Atlas Shrugged, the movie

I'm delighted to hear that Atlas Shrugged is being made into a movie. I would like to find out how they adapt such an intense story and elaborate description into a movie. I just hope they get the idea of the story well. The description will, though, continue to be something to read. A trilogy is planned and the first part is releasing on April 15, 2011. I plan to read up Atlas Shrugged before that once again.

Meanwhile, this is John Galt quoted from the novel 

'The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains. Such is the nature of the competition between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of 'exploitation' for which you have damned the strong.'

You're on camera!

CCTV cameras are all around. They've installed about 12 of them in and around my office. And the security guard and the administration manager can watch what's happening around the office and in some select areas in the office. I must say our office is a reasonably closed space with not much scope for break-ins. And above all, there seems to be no real motive to break-in. I've always thought that the CCTV cameras are a waste of money and time. What can you detect or find on such camera output?

The total amount of data or footage generated by all the cameras put together cannot be fathomed by all the security guards, assuming that's the only thing they do. They simply don't have the capacity or bandwidth to review all of it. And to tell you the truth, its pretty boring and uninteresting to watch the footage beyond the first few minutes, leave alone a whole day. Most of the time, nothing happens. But it is the job of the security guards to review it, all the time; well, at least most of the time. And it has to be real-time!

BriefCam, an Israeli company, has come up with this brand new idea in CCTV cameras. It works by separating the times when there is movement and times when there is no movement at all. And it senses those times when there is no movement, and excludes such footage. It uses motion detection algorithm and separates the static background, creates a fixed database and focusses only on the moving images. These moving images are summarised and bunched together for the security and surveillance staff to review as and when convenient.

The process still requires the surveillance staff to go throught the footage manually. But it gives them the option of making better use of the time by editing out the non-moving boring footage. Now that's something! Its amazing how people come up with such small improvements to ease life.

Phase out the senior journalists

The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, interacted with senior journalists of the media a couple of days back. He handled the media well, considering the amount of pressure he was in. He could not convince his critics, but he stood his ground and managed unscathed, largely, and his performance was especially laudable, considering he is an accidental politician.

In this media interaction, it was interesting to watch the media, rather than the PM. Prannoy Roy, Rajdeep Sardesai, Arnab Goswami were at their stupid best. Prannoy Roy went on talking for 5 minutes, without coming to the point. He spoke about how the first year post elections is a honeymoon period, and how you generally could pass policy decisions without much difficulty, how for Singh this was difficult, and that he would face elections in 3 years, and he forgot his question. He ended with a tame question, that was would he be the candidate in the next elections. How incisive was that?

Singh replied saying it was too premature to comment. Another senior media journalist asked whether Singh would like to see India lift the cricket world cup. What did she expect Singh to say - no? OK, they were bad! But what's the point I'm making.

When journalists reach a certain saturation point, they must be phased out. Just as everything in the world goes through a life-cycle, so does the journalist. And considering that the journalist is a much-watched and followed personality, the saturation is reached even earlier and is much more stark. 

Because, once they reach a certain level of exposure, they stop being dispassionate about and distant from the issue, and they start taking a position. When they meet someone who doesn't agree with that position, they react in a belligerent manner. They hide this media blunder by saying that they provide us opinion and not just the news.

I can surely say that the Indian people are knowledgeable and intelligent enough to form their own opinion. They need only the news, experts' views and not the media analysis, most certainly not of these jaded journalists. So most senior journalists need to take vanvaas, and allow for some dispassionate and unbiased journalism.

How can we shake up this system? Or can't we?

The Day The Music Died!

On February 3, 1959, a small-plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, killed three American rock and roll musicians: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, as well as the pilot, Roger Peterson. The day was later called The Day the Music Died by Don McLean, in his song "American Pie".

When asked what "American Pie" meant, McLean replied, "It means I never have to work again." Later, he more seriously stated, "You will find many interpretations of my lyrics but none of them by me... sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence." How profound!