The people who dwell beneath our faces

The credit for this entry goes to my sister, who actually thought of this. Since this seemed like a pretty nice topic to write on, here goes.

Me and my sis were discussing all the differences between USA and India, things that we've noticed in our brief stay here. There was one thing we agreed upon, the bordering-on-weird insistence of people to say thanks for everything. I mean, if someone is especially nice or something, then it makes sense, but saying it all the time doesn't make much sense. It reduces the sentiment to a mere polite necessity, something people must follow. Not that I'm against politeness, I've experienced my share of unpleasantness back in Delhi, something that any other delhiite will attest to, we're not the most polite lot. To tell you frankly, atleast initially, the politeness and thank you's seemed very nice, they were a breath of fresh air. Even the things like cars stopping for you when you cross the road, in India, that's a death wish :) . But then came Thanksgiving, ooh and how that changed things.

To people who're not familiar with what I'm talking about, Thanksgiving here, is like the mother of all sales, once you set aside the obvious festive stuff, which I'm not too clear about. The so called "Black friday" is like a huge event the whole country gears up for, and sales announcements go out months in advance. At first I thought, ok, so it's a sale, so what. I didn't pay much attention to all the stories about people camping outside stores days in advance. Then came friday. Not feeling too enthused to camp outside anywhere in the kind of weather New York, we left at 11 in the morning, and made a customary stop at Walmart. The signs were there, the usually empty parking lot, was choc-a-bloc full. There were masses of people around, and I found myself thinking, this feels more like home, well, chandni chowk atleast. The differences were clearly apparent, no cars stopped for people, no one said thank you, or anything like that. People were even downright rude, honking incessantly, the likes of which you wouldn't face in Delhi even. That confirmed something that had crept into my mind over the past few days. That the politeness that people present, is well, a sham. no one really feels it, but people still project that smiling face and talk politely.

The inherent fakeness of the whole business is kind of shocking. People from the west repeatedly criticize people of the east for being impolite, which is not all false, but still. It probably is still better than faking it, that's something I probably I hate the most. And that slowly tied itself to a lot of other things in my head. The first, and seemingly obvious thing is to tie it to the declining birth rates in the west. Ok, don't laugh and fall over just yet. Everyone knows about the issue, and it seems like a simple logical step. No one would ever want to marry someone without knowing that person from the inside (I mean the personality perverts). That would be a herculean task if that required first tunneling through a mountain of enforced politeness. It simply would take some serious thinking to be sure that what the other person is doing for you is actually real, or if it's a front. I remember what my father says, being an avid, and pretty good photographer, that the best shots are captured when you don't pose. True beauty lies in the moment, and in that impromptu, unrehearsed action. After seeing a lot of the photos, it's kinda hard to deny it. That brings another thought to mind, whether the unrelenting march towards "civility" is actually as good as it's touted. Ok, not killing each other is fine, but being polite all the time is stretching it. Because, forcing people to be polite doesn't change them, it just pushes that inherent malice deeper inside layers of jargon. If the many thousands of years of "civilised" existence have shown, this malice can never be rooted out of people. Which kind of explains the reason why civilizations at the pinnacle of their existence die out, human society simply cannot withstand the barrage of sophistication.

To clarify a bit, I'm a bit partial against all the sophistication. I mean who hasn't seen a scene in a movie where no one knows what all the forks are for! To put it simply, having too much sophistication really kills the fun, so lighten up, and try to not be so stiflingly polite :P

Peace

Peace

Peace, a thought with a noble sense
Nowadays, just a tattered fence
Which sought to change the world
Into a livable place
But is now waiting for someone,
To give it, the coup de grace.

Great leaders fought for it for years
And saw a glimmer of hope
Another few, took only minutes
To make it a worldwide joke.
Many people used it,
Like caste and creed
And disposed it off as they pleased.

The real meaning behind it is forgotten
It is just an instrument,
Used for means so rotten
And now I wonder
Whether the time has come
To let peace, rest in peace?

-- Me

Looking back...

Even though I'm still short on time, I realised I do best when I'm facing a deadline :) , so here goes.

Doing my usual timewasting, I stumbled across an invite to my (high) school's alumni meet in January. To people who don't know, I'm from the Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram, a name whose fame is rivalled probably only by my other alma mater, IIT Delhi. Ya you will obviously disagree, but who cares, it's my blog, not yours. And when I read the date, and a comment by my close friend, I realised it's gonna be 6 years I've been an alumni dipsite (ya that's what we're called). And that's what made me realise it's been that long. In many ways I'm that same person I was then, in many ways, I'm very different. On the outside, I look much the same, probably a little geekier, some side effects of IIT there, heck some time back my nursery teacher recognized me without breaking a sweat! . Inside, dunno, I'm much the same, but very different. Whenever I look back I'm always amazed by how naive, how innocent I used to be. I guess we all do, that's why the cliche (ugh! never knew I'd say that) "the good old days" exists. People who keep track of me through this blog are likely to imagine me as this depressed guy, I don't usually write when I'm happy, I just enjoy that time.

