Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

The Virginia Tech shootings shocked the world with their savageness and they were totally unexpected. Now the entire world is asking questions about the tragedy and guessing how it could have been averted. They don’t realize the following basic fact: Hindsight is perfect. Now that we look back we know that the guy is a killer and we are re-evaluating all his information taking that into account and this gives us a totally different picture of the person as a deranged killer. Before the killings we would have painted an entirely different portrait of him.

The shootings made Cho into a instant celebrity, his works are now plastered all over the web with people commenting on them. His manifesto was broadcast on TV and is now available on the web for download. Guess what? Thats what he wanted… He wanted to be famous. Now the media gave him his wish. All for the all mighty ratings. Not saying that they shouldn’t have reported the crime. They should, with all the details. But publishing his plays was not required, neither should they have broadcast his manifesto. That didn’t achieve anything other than increase their ratings.

People worldwide are condemning the Virginia Tech officials and the cops for not reacting fast enough. Guess what its really easy for us to point out mistakes. We weren’t there. We didn’t have to make the decision based on limited info. The arm chair analysts all over the world are jumping over each other pointing out the failure’s in the system.

Let me tell you a bit of personal experience with terrorism. I was in Newark, NJ on Sep 11 2001. I was in class after just having landed in the US on the 10th. The WTC was attacked, the first tower fell followed by the second tower. I only found out after I got out of class and even then it took me over an hour to figure out what was going on because so many rumors were going around. We finally got to know the truth from watching the news and talking to Public safety officials. The first reaction of everyone was disbelief, followed by horror and panic. Thats the killer. If NJIT had been attacked after WTC it would have had been bad because no one had the entire story inspite of the best efforts of the administration.

In the Vtech shootings a lot of people initially thought that he was playing a practical joke when he walked in with the guns. Think about it, what would you have thought when you saw a friend/acquaintance walk in with something that looks like a gun? Would you have thought he was joking or that he was about to shoot you?

Reading online about the tragedy we find out that he was bullied in school, was depressed, was acoustic. That doesn’t excuse what he did. If he was bullied/picked on in school he should have dealt with it like a million other kids do. These are just excuses. We are trying to justify what he did. Guess what? Nothing can justify what he did. There are a million ways he could have dealt with his issues, he didn’t have to shootup innocent people to make his point.

As far as I am concerned people who chose violence against the helpless as his means of protest deserves the same label: barbarian. They are not the oppressed, anti-hero’s or fighting the establishment. They are barbarians. Period.

But for every Cho we have a hundred people like Liviu Librescu. Liviu died trying to protect his students from the mad man attacking them. He is the hero in this tale not Cho. However I only read about him in one paper ONE!. Everyone else is busy posting the body count, the blood bath photos and talking about Cho ’cause thats what sells the papers. The media should give people like Liviu more coverage. It shows that the world is not all bad and gives people hope.

My condolences to all the people who lost someone at this senseless killing. I hope you find some peace in the coming days.

– Suramya

You have got to be kidding me. Wasn’t Spider-Man India enough? If I recall correctly it was a major flop. Now we have this horrible idea:

Imagine the popular American youth comic idol Archie conversing in Hindi, chasing Veronica, who’s draped in a sari while Jughead’s burger gets replaced by an idli and Moose dumps baseball for cricket. Flights of fancy? Not anymore.

The US-based owner of the famous comic brand Archie Entertainment is planning a large scale expansion in India, for which it is even looking at localising the content to suit the market requirements.

Part of the charm of these comics (Archies, Spiderman etc) is the US settings and this will ruin it. I don’t have a problem with a hindi translation of the comic, thats a good thing and will probably increase their sales but “Indianizing” it is just wrong. If I want to read a comic with an Indian setting I will read one of the many Indian comics: Nagraj, Chacha Chaudhri, Super Commando Dhruv etc.

What kind of weirdo’s come up with these idea’s?

Source: When Archie speaks Hindi, Veronica will come wearing a sari- Hindustan Times

– Suramya

Just watched the last episode of Primeval, which is a British production about a group of people investigating a series of anomalies which allow travel to the past and vice-versa that are popping up all over London.

It is an interesting series and I liked it but there are some things that they do in the series that don’t make sense and are really stupid/illogical.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In the first episode this kid finds this big shining thing (Looks like a big fractal) hanging in the air and the first thing he does is stick his head into it. He doesn’t try to toss anything into it to see if its dangerous or even put his hand through it, just sticks his head into it… How stupid is that? Then when the professor decides to take a stroll through the past, he just walks in without any gear to use in case the anomaly closes and they get stuck.

