
My joy was short-lived though; I shortly discovered that my cell phone was missing. Frantic, I rummaged around the compartment. My annexed neighbour however was unperturbed. Still counting the beads on her prayer-chain, she pointed out the phone to me.
It was there on the berth, my berth, where her head had been previously. It must have fallen down when I was sleeping in the upper berth. (I keep my wallet and my cell phone in my trouser-pockets, another of my quirks) I apologized profusely; I had only thought evil, you see, not said or done things. My apologies must have rung hollow and insincere; from the way they looked at me, it was obvious that they thought that I had done it intentionally.
She flung an accusatory glance at me, which rebounded off my innocence. I was only an instrument of Fate. And it was not as if she had not known the truth of gravity when she had lain in my berth - “There is a God, and He is Up Above.”
-Thomas Jay Cubb
When traveling by train, people generally avoid the side-lower berth in sleeper coaches. Even if you are only of average height, your feet don’t fit within the berth’s frame when lying down. In order to sleep, you have to embryonize yourself, curve into a banana.
Even so, your feet will jut out and the people – vendors, beggars, passengers, who not - walking by will brush your feet as they make their way through the passage. Slumber is well-nigh impossible with hot kettles and cold bottles grazing your toes, however fleeting the contact may be.
People would give anything for a good night’s sleep and hence they give a wide berth to the lowly side-berth unless they’re elderly or extremely short. However, given a choice, in spite of the discomfort that it entails, I always take the side-lower berth. Call it a quirk of mine, but the side-lower berth does offer some definite advantages:
(Ir-rationale)
a) In hot weather, you can open the windows before sleeping. It’s a pleasure sleeping with the wind blowing on your face and cooling the length of your body.
b) You can keep your distance if your co-passengers are gasbags. If they are interesting, you can always talk of course. You have the best of both worlds. In the six-seat/berth compartment, you are stuck; you have to put up with whomever you are put up with. Also, if you choose the side-lower, you have only one co-passenger whom you absolutely must bear.
c) You can sleep with your head pointing whichever direction you choose- either in the direction of the train’s motion or against. I hate traveling backwards.
Plus, every time you make a booking indicating your preference as side-lower, it being so unpopular, you get what you asked for. Who can say that there is no joy in that? Hey, somebody actually granted you your wish!
So there I was in the Bangalore-Trivandrum Express. Sure enough, I had gotten my very own side-lower berth. I had dozed off almost instantly after settling in; it had been a tiring day. I woke up refreshed after a good night’s sleep, the cool night-wind had energized me. I found that many of my co-passengers had gotten off on the way.
(The Encroacher)
From a station on the way, an old woman with her son and his family boarded the train. They chose to sit in the six-seat cubicle on my side. Thankfully, they left me alone, one of them could’ve opted to sit on the other half of my berth, you see.
The train chugged on, and after a while, I left my seat to take a dump, leaving behind my bag and novel, “booking” my seat. Even so, when I came back, I found that the old woman had crept into my seat. Encroachment! Infringement! In sharp contrast with me who would’ve taken the seat of my preference given a choice, she had taken it given a chance!
She seemed harmless enough, the praying, God-fearing, grandmother-type, with big gold earrings the size of bangles dangling from her ears. The rosary in her hand would’ve made her seem saintly to some but to me, she was a scheming demon in white. The white witch was not going to vacate; she seemed oblivious of me - lost in thought, engrossed in prayer. I quietly sat on the other half of the berth.
(Do unto others as others do unto you)
I didn’t protest aloud but I did keep shooting lethal looks at her, my eyes glowing with indignation and irritation. For a while, I shifted around trying to force her out through subtle, surreptitious changes in the position of my legs, pulsing, nudging but no, no way she was budging. She was a Mountain Of Faith, confident that she would be forgiven her trespass against me.
Some time later, after futile minutes of desperation, I decided to hunt around for another suitable seat. Trudging along the coach’s passage, I detected a side-lower berth that had been left unguarded by its owner. I seized the opportunity! I sat down and when the rightful owner, a young man, returned and saw me there, I thought I could see glimpses of me in him. For a while, he and I played me-and-encroacher-grandma.
He started behaving almost identically as I had previously. Perhaps it was normal - just human nature, or maybe comfort-loving-selfish-young-urban-male nature, that made us behave like we did. What hardships had we ever known, born into a pacifist world of plenty? Here we were, pettily fighting for a mere seat. Enlightened, after a while, I smiled a knowing smile and ‘surrendered’. I walked away.
(Thought experiments)
I returned to grandma-taunting. I would appeal to the encroacher’s conscience telepathically: Get up! Get up! Respect the boundaries! Why were wars fought in your day? The prime reason… Moved by the injustice, and convinced of my innocence, I was shaking my head so much that it could possibly have been classified as an audible vibration. But older people have a higher threshold of hearing and hence my mental remonstrations failed to inspire remorse in the old lady.
She continued counting the beads on the rosary. Couldn’t she see the futility of that? You can keep doing that for an eternity and not have a clue as to how many. Infinity is a circle… Maybe God was listening to her prayers…If she wanted to stretch her legs, Let There Be Space! I climbed to the upper berth and I lay back reconciling myself to my fate.