Getting back, the past is such a wonderful thing. People remember their school life as a horror or a wonderful ride, it's sorta difficult to be lukewarm about it. I guess it's a mixture of both, else there won't be million dollar industries to cash in on it. To tell you frankly, I was never one of the "cool" kids. I never regretted it, even when the maiden mobile movie enterprise from my school came out :P . Maybe especially then. If you don't know what I'm talking about and are from India, what world were you in! I was kind of the archetypical studious boy, minus the specs for most of my school time, and as I'd like to believe, minus some of the geekiness. Frankly, I'm a lot geekier now than I was then, but then, IIT does that to you. The simple fact is that when I look back, I remember all these wonderful people I met, all the experiences I had. I'd never wish to change any of it, who I was then made me who I am today, and I'm pretty happy with that. The funny thing is how I used to imagine, that 6 years down the line after passing out from school, I'd be set, decided on what I wanted to do with my life, and actually doing it. Now I realise, I only have a vague idea of what I want to do with my life, and I'm not quite there, and probably we never do. If we do get to where we want to go, that makes you lose your purpose to live, which is probably the worst thing that can happen to anyone. I guess the best we can do is to always remember that child inside of us. That's why, I guess, they say, no matter where you go, don't forget your roots, where you come from. I still remember myself as a wide eyed little kid, holding my mom's hand, entering the school on my first day, as I do my last. I still remember entering IIT for the first time, and leaving it for the last time. I guess I'll always remember coming to UNC, and definitely leaving it too. I've had some good, some bad, and some truly wonderful memories, made my best friends at these places and had some of the best times of my life. If I give credit to who or what has made me who I am, these places and the people I met there, come second only to my family. These places will forever remain enshrined in my head as those wonderful places, which regular places in this world aspire to be, but never achieve, inhabited by such wonderous people whom even fiction cannot match, with memories to match. These places, ladies and gentlemen, are my heaven, and forever they shall be. In the words of the mughal emperor Humayun, "Gar barruye zameen asto, hameen asto, hameen asto, hameen asto", which roughly translates to, if there is a heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.

Life

This is one more of my old poems, while I still am plagued by lack of time

Life
You can be surrounded by friends, yet be all alone,
You could have won the greatest prize, yet lost it all,
You could be the happiest person in the world, yet find no reason to smile,
You could have known a person a lifetime, yet find a stranger in front of you everyday.

You could have seen all the world has to offer, yet not seen anything at all,
You could be the richest guy alive, yet poorer than the beggar on the street,
You could be the most powerful & influential person, yet be the most helpless.

Life is not about what you choose, but what you do with what has been given to you,
It’s about leaving your past behind and think about the present, yet not drift into the future,
It’s not just about pondering over who you are, it’s about putting those thoughts into action,
Because you are unchangeable, irreplaceable, and so are those around you,
Because where there is good, there is evil, and it’s not in your power to root out all of it,
But what is, is to overcome it & look at the bright side of life,
Because you have but one life, so put it to good use, and relax and leave the rest to life.

-- Me

Hope

This is one of quite a few poems I wrote a long time back, I'm going to put these up over a period of a few days while I come up with some new ideas :D

Hope

When you are down
And you try to smile,
But all that comes is a frown.
When the odds are against you
When the thought of failure plagues you,
When all friends have left your side
Then, deep down inside,
A ray of hope comes to life
And within you, ends all strife
Thoughts sort themselves out
And you are rid of all doubt
It gives you the inspiration to fight
Against all odds, against all might

It is not an instrument of the great
It isn't all just fate
It's all in your hands
It stems from the will to succeed
Obstructions in your path, there shall be,
But to those, pay no heed
Cause they shall always be
Draw strength from the will
The path is uphill
But don't lose hope
Because my friend, we shall overcome,
Succeed you will.

-- Me

The Holy Inquisition and Wall street crashes

I was watching this somewhat interesting movie out of boredom, which briefly dwelled on the topic of the inquisitions and how the people of Venice turned from fawning over courtesans to blaming them for all the ills that befell them. And essentially how they were tried and convicted as witches. In case you're wondering, it wasn't a documentary, just something Netflix popped up on my screen. Also, in case you're about to cringe and shy away fearing yet another history lesson, well, don't, I'm not gonna explain what the inquisition was.

