Knowing: Some Questions

I recently watched the movie “Knowing” and some questions came to mind, so I thought I’d put them out-there. Before reading further, please bear in mind that this post contains some spoilers, so do NOT continue if that will be detrimental to your enjoyment of the movie.

So the movie centres around Randomness and Determinism, i.e., whether what happens in this universe is random or has it been pre-determined. Now obviously, this question is inherently controversial, in that most of the religions, certainly the Abrahamic ones, posit that things are pre-determined.

The movie “Knowing” can be viewed to support either viewpoint

The gist of the movie is that a character, in her young age, writes down a sequence of numbers. This sequence of numbers predicts every major disaster by specifying the date, the death toll and the geographic location (encoded as the latitude and longitude). The events of the movie are set 50 years on, when most of the events predicted by the sequence have already occurred.

The final disaster predicted by the sequence predicts that the disaster would end the world. Everyone would die, except some chosen ones. And indeed, we see in the climactic scenes that two children (and there is implication that several others as well) are transported by some entities to another Earth-like planet with 2 moons and lush fields of wheat, running towards a mystical tree from which flower blossoms are flowing off like snowflakes.

It is the manner in which the chosen children are transported that made me question what the movie seems to be stating.

The children are transported by spaceships that resemble Ezekiel’s Wheel.

NB: Ezekiel’s Wheel is the spherical structure in the bottom-left corner of the above illustration, taken from Wikipedia.

If the children were transported by a theological or metaphysical entity, then there would be no need for some kind of spaceship to do so. They would simply blink and find themselves in their new planet.

On the other hand, if the movie was implying that there was some kind of super-natural, ultra-intelligent, extra-terrestrial race of sentient beings that placed the human race on Earth and knew our actions (much like a programmer would know how a program written by her would work, even before she ran it), then, the movie would indeed need to illustrate that viewpoint the way it did in the movie.

Another question that comes to mind after watching the movie is: is this movie implying something about the source of religions?

There seems to be a suggestion in the movie that events far in the past can seem to be miraculous or metaphysical once they get shrouded by the mists of history. For example, take the account of Adam and Eve are recounted in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Once you peel away the layers, the account states that a male and a female were transported down to a planet.

This movie actually depicts that happening, but more importantly, it seems to imply that such an action does not need to be a divine action—that it can very well be the action of physical entities, albeit super-natural, ultra-intelligent, extra-terrestrial sentient beings.

I would be interested to know what other people thought after watching the movie.

How To Fix Escape and Tab Keys Not Working In Windows XP under Windows Vista or Windows 7

The Escape, Tab and other assorted keys can sometimes stop functioning under in XP running in Virtual PC under Windows Vista or Windows 7.

After searching for a possible solution, I found one, but it didn’t work for me, but I found a workaround, though it is a bit tedious.

First, the solution I found:

1. Shut down Virtual PC after shutting down any running virtual machines.

2. Go to Local Security Policy under Administrative Tools, which can be found under Control Panel.

3. In the Security Settings section on the right, select Additional Rules under Software Restriction Policies.

4. Create a new Path Rule.

5. Specify %AppData%\Microsoft\Virtual PC\VPCKeyboard.dll as the path.

Alternatively, C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Virtual PC\VPCKeyboard.dll can be specified, where %UserName% is the username under which you log into Windows.

6. Specify Unrestricted as the Security Level.

7. Restart Virtual PC and the misbehaving virtual machine and note that the Escape, Tab and other keys are now working.

Now, the problem is that the above solution did not fix the issue for me, while running under Windows 7. However, the following does work, intermittently.

1. Shut down Virtual PC after shutting down any running virtual machines.

2. Open Windows Explorer.

3. Type %AppData% in the address bar and press Enter.

4. Navigate to the path Roaming\Microsoft\Virtual PC under the %AppData% folder.

5. Locate the file Options.xml in the above folder and delete it.

6. Restart Virtual PC and the misbehaving virtual machine and note that the Escape, Tab and other keys are now working.

NB: The issue will occasionally reappear requiring the above process to be repeated. Needless to say, that is irritating.

This solution does work for me. I hope this helps. Please drop me your comments and if you know of a better way of fixing this issue.

This world has gone insane. Too many idiotic, "humane" laws.

Last week, a paedophile Craig Sweeney was sentenced to life in prison... except he can be out on parole in as little as 5 to 6 years. His crime: kidnapping and raping a 3 year old girl and taking her to a hostel for other paedophiles, presumably for them to repeat what he did with her.

I am amazed! I am speechless! How do people reconcile

Sweeney should be electrocuted in public and then the mother of the 3-year old invited to mutilate his dead body and then his remains fed to dogs and pigs. That, I think, would be a fit treatment for a person who thinks nothing of doing what he did with a defenseless 3-year old girl.

Today, I was reading a report on the cash-for-peerages scandal that the Labour Party has gotten itself embroiled in, in the United Kingdom and for some reason, I started thinking about the word peerage. Since I'm a little inquisitive by nature, I decided to look the word up in my favorite online dictionary.

Upon reading the definition, I was astounded. I was shocked. And, I was troubled.

Allow me to elucidate.

When I was a young boy, I used to study at one of the best educational institutions for young boys, in Pakistan. There were other boys with me there who came from a more feudal background. One of them was Shahid. He is a orthopedic surgoen now, reportedly also living in the United Kingdom. (Shouldn't it be United Queendom?) Whatever. I digress.

One night, after dinner, we were talking about our respective families, and he told me that he comes from a long line of gaddi-nasheens. Literally, that translates to he-who-sits-on-a-cushion. The word he used was peer (pronounced as in English but with the middle syllable î in pîr pronounced flatly). The general notion of who a peer is, in Pakistan, is someone who is religiously and spiritually elevated-- someone to whom one pledges one's allegience.

The important thing to note here is that there's a religiously-ordained aspect to this pledge of allegiance, i.e., those who are pledging this allegiance consider it their religious duty to pledge their allegiance to the peer. Moreover, the position of the peer as defined in Pakistani feudal society is hereditary, as the reader might already have presumed by my use of the phrase 'long line of gaddi nasheens' earlier in this post.

Now go take another look at the entry for peerage on my favorite online dictionary.

Are you astounded? Are you shocked? Are you troubled?

Is it a wonder that Islamic fundamentalism is coming back to bite the Western democracies in their asses?

Since this is my first post, I thought I'd introduce myself.

I am a 29 year old guy from Pakistan. I moved to the Queen's country last year in February. I spent 5 months staying with friends and family looking for a job and in August last year, I was found a job in an IT company and settled down in a small town called Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire with my wife and son.

My wife's name is Beenish and she's a doctor. She's also from Pakistan. Our son, Danyal, is 2 and a half years old.

The company I work for makes software for the retail industry. It's a great place to work at. The atmosphere is superb and in my 9 months or so working here, I am thankful that I haven't detected any under-currents of office politics. That, I believe, is a total turn off and a sure way to prompt me to start looking for another job.

I loathe personal controversy, since I'm a sedate sorta guy.

Anyhoo... let's post this blog and see if the domain name displays it nicely.