For some time, I read my book with an occasional glance down at the old lady who, by now, had settled into a conscious trance, evidenced by her rotary rosary. I also resumed my stare-athon, with the old lady’s son this time, hoping that he would get the message.
Amongst other nefarious schemes for an ouster, of varying subterfuge, I thought of starting a conversation with the man in which I would cursorily and casually throw in the anecdote about the Arab and the camel – the one in which the Arab shares his tent with a camel and ends up being kicked out – with an occasional chance glance at his mother for good measure. That could get the idea through.
The parabolic parable was not to be, though; one just could not predict how people would react to their mother being called a camel! I’ve seen fights break out and heard that men have been killed for less. I could possibly have scraped through with my feathers unruffled in the probable scuffle with my quick-and-ready rejoinder: I was not an Arab, of course not! But cool logic tends to evaporate in the heat of rage; I decided not to take the risk. Thus scheming and plotting coups, unable to concentrate on my book, I nodded off momentarily.
(Hand Of God)
When I opened my eyes, sure enough, I fixed my gaze, leaning over, to my seat of contention. It was…empty! There for the taking! I looked to my left and saw the old lady, sitting with her family again. Thought can move mountains.
Joyously, though not ostentatiously (I think I managed to keep my rapturous glee down to a smirk of smug satisfaction), I descended down to my berth (mine!) and lay down. I even managed to read my book.
My joy was short-lived though; I shortly discovered that my cell phone was missing. Frantic, I rummaged around the compartment. My annexed neighbour however was unperturbed. Still counting the beads on her prayer-chain, she pointed out the phone to me.
It was there on the berth, my berth, where her head had been previously. It must have fallen down when I was sleeping in the upper berth. (I keep my wallet and my cell phone in my trouser-pockets, another of my quirks) I apologized profusely; I had only thought evil, you see, not said or done things. My apologies must have rung hollow and insincere; from the way they looked at me, it was obvious that they thought that I had done it intentionally.
She flung an accusatory glance at me, which rebounded off my innocence. I was only an instrument of Fate. And it was not as if she had not known the truth of gravity when she had lain in my berth - “There is a God, and He is Up Above.”
-Thomas Jay Cubb
Friday, September 16, 2005
Song For The Quinquennium
I reproduce here my submission to My Favorite Word.
Quinquennium. Not too many words start with a 'q', and this one has two 'q's! Really like the way it sounds too.
-------------------------
SONG FOR THE QUINQUENNIUM
-------------------------
English's list of Q-words:
Not many in queue.
I searched "five years"!
At last found a good one
not just starting with Q
but which in fact had two!
I just love it, won't you too?
Please do take my cue.
-Thomas Jay Cubb
http://incubbator.blogspot.com
I wonder why this word is not more in vogue; a quinquennium is a more practical measure to track your life with than a decade is, come to think of it...
-------------------------------------------
This became, very soon, the first version of "About A Word" (final version at CubbSpace)
This is a poem about the word quiniquennium which means "five years", it is in fact my favourite word. somebody had asked me yesterday, so that's where the inspiration comes from all of a sudden..
it's very very experimental.has its rough edges, so let me know what you think... so that i can finalize... .
luv
thomas
ABOUT A WORD
--------------------------
English words starting with 'Q'
Are, queerly, a quite quiescent few.
Query anyone, "Not many in queue".
A quixotic five-year lexical quest (quite untrue)
And I found the word most q-true-blue!
Half a decade, it's my favourite
(The word's quinquennium)
Say it aloud, savour it
Ain't it cute, sounds so.. yum-yum?
No question, better than all the rest of'em.
For not only does it start with a 'Q',
It has one to spare too: two!
-Thomas Jay Cubb
(September 15, 2005)
Quinquennium. Not too many words start with a 'q', and this one has two 'q's! Really like the way it sounds too.
-------------------------
SONG FOR THE QUINQUENNIUM
-------------------------
English's list of Q-words:
Not many in queue.
I searched "five years"!
At last found a good one
not just starting with Q
but which in fact had two!
I just love it, won't you too?
Please do take my cue.
-Thomas Jay Cubb
http://incubbator.blogspot.com
I wonder why this word is not more in vogue; a quinquennium is a more practical measure to track your life with than a decade is, come to think of it...
-------------------------------------------
This became, very soon, the first version of "About A Word" (final version at CubbSpace)
This is a poem about the word quiniquennium which means "five years", it is in fact my favourite word. somebody had asked me yesterday, so that's where the inspiration comes from all of a sudden..
it's very very experimental.has its rough edges, so let me know what you think... so that i can finalize... .
luv
thomas
ABOUT A WORD
--------------------------
English words starting with 'Q'
Are, queerly, a quite quiescent few.
Query anyone, "Not many in queue".
A quixotic five-year lexical quest (quite untrue)
And I found the word most q-true-blue!
Half a decade, it's my favourite
(The word's quinquennium)
Say it aloud, savour it
Ain't it cute, sounds so.. yum-yum?
No question, better than all the rest of'em.
For not only does it start with a 'Q',
It has one to spare too: two!
-Thomas Jay Cubb
(September 15, 2005)
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