One fact I do wish to discuss, is how in history, women have been blamed for a lot of ills that occured. They deserve credit, they've taken the flak for a lot of things which weren't their fault at all. It's quite interesting how we tend to try and find scapegoats for everything. Whenever things are going well, we are happy and adore the people revelling in success. But as soon as things turn bad, we revile the very same people, blaming them for all ills. In history, though we didn't exactly place women on a pedestal, but they were usually the ones blamed whenever any natural calamity struck. Courtesy, religion, and the world being male dominated. The Holy Inquisition is just the worst of the kind that took place. And to look at it, history is littered with similar incidences where a few exploited people's insecurities to label a certain section as responsible for all ills. The most famous of them all is probably Hitler's crusade against the Jews, but it is probably not the bloodiest or the one affecting the most number of people. Essentially, we start becoming a one man justice system, and give them no real chance to defend themselves. That's probably the herd mentality, or simple ignorance. When we suffer by no fault of ours, we often want some scapegoat to blame.

And actually we don't need to go too far back to look for evidence of such acts. The recent Wall street crashes and global economic collapse is a simple example. We were quick to blame the bankers who handle these things. Well, not to say they aren't at all responsible for what's happened, but simply, the majority aren't, and it's this majority that's been hit the worst by this. But then why do we blame them? jealousy. We've watched these people enjoy a lavish existence, by apparently doing no work, while we suffer and slave in our daily lives. Well, it's a little true, it's hard not to feel envious of their existence, and we inherently bide our time to hit back at the ones we feel jealous of, it's simple human nature. And since now it's our time, we blame the entire kind of bankers for all ills, a kind that needs to be purged or controlled to fix things. Similar arguments tend to be used in communal riots, an event that's sadly too common in my own country. Even more so, I've heard many more such arguments in the "war against terror". So why does that deserve quotes? we've so simply put the tag of a terrorist on just about every muslim we see, that it's actually disturbing. The people we vilify as terrorists, do we ever try to find out what plagued their lives. While I still don't condone their actions, I can see why some would take up arms. They are shown such similar arguments against the west, like you are shown against them. They have their own insecurities, some have probably suffered a personal loss as well. But the general fear would probably be sufficient to induce such a condition. Any smart person knows how easy it is to brainwash a scared person, you can simply make them do whatever you want. Manipulation of others is like a primal tool we all have, and use subconciously everyday. Some are better at this than others, and most of these people, become leaders in little time.

What you can take from this? look at someone who the world, or even you despise with an impartial eye. Look at the circumstances that made them do the things they did, what would you do in their situation. And before judging "I'd never do that still!" remember what crazy things your mind can make you do when insecure. And maybe look at that person, and give him a second chance, a benefit of doubt to earn your respect, before you move on. Maybe if we all did that, the world might just be a better place.

The Rise and Fall of empires

I'm guessing I'll be getting a lot of flames after this, so my only request is to keep an open mind. This issue is pretty contentious, and people usually have pretty fixed views on such topics.

This topic was motivated partly by the goings on at Wall Street and other things, which made some of the dormant things in my head pop up again. To get to it, lets first look at great empires. History, or rather historians offer plenty of examples, be it the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and many more. The Romans are usually held as kind of the template used by future great empires of the region, like the Byzantines, even the erstwhile British empire to a certain extent. Whether calling the British empire a great empires is right or not, but the sheer size of the region under its control is an attestation to its glory. All these, and other civilizations are always remembered for their architecture, how they established large cities where earlier there were none, and the spread of education. You'll find volumes over volumes of books and numerous historians who can tell you explicit details of these civilizations. There is the obvious dark thread as well that ties them together, which is that all of them relied heavily on slave labour for many and most of their great architectural achievements. It was a model perfected by the Romans I believe, and used for aeons to come. One more common thread was that these were military empires, they conquered places and stationed troops to maintain order. That perhaps is the biggest defining characteristic of an empire, the ability to maintain control and order. In the ancient and medieval eras, military domination and controlling trade routes was the only option to keep the empire running. And what almost always brought about the end of an empire was the failure to keep these two conditions satisfied. To keep one part of the world in luxury, some other parts must be overworked, overtaxed, and essentially exploited. Plus, to keep things politically sound, there always needs to be an overarching philosophical justification for the actions of the elite. As it is, exploitation usually breeds revolution, and seeds for the destruction of the empire. I concede my examples are exclusive to european empires, but they are the ones about which we know the most.

