poem in NYC Subway...

I was on the 6 train yesterday and started looking at all the ads on the top of the subway car, one of the ads had a poem, which I found interesting:

If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.
-Vera Pavlova

I'm still trying to figure out what the poem is trying to get across because it seems that there are contradictory statements between the 2 parts of the poem which talks about the future based on the present and one which talks about the past based on the present, yet they seem to contradict each other, am I missing something here or am I just not able to figure out the logic in this poem?

Shyamalan's new film, The Happening

Well it seems like M. Night Shyamalan has written another "thriller" titled, "The Happening", I hope he has changed his writing since the last few of his films, it seems that after The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, many of his movies tend to give away too much at the ending and reveal more then should be revealed rather then leaving things to our imagination making the monster or force that is the fear in the movie even more scary when glimples of the monster are shown but not the whole. The first movie of his that I saw was "The Sixth Sense" and I admit it was very well written the use of color to highlight specific items in the movie in addition to the use of suspense with things to make things even more discreet was very well done, after that movie I watched Unbreakable, overall it was well written, a good plot with all elements of a superhero movie, the hero and the villian. But then he released 'Signs', that movie wasn't up to par with his past films, the same goes for his later releases of 'The Village' and 'Lady in The Water'. I hope that this new movie of his reclaims his reputation that he had when he wrote 'The Sixth Sense'.

Harold and Kumar 2 looks pretty funny...

It seems like they've released the trailer and a nice teaser for the new Harold and Kumar movie, titled, Harold and Kumar 2: Escape from Guantanamo Bay, the censored as well as the restricted trailers are available at the movie website, the trailer containing restricted scenes looks hilarious, but be warned the restricted trailer does have quite some graphic scenes. As of right now I don't know if this movie is going live up the reputation of the first one and I'm sure it's going to offend quite a few people, but lets see how it fares once it is officially released. Enjoy.

Sant Mat...

So I came across the biography of Shania Twain and as I was reading it it mentioned that herself and her husband practice a religion known as Sant Mat, now I personally have never heard of this religion, and so I curiously decided to surf over to my good friend wikipedia and google and started to look up more information about it. Well the premise of the religion or atleast what I sort of came across after surfing through a few pages was it's focus on the few principles of the Hindu faith mainly that of dietary practices as well as meditation, to help develop a sense of self or an understanding of your existence in this world, ok so that last statement is probably the basis for all religions that are currently practiced in the world today; all religions are there to help one find meaning for existence other then fulfilling routine or common duties but from a metaphysical aspect of what our existence means for you and the relation of our existence in the harmony of the world around you. And the idea of Sant Mat is to practice a way of life where you find a path to realize yourself and eventually find God. So Sant Mat's current spiritual master is Sant Baljit Singh, which I guess he would be the equivalent of the Dalai Lama in Tibetan Buddhism, but the way in which the current Dalai Lama was selected is probably different then how Baljit Singh came to be the spiritual master, since there is no mention of reincarnation amongst the belief of the Sant Mat faith, however more contemporary movements of Sant Mat, do believe in the idea of karma and reincarnation. Well I should say that on the Sant Mat site they mention Karma but not reincarnation... Regardless, the selection of the spiritual leader in the Sant Mat faith is not through principles of selection for some of the other Dharmic faiths (correct me if I'm wrong here). The Sant Mat movement has a very egalitarianistic belief. Which is nice in that they view everyone as equal no matter their social status of religious affiliations, regardless of their belief or their way of life. Which is the one thing that I do find a bit disconcerting in many religions, I feel that equality should be the core of all religions and placing distinctions on groups of individuals, because of their upbringings or their way of life, devoids the idea of religion as a way to discover ones place in their metaphysical existence and understanding of God. But we don't live in a perfect world, but perhaps one day we will find equality amongst all living creatures. I end this post with a quote by Mohandas Gandhi, "All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth."

The elusive mystery surrounding 'Cloverfield'

I've been awaiting the release of 'Cloverfield' which was originally titled '1-18-08', as that is the date it is scheduled to be released by producer J.J Abrams, and the anticipation is getting to me, not just because the whole release has been surrounded in mystery but also because the trailers and teasers don't really reveal too much about what the dark force in the movie is, in addition when the movie was first announced their web page was a puzzle which contained a bunch of photographs that contained some hidden images, and even now the monster that supposedly is the dark force in the movie is still shrouded in mystery, is it "slusho" or "Cthulhu", whatever it is J.J Abrams seems to have a nack for arousing our curiosity in a lot of his shows, from Alias, to Lost, I remember in Lost they had managed to create a fake corporation called the Dharma Initiative, that was involved in scientific research. And his mysterious writing style continues in the marketing of this upcoming film, whatever the monster is I'm looking forward to watching this film once it's released.

who names the elements on the periodic table?

Well in the past newly discovered elements were named by the scientist that discovered them, such as polonium named by Marie Curie who first discovered and named it in honor of her homeland in Poland. But these days the elements names are decided by an International committee of chemists, and they are usually named after Greek gods, places, or scientists. Go figure, I guess if I ever find that elusive new elements or happen to suddenly come upon a new element out of just pure luck I guess jaynium is out of the question. Well at least we can still name stars at the International Star Registry, even though most starts are probably so distant that they will rarely be observed by any amateur astronomer observing the night sky, eh who cares, when that gigantic book with the names of stars and their RA and Dec my name will be in there. Of course this is not public since the star registry is a private company so most astronomers don't really care what the star is called it will just exist as a couple of letters and numbers depending on what galaxy the star is located in, or however else any of the many books published containing the coordinates of discovered stars happens to assign names to them. sigh.

Incase of fire what would I run out with?

So a few months back I was taking a shower one evening and began to hear some sort of a ringing bell, I thought it was nothing and just someone's loud smoke alarm going off because they probably left the stove on and their pot of spaghetti ran out of water and which eventually evaporated and burned the spaghetti, anyway, so as I finish my shower and still hear the ringing bell I start to wonder what that strange sound it, it sounded like a school bell going off indicating the end of class like we had in high school. So I get dressed and open up my front door and it's definitely not a school bell but rather the fire alarm, so I nonchalantly get my wallet keys, and cellphone and walk out of the building to find the rest of the tenants also waiting outside for a firetruck to come and turn off that annoying bell. Supposedly someone had pulled the fire alarm switch setting the bells ringing, I'm happy it just wasn't in the middle of the night. So it got me thinking if this was a real alarm what would I run out of the house with? Would I run out with my computer, but that would take time unplugging all the cables... should I run out with at least some form of id, I don't know... if all you people in the blog world had to run out with one thing what would it be? I think that at the least I should run out with some soap, toothpaste /brush and deodorant so that at least if I have to spend time in a shelter I won't stink :), or maybe I should take a fire extinguisher with me so that if there is a path that I need to walk through to get to safety but on fire, I can at least reduce the flames a little bit. I bet I would probably be too frantic and not even remember to take anything if the time came when I needed to run out.