The most irritating thing is that they talk a lot about not changing the past but they don’t seem be doing anything to preserve it. In the last episode they decide to make a permanent outpost in the past to look for a particular anomaly (Nope won’t give away all the plot details. 😉 ) and the armed escort dies, so they decide to abort the mission (Which makes sense). So how do they go about it? They bury the guys over there, leave all the equipment there and just leave. They don’t care that by leaving the stuff there they might cause a paradox/mess up the future. The equipment they leave includes: Camera’s, tents, emergency rations and other stuff thats not bio degradable.

Then they kill a lot of the creatures that come through the anomaly. Shouldn’t that change the past? Since the creature was killed it can’t do what it was supposed to so the should timeline change right?

Other than these minor irritants the show is good. The special effects are good. The season ending was cool though, I am waiting for the next season which will probably come out in 2008.

The other show I really like is Heroes. That show is just plain awesome. Each episode makes you want to watch the next one. The next episode won’t be out for a month though so I have a long wait for my next hit.

I used to love ‘Lost‘ but I think the producers/writes got lost during the production. The show doesn’t make any sense anymore. They are introducing so many plot twists into the story that its become like a Jalabee (For those of you who are wondering what a Jalabee is, Its an Indian sweet and here’s a picture of it ) and stopped making sense. I have stopped watching it. They should have ended it in Season 2, there was no need to drag it out for the third season.

The next season of Doctor Who is starting in April and I can’t wait for it to start. The Doctor will have a new companion so it should be fun. Torchwood (A spin-off of Dr Who) is also supposed to have a new season but don’t know any details about that and I didn’t like it that much anyways so not that eager for it anyway.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

As most of you know, I love reading and read a lot of books. Over the past few days I have been reading a lot of books so I thought I should share some of my thoughts about them.

I finally finished reading the entire Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley in order which made some of novels more interesting. Pity there aren’t more of them. However they are the only novels by her that I liked. In most of her other books the stories come off as a bit stilted and heavy handed. Another problem I faced was that the novels don’t have any official chronology which makes if difficult for those who want to read the books in order. Oh I know that the books are mostly standalone and can be read in any order but its more fun reading the books in chronological order. I did the same with the Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey and found the books to be much more enjoyable that way.

Another author I like is Patricia Briggs and I just finished reading her book “Blood Bound“, it was an interesting read. Basically its part two of a series about a car mechanic who can shapeshift into a coyote and how she deals with problems a vampire sorcerer causes in her life. The book is sharp and witty, somewhat like the Weather Warden series by Rachel Caine or really early Anita Blake novels. Hopefully the next books in the series will be as good and not devolve into mindless romance novels that replace a good story with lots of sex and romance (Anita Blake Vampire hunter is a good example of such a series)

Patricia Wrede is a new author I found thanks to Amazon lists that suggest additional books based on the books you are currently viewing. This lady can write. Her Enchanted Forest Series is a series that takes the standard princesses and dragons line and changes it to something new and unique. The princesses in the novel is bored with being a princesses and decides to walk upto a cave full of dragons and insists that they take her prisoner and let her work for them. Then when the expected knights and princes come to rescue them she tells them that she doesn’t want to be rescued as she is happy living with a dragon. Read the book, you will like it if you like humor and prefer to read books where the characters have a brain. Her name has been moved to the list of authors whose works I egarly wait for.

The latest book I read is “Sir Apropos Of Nothing” by Peter David. This book is off the hook, It looks at the roles of the hero, sidekick, and villain turns them on the head. In the book the sidekick (Apropos) decides that he doesn’t like his lot in life so he decides to change events to make his life easier and to make him look better. A lot of his actions are not noble as he is a self centered person that doesn’t care two hoots about others but in spite of all this the book is funny and a good read. Going to read the second book in this series next and if I like it then I guess I will have to add another author to my list of must read authors.

Not all of the books I read recently were good though :(, one of them was especially disappointing because I like the author a lot. I am talking about “A Deeper Blue” by John Ringo. I got my hands on the Advance Readers Copy of the book from Baen Book’s Webscription Ebooks and was really excited to read it. This is the 5th book in the ‘Ghost’ series and I really liked the earlier books. The author really knows how to depict war and troop movements and since I like military fiction I like his books a lot. Unfortunately in this book he decided to get on a hobby horse and basically make it look like that all problems that the US/world is facing now is due to Muslim terrorists.

At first when I started reading I was like whatever, this is a novel the author has the right to take some liberties with the world his characters move in. This was after I read this statement in the book:

“Every major terrorist attack on your people has been by Islamic males between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five. Paying particular attention to such people simply makes sense. When a person that looks Islamic comes through the Keldara region you can be sure that we take a closer look. What is that thing about if it walks like a duck?”