Stepping into the modern era, military empires are untenable. Public opinion and the easy dissemination of information have meant that the previous philosophical justifications can no longer hold. Obviously there do exist more sophisticated arguments for other kinds of control and dominance, but fighting wars is very difficult, as the americans have realised. Wars create such a barrage of bad publicity, let alone the terrorist responses, that it's difficult to stem the flow of public outrage from around the world. But the crux of my article is not really military empires, I've discussed them to death earlier as well. In the modern era, philosophical and economic dominance is the a-la-mode (well blogger doesn't allow french accents, or atleast I don't know how to get them) method. If I may, I'll borrow Mr. Ahmadinejad's almost favourite term, the american empire. I obviously don't mean it in the way he does, I only intend it to mean the dominance of the USA over the financial markets of the world. A financial crisis has hobbled the markets around the world. There are obviously those around the world who are gladdened by these developments, I, frankly am not. My reasons primarily centre around the money I have myself lost in my stock portfolio (yes, I do have shares). I'm always amazed by the amount of control USA, through its companies, wields over the financial, so to say, ecosystem. I like to see the source of all major developments in some conflict, and I consider the second World War as the major turning point for USA. It hobbled Great Britain, which frankly was destroyed by war, in addition to losing all its colonies. It was essentially reduced to what someone said, the inconsequential island in the Atlantic. Plus, Britain, and most of europe, owed USA huge amounts for war supplies and reconstruction costs. Plus the huge navy developed helped USA control the largest resource on earth, the seas and oceans. They essentially controlled trade, and with the capitalist model of mass production, they made huge profits and established massive trade surpluses with just about everyone. With that, the dollar became the base currency for the world, a stable currency which is used by everyone to trade in. 50 years on, things started to change. The former Asian and African colonies started to come up. Now, China, and to a much lesser extent, India are starting to wield considerable influence, or so I'd like to believe. India, sad to say, never adopts controversial stances on anything, but the Chinese do. They are fiercely competitive of their interests, and they essentially used the same model the USA used to create their dominance. Mass production, at varying levels of quality, is swamping the world with Chinese goods. I'm really not concerned whether that's a good or bad thing, the Chinese are fiercely proud, and will try their level best that major snafus, like the recent milk adulteration problems, are not repeated. The simple thing is, that Chinese firms are beating the USA at its own game. China now has a substantial dollar reserve, and is on the lookout for takeover. Years of trade deficit at the USA end have led to such an outflux of dollars that it is difficult to prevent the world from amassing them in huge quantities. The problem is that the USA's production edge is gone, almost all commodity level production has been shifted abroad. Their only major control lies in the financial markets. And with the ongoing financial crisis, that major pillar of the American "empire" is threatened. Probably the government realises this at some level. This is where I come back to control, for the survivability of an empire, it must maintain control and order. When it doesn't, a new empire usually takes its place, for how long, it's difficult to predict. In the current scenario, China &, to a somewhat lesser extent, Europe is starting to present a viable alternative to the USA for having a financial centre of world. It's hard to overlook China, when most of the things are made there. The thing is that, if Wall street caves, it'll be the coup-de-grace (pardon the french again :D ) for American dominance in the economic sphere. The military can only do so much in such a scenario. USA cannot dominate negotiations using the power of force alone in today's world. Of course, the collapse of such a magnitude would take years to complete, but the period of chaos that indicates a transition is underway, and if it's not stemmed, one can only imagine the outcome, not for the world, but for the USA.

Movies and superheroes

I've always been a big fan of comics and superheroes. There is something magical about seeing a crusader standing up for the weak, and triumphing over not just evil people, but evil itself. Someone with the power to change the world, and someone who uses it. A person bigger than life itself.

There's a simple charm to such tales. It's much easier to see black and white separately in such stories rather than the muddled grey we usually see. Yet the people behind the heroes are very human themselves, they're usually shy, honest and truthful. They stand behind curtains looking at the ones they love, the ones they would like to be with, the ones they may never have. It's something I guess every geeky and nerdy guy, and comic fan would relate to. But oddly so, I think others do too. People are inherently nervous, in times where they feel powerless to prevent harm to what they hold dear, they tend to look to higher powers for help and guidance. Ample proof is provided by the thousands of miracle stories just about any recently devout person will tell you, how the lord helped them overcome great misery and problems. I feel that little scared kid never quite dies in anyone, he or she is the core of anyone's persona, and in times of peril, we tend to recede to that very persona. Every scared kid needs someone to hold their hand and tell them it's gonna be ok. Though this might sound like an extremely twisted proof to such a claim, an interesting "research" was published in the media some time back. The reason research is in quotes is that the authors were from the (in)famous Playboy magazine. They simply correlated the centrefolds' vital statistics to the times when people were under duress, for e.g. economic downturns etc. What they found was extremely interesting. Men (well , people is a useless generalization here) chose more curvaceous women in times of economic upturn, or when things were going well. In times of depression, they chose women who looked more liked they could take care of them.

