This and that...

Firstly, a very happy new year 2005 to all the readers out there. Yay! First entry of the year! I promise to strive to lower the standards of entries more than ever during the course of this year. You can count on me for that.

Secondly, now that I have titled the article "This and that..." I am wondering if that isn't a more appropriate title for my blog. After all, it is as uninteresting as "Scattered thoughts..." and doesn't incite anyone to click on the link when they read the title. Aside: I realize some of you have strong opinions against deciding on the title before writing the entire article. To those folks I quote one of the greatest philosophers of all times, Calvin, who said, "Pfffrrrrrbbbtttt..." Okay, coming back to the issue at hand (another aside: what is the issue at hand?)

I had plans of writing 2004: A year in retrospect. But it was all research, conferences, ballroom dance competitions and another year of PhD with no end in sight. Same old, same old.

Meanwhile, in the news, Dave Barry announced his retirement (at least for a year's period). Warning: the paperwork involved in signing over your soul to the Devil looks miniscule compared to the details you need to give to Miami Herald before they let you read the article.

To the curious types, yes, the Devil is real. Otherwise, tell me who else will God play dice with? Once we agree that Einstein and Bohr understood the universe better than us, it follows that there exists a Devil whose legalese allows trading of souls for material benefits. Furthermore, it can also be proved that the Creation followed an open source development model and a clear case for polytheism can, therefore, be developed.

What I am trying to say that you can explain away the entire creation based on the software development model. Think about it for a minute. Some entity (let us, for the sake of argument call it/him/her god-1) first created a prototype for the world and the things living in it. Along comes another entity (for simplicity god-2), does not like the way the world or some creature in it, thinks it/he/she can do better. God-2 creates a patch, sends upstream to god-1, who thinks the world is just right the way it/he/she wrote it and rejects the patch. Because the whole firmament is open source, god-2 forks the codebase and releases his own version of the world/living beings. Of course, every god-n (where n is a natural number) whose patch was rejected went ahead and created its/his/her own version of a living being and that explains the different species, different races and religions. Following the same logic, every patch that was accepted contributed to the evolution of the existing creatures. The secret, mysterious cults are analogus to the closed source development model where you have to sign a non-disclosure agreementto see the source code and have to agree to restrictive licenses to modify the source code. Of course, there will be some virus, worm, adware, malware writers which explains the existence of devil and other problems. The ice age, meteor strikes can be explained away when god-n reverts back a version or ceases development of a particular version/software. Folks who are atheists, I will try and accomodate your viewpoints as soon as I figure out how. I am thinking it will be something along the lines of AI and self repair. Send in a patch if you have any bright ideas.

Back to Dave Barry, I, like him, wonder if I am getting less funnier these days. One thing is for sure, I will miss his toilet bowl related humor. Another bit of news, ABC News has named bloggers People of the year. Good thing I got on the bandwagon just in time.

All said and done, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, if creation was akin to software development do they use CVS or Bitkeeper. I am not sure.