The book then proceeded to get worse and worse… Every time they had to catch a terrorist they would look at the Arabic male and sure enough thats the terrorist. The second problem was that the book didn’t really seem to have a plot, all it did was point out how easy it was to attack the US and that the best way to stop it is to stop the Muslim males.

It got so bad that I actually stopped reading it before I got to the end and believe me it takes a lot for me to stop reading a book that I am almost through with. (I had another 3 chapters to go through).

I guess the author is human and has human failings but I had expected better. The book was the worst book I have read in a while.

Ah well this is all for now. Will write more later.

– Suramya

PS: Incase you are wondering, all the books mentioned above are fantasy/SciFi or Military fiction.

Michael Crook is an all round idiot who doesn’t have the brain cells God gave to an amoeba. In case you don’t know who he is here’s a brief history:

1. He is the webmaster for: forsakethetroops.info which is now no longer up. On this site he basically argued that military personnel are worthless, idiots, overpaid, and that he is glad when they are killed.

2. He is also the webmaster for http://www.denytheholocaust.com/ where he claims that the Holocaust never happened.

3. He posted fake sex add’s on Craig’s List. Then got the personal details from the people who responded and posted them on his site. Then he actually contacted the co-workers/spouses/CEO’s of those people and basically ruined their lives. Ok, the guys shouldn’t have been cheating on their wives but what gave this idiot the right to post their personal info and contact their boss?

Oh and he said and I quote “I stand firm in my hatred for children, jews, and members of the military.” and he also doesn’t like clubbing probably because unless a girl is completely wasted she would take one look at him and run away screaming…

So how does all the above translate to a lawsuit?

As you have probably realized by now this guy is not the sharpest tool in the shed and a lot of people don’t like him. So this guy (Jeff Diehl) had posted an article about him in September where they made fun of him. To emphasize who they were talking about they used a still from a Fox TV interview (Which BTW falls under the ‘Fair Use’ portion of the copyright law) and made fun of him.

I guess he didn’t like what they were saying so he stooped to underhand tactics and sent the ISP hosting http://www.10zenmonkeys.com a DMCA take-down notice. So Jeff’s ISP shutdown his site (They had to under the “safe harbor” provision otherwise they become liable for it) but this really upset Jeff so he moved the site to another ISP (Laughing Squid) which was run by a friend of his. Now Michael thought that since it was easy to shutdown a site he did it again and sent another notice to Laughing Squid’s upstream provider. This really really pissed off Jeff and Laughing Squid’s owner so they contacted EFF who registered a lawsuit against him which I completely support.

NEways I am too lazy to type the rest of the story so you can get all the details over here, here and here

Now here’s my view of the entire stunt. This guy was probably dropped on his head multiple times as a kid, was rejected by all the girls (And Guys) he met, was thrown out of clubs, rejected from the Army so he decided to decry everyone and say he didn’t want to join anyways (The grapes are sour, and I didn’t want them anyways).

Most of his stuff I can ignore, his misuse of the copyright act got him sued. If he doesn’t believe the holocaust thats his problem. There are people who still believe that the earth is flat. What I found really offensive that he took photos of solders dying and made fun of them. What kind of a person does that? Ok, I don’t really support the war on Iraq but that doesn’t mean that the people fighting it should die. Oh and he also sent death wishes on a card to a solder injured in the line of duty .

He actually said:

“Our underlying problem is this: the military is a lifestyle these morons chose. What idiot risks their life for a country? It’s what they chose. Hopefully, they knew in their hearts this is abusing taxpayers’ money, and they enlisted anyway. So…Forsake our Troops! Let ’em die in combat– we don’t need their ilk in this country!”

There’s a lot more where this came from. I don’t think I am going to post any more. Read his blog/website if you have the stomach for it. I am not posting a link to it here because I don’t want to increase his website ratings, so just search for michael crook on Google.

I come from an Air Force Family. (Not the US but the Indian Air Force.) and A lot of my friends are in the Indian Air Force and the Indian Army, some are also in the US army and Air Force . I know what kind of guts it takes to go out somewhere where you know that the next step you take might be your last one. I have heard enough stories and seen the devastation a fighter pilots family faces when their loved ones don’t come back home (Kargil war, India). What give him the right to make fun of people who are willing to die for their country and something they believe in?

If I ever met this guy in person I would have a hard time restraining myself from beating the crap out of him.

I am not the only one pissed at him, Tucker Max actually invited him for a debate and his writeup is really good. Check it out.

In conclusion, the guy is a moron. He is a waste of oxygen and I wish he would crawl back into the hole he came from.

– Suramya