Well you may ask what does this have to do with movies exactly? That's simple, try to find the biggest hits of the past 7 years or so, and they'll mostly be fantasy tales about superheroes and the like. 7 is kind of the pivotal number here, cause I'm making a reference to 9/11 here. It seems a lot of the american public hasn't quite emerged from the shock of that time. They still feel that the wrongdoers have not been punished, and they are still at risk. Movies have also adopted a very politically active role, making snide references here and there to the ongoing events.

One might ask, why do things take so much time to heal as we grow older. Well, a major part of the answer is in the question itself, we grow older, more rigid. Another big part is probably that as an adult you are expected to take care of others, and generally hide your fears. Our problems tend to accumulate inside us and we have no one to turn to for answers. And no one to put our problems in perspective, we're pretty likely to get excessively tense about trivial things.

I sometimes wonder if it would be better if there was someone who had all the answers, or atleast someone who could point us in the right direction. Someone who knew exactly what to say, when we're lost for words. Someone who could prevent bad things from happening and people we care about go away. Someone who could be our very own ... superhero.

There and Back Again, an Indian's tale

I recently arrived in USA for pursuing a Ph.D. . For people who know me and haven't been in touch :P , that might be a shock, but I believe my self from one year back would feel the same way. Anyways, I decided to enjoy some time before joining the course, and am staying for some time with my brother in New Jersey.

USA in general is very different from India, almost diametrically opposite actually. The first time I landed here, the scale of infrastructure is beyond anything ever seen in India. I once heard a slogan, "Everything is bigger in Texas", as compared to India, I feel the statement is fitting for the whole of USA. Everywhere you see, things are bigger, people are bigger ( :P ), and buy in bigger quantities. It really makes me wonder why George Bush thought that India and China are causing food shortages! no one there ever eats on this scale. The effects of having many magnitudes of land more, and a similar fraction smaller population is plainly visible. There's greenery everywhere, and things can be built to a larger scale. There are hundreds of small cities compared to a few huge ones. I feel the biggest difference is that people are, atleast on the surface, more polite and warmer. Strangers greet each other, cars stop for pedestrians, generally stuff that you would never expect in India.

All in all, people live very different lives than in India. That's probably why they like people from India, who focus on their work mostly, and pay very little attention to other things. A trip to the Indian dominated part of New Jersey quickly illustrates the difference. Cars suddenly don't stop for pedestrains as easily. A different odor hangs in the air, a smell distinctly indian, but from an unidentified source. The people, obviously look different. You can actually see people from every part of India in one place, something very difficult to see even in India. Once I entered an Indian store outlet and turned my back to the entrance, it was difficult to see that I was not in India. For most of my time, I was smiling and close to laughing, why? dunno, maybe it was that the sight of familiar faces brought back some sense of assurance. More so, it was the understanding that nowhere you go, indians will remain the same. I believe that throughout our childhood we learn to interpret emotions from facial expressions, and a lot more. Moving to another place with different people probably sets this instinct off, you no longer know what's the right custom, what people mean when they say the most common of things (apart from the obvious meanings of course) etc. etc. That probably is the source of culture shock, something that been "right" is not right anymore. You've suddenly been returned to the stage where u were as an infant, plus you don't learn as fast anymore. It's quite easy why it's unsettling for people, and the reason some need help.

The fact that Indians mostly overcome greater problems, fighting for everything against others and the system, is probably the reason why they are successful. They can battle anything, succeed in spite of all odds. That is the difference with China as well, China is an example of how, a system perfectly optmized for attaining certain goals can work. On the other hand, India is more of a game theory playground, how even when everyone selfishly thinks for himself, a country can progress at such a pace. In spite of apathy from the government, other people, the people still have created a wonderful example for success. Usually at this point, people say how if there was a better "system" and "governance", India could so so much more, but what they miss out is that the bad system has made the people this way so that they can tackle anything. It's a simple give and take, adversity shows the best or worst in people, but it always shows the extreme, and optimized response, which ensures the maximum possible results, good or bad.

Political correctness

Today I was reading an article on how the USA's negotiator with Brazil for the upcoming WTO trade negotiations, Susan Schwab was hurt by the Brazilian counterpart's remarks. He had apparently compared the tactics employed by negotiators from developed countries to Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, and Schwab is descendant from Jewish holocaust survivors. His exact statement? as quoted by Yahoo, "Goebbels used to say if you repeat a lie several times it becomes a truth," and "I am reminded of Goebbels", quoting certain parts. Though I know that forming an opinion on the basis of incomplete comments is dangerous, my point is not entirely based on this.

Recently Britain's schools have changed the nursery rhymes taught in schools (see here). Britain, or the United Kingdom to be more correct, has almost been at the forefront of political correctness, replacing black with rainbow, etc. etc. Some of the changes are actually quite hilarious. Before you start raising fingers at me, let me point out that I'm also a "coloured" person. But the simple fact is that when you say baa baa black sheep, I can't see any semblance of racial discrimination. In a contorted way, possibily yes, but then you can see innuendos in just about any statement. Language, any language is an approximate representation of what we wish to express. In algebra, we call this dimensionality reduction. One of the most common ways of doing this is PCA or Principal Component Analysis, which is that you try to gauge the common thread in the data, to put it very crudely. This is done with almost rampant disdain in computer vision to remove noise in data collected from natural sources (:D no offense, I know it's necesary). Which is why it's quite beyond my comprehension, why we haul up someone based on some part of a statement. Isn't it relevant as to what thread was being followed and the context in which the statement was made? I always find that the media, press in particular, tends to highlight such things to gain TRPs, taking out small sections of statements and contorting them. Problem is that these sections are used by a majority of people to form opinions even without knowing the full fact.

While I do accede that little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the press may claim that it is the responsibility of the people to find the truth, but the press are most people's only source for such information. Even more so, we must allow some leeway for people's inherent stupidity. You may not notice it, but everyday you'll make many insensitive comments to a multitude of people. But, being part of everyday occurence, people ignore them, as part of the lost art of common sense. If you feel that you're not part of such a group, try and listen to what you said, you'll be shocked.

Every statement can be taken in atleast 2 ways, so don't try to create a context out of a statement. Like my favourite PCA, gauge the common thread. And though I concede I've never as yet been a victim of discrimination on the basis of colour or the other common things, I still feel some judgement call should be made the statements that are held as discriminatory. Though it's probably a better thing for people not to say stupid things, but that's quite a thing to ask, don't you think? I mean, in India, being a general category male is like a curse. People have a tendancy to blame this category for all evils that plague society. And being part of this category implies that you have to slog for everything a little more than everyone else, meaning people having reservations, even though I myself didn't do anything against them, nor have anything against them. Without digressing, let me just say that reverse discrimination is as prevalent as discrimination.

To conclude, I just want to say, that it's been more than 50 years since the Nazi's were overthrown. Give them germans and others a break. Referring to a person of that group doesn't mean that you condone their actions, you're simply using them as an example. They did terrible things, and it can cause a lot of hurt to be reminded of them, but they're still the past. A new generation has now emerged who don't grasp the brutalities of the actions done in the past century, as well as people of the developing world who didn't have anything to do with it. These people are already paying some price or another for what happened, even though they were direct or indirect victims, and not the perpetrators. Political correctness can seriously stifle free communication, and lead to more problems that it can solve. In my opinion, though people should be educated to be more careful about what they say, they should also be educated to be more tolerant. Being all prickly and quick to get insulted is probably not the best way to go about things. In that spirit, I apologize to anyone who finds this article insulting in any way.

Art, depressed artists and nervous exam takers

I'm one of those people who, when looking at some piece of modern art, do seriously wonder what people see in them. Mind you, some pieces are seriously good, but some actually look like someone's baby puked on them. I once took a philosophy course in college, called art and technology (though I never quite saw the tech part :D ). It was interesting, to say the least. Though my limited philosophical skills saw me scrape throught the course, I did pick up some interesting insights into what is art, and how do people perceive it.

As part of my class presentation, I picked up music as the art subject of interest, and tried to go about thinking, how and why do we actually like music?? or even hate it, or worst of all, go from hating to liking it!. Trust me, songs do have this way of growing on you. And I saw these 2 concepts, "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", and the obvious one, that beautiful things, are beautiful cause they have something in them. Which actually contradict each other, so u can't pick both.

You know, there was something taught in school which I never quite figured out a purpose for, resonance. It's quite wonderful in essence, and it says that everything, i mean everything has a certain resonant frequency. Which means that if u send waves of a certain frequency into the object, it'll vibrate like hell, much more than any other frequency. Still don't get it? remember that cool gadget Bond used to shatter glass? that's it. In school we actually had this experiment to determine the resonant frequency of something, don't remember what. In fact, there's this story that while walking on bridges, armies march out of step so as not to accidently make the bridge collapse, cause supposedly it's happened.

So you may ask why does resonance come into the picture?? well the answer's half already there. Forget the physics of it, and just focus on the concept, everything responds more to a certain input than any other. For more clarity, try and remember any memory in your head, and apart from that vivid image in your head, notice that you'll remember how you felt then. Sometimes those emotions might not even make sense to you, most people just ignore them. But the fact that your brain records them in the same detail as any sensory input gives an important clue to the importance your brain gives to emotions. Before I finally state my claim, consider this fact, you'll always like certain songs when you're in certain moods. It may differ for different people, but there are certain clear trends, like mopey songs when you're sad etc. etc. Well, that's it, isn't it, resonance. Your brain responds to certain types of songs when facing certain emotions. It's like your radio receives signals (resonance again :P) you tune it to a particular frequency, and voila music. Similarly, I believe, emotions tune your brain to accept certain input better, or look at things in a different way.

Still don't believe me? try playing different songs when in different moods, they'll seem seriously different. For me, when I'm pensive, like when writing this blog, I like songs more like Friday, by Goldspot, when i'm depressed or trying to drive myself to work, Linkin Park or other heavy metal style music is more like it. Forgive me, if my music classification is off, never got around to figuring it out. I especially give an example of music, because more people experience this form of art than any other.

With this done, you should be wondering, why does this resonance happen? well your brain gives you clues. It'll faintly reminisce about the past. I believe your brain keeps recalling memories, it's its way of understanding stuff, fitting current experiences to past ones. Which is why, if the song brings back memories whose dominant emotion matches your current state, you'll like it. But you'll still have stronger reactions to sad emotions, that's something I never quite understand. Which brings me to art in general, its appreciation requires that you have experiences some of those emotions expressed by its creation. And creation of art is even more problematic.

Most of you would have noticed, how many artists die of depression related stuff like suicides, drug overdoses etc. And as I said, people have stronger recalls of adverse emotions. Even more personal experiences, I feel that creating art requires a certain amount of depression, sadness. When seems plausible, when you're happy, why would you go through the whole process? why wouldn't you rather enjoy. This probably requires more thought, and so I'd rather leave it for another post considering how long this one has become.

My last topic for this post, nervous exam takers :D, well I'm one too. This too does have some relation to all of this, cause, as I said recall brings back emotions as well. So if u were not too confident while studying, in addition to having low confidence, you run the risk of having those emotions come back during your exam. Try thinking about it sometime.

Well, that about does it, that should clarify some things about art, but u're always welcome to use my opinions about some work of art when I don't like it, a baby could've done it!

Moments...

Have you ever felt, for a moment, that time would stop, and this moment would stop forever? Know it sounds awefully cliched, almost movie worthy cliched, but it's interesting. Better minds than me, have said “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” So it might be worth paying moments more than a cursory glance. I truly do believe in the statement, so if have never have had any such moment, look for one, mebbe you had one but never noticed.

In your free time, try reminiscing for once. What you'll notice, that with each memory, you also tend to recall some bit of the emotions that you felt at the time. In fact, the moments clearest in our minds tend to coincide with our emotional moments (ya that includes being angry as well). Depending on the kind of person you are, you'll probably pay more attention to certain emotions than others. If you think I'm picking up from some theory, nope, in fact I'll be highly surprised if there's a theory that says so.

Why is it important? if what I'm saying is right, then maybe at the fag end of your life, with nothing much to do, you will reminesce. And it's these moments that'll come up in your mind, so it pays to pay some attention, as you might just have some choice in what your life's movie reel look's like. This is mirrored in a lot of literature you'll find, and I'll mention one line from one very nice poem I read once, "Don't dance so fast, time is short, the music won't last"

So try and live life in the moment, mebbe you'll pick a memory that you'll cherish for all life. But don't live in that memory, it's a memory, and is best left in the mind, not to be wondered about. It can never come back, never be changed, only remembered.

Exhausting efforts of optimization!

Warning: Any non-geeks, avoid this article, u're unlikely to appreciate, let alone understand the article(no offense, but it is the case here).

I write this post after having spent the past 8 hours on trying to optimize my program. My code was originally written in Visual C++ (i.e. Windows) and on finding no tools to let me profile my code, i shifted to gcc (i.e. linux). Why a commercial programming suite lacks a profiling tool is baffling. It would only let me do a profile guided optimization. In my experience, a good programmer with a profiler can do a hell lot better job at optimization than any compiler. In fact, after my efforts, adding any other optimization flag other than the obv -O3 actually slowed down the code!. That is one big reason i like linux and gcc. It's a developer's os, meant expressly for development, which is why its adoption by other people baffles me a bit, they're not using the most powerful features of the os, and giving up quite a bit of user friendliness in the process.

One of my professors once said, that some code written by a novice programmer can be speeded up about 10-20 times by an highly experienced programmer who knows his hardware, even without knowing what the program does. Though this might be a bit of an insult to some, it's true to an extent. I've actually hit the 10 times mark on some of my own code :D , and the code wasn't badly written to begin with. But, something the confuses me is that there is no comprehensive guide to writing fast code. There are some basic tenets which if followed, can give very good performance on any machine. In my opinion, hardware specific optimizations are best left to compilers, unless u're really gud at it. you'll always find the basic stuff like locality of reference, pass by reference etc. Yet no one usually talks about the stuff you can do if you spend some time with the program. Statistical analysis is an amazing tool. The biggest thing that tend to slow down code is branching. Only very experienced people can truly minimize the branch penalty. But you can do some things on your own. See which options are more likely to occur, and try to keep these options higher up in the 'if' condition checks. Simple as this may sound, it's often ignored. Plus, removing unnecessary conditional checks. See if some condition checks can be reduced, e.g. if u're using nested if's see if conditions on the outer loop variable can be confined to the outer loop, it can speed things up by quite a bit.

Adding threads is also a good idea, especially for scientific codes. OpenMP is an amazing tool that you can use if you don't want to get your hands dirty with thread management. Most modern compilers support it, and using it, you can usually speed up your code by about twice (in most cases which can be parallelized) with about 5 minutes of effort. But not always, it actually slowed down my code by twice, even though it's eminently parallelizable. The fact that it was GCC may have something to do with it, their OpenMP implementation is still new. Open source guys, don't scream that i don't know what i'm doing, that's the reason and it's not gcc's fault, I'm decently experienced at code optimization, and i quite put the blame squarely on gcc, cause the same code was speeded up by vc++ when openmp was switched on.

You'll be amazed how some basic thinking can help you write code that can make those crappy looking algos run better than more sophisticated ones. To those who only believe in big-Oh's , try meeting a systems guy with programming experience, you'll be amazed at how O(n2) may be less than O(nlogn) :D

Wonderful childhood

As kids, we're always in a hurry to grow up. We want to outgrow the dictatorial regime that is our parents and get the freedom to do whatever we want, do whatever we want (and probably eat whatever we want :D). We're carefree, have nothing to think about, and tend to generally have fun. Ok, this is getting a little movie-like perfect, but that's an opinion of a grown up. One of the most, if not the most wonderful parts of childhood, in hindsight, is the freedom from making decisions. Everything is decided for us, be it which school, what to wear (to a certain extent) etc. etc. At that time, we little realise what a perk this is. Resolving a quarrel is so easy! a parent just has to intervene, and we're done, their word is the law.

These last 2 lines are probably the most important. As you come to the nervous teens and adolescence, you realise how much decisions can hurt, and haunt. Your decisions can be small and insignificant, or ones that shape your life. Don't know about you, but I'm cursed to wonder about what ifs, about each an every decision I make. I'm probably built that way, and my upbringing and having to sit cooped up indoors for long times (I was sick a lot as a kid, asthma), makes me wonder about each and every decision I make, and how that affects me, and more so, others. I always remember my carefree childhood, when the most difficult decision to make was probably which ice-cream flavour to take. Talking about the best time, the worst time is probably adolescence. I have had the opportunity of going to one of the best universities in India, but as I near the end of the degree, I still wonder whether how I spent my 5 years here was right. Whether doing something differently would have made things different, whether the path I've picked is the right one. I believe, decisions taken during this period will stay with one for all life, be it as cherished memories, or nightmares that haunt. This is what makes one realise the true value of the innocence and carefree times that were our childhood. Which is why I hate reports of child prodigies, a child should live their childhood with as little burden as possible. Let them go outside and experience the world, don't push them to work 3 hours a day to master some instrument or chess. What you do as a child makes or breaks you as a person. Most of us focus on working harder and harder, making our minds toil to the ends of their limits, trying to push a little further. Don't trust me? try asking some undergrad from a top institute to sit down and do nothing, just relax and take in the atmosphere, they won't be able to. Why? because your mind aggressively trims powers in the early years which it considers irrelevant, to make space for what, we and it, consider important. And running in the rat race makes you exactly that, a rat, running mindlessly in its wheel, unware that it can stop. Still wondering why many brilliant minds burn out? or sportstars retire in their prime because nothing drives them? See if Phelps or Hingis ring bells. When you work hard, so hard, something inside you dies, that child. That child inside you lets you laugh, to enjoy, to love, and look wonderously at every new day.

Remember my next point? that wonderous resolution of quarrels? well, as you grow up, you become more and more sure of yourself. Gaining knowledge breeds confidence, and whether we like it or not, confidence breeds arrogence. Just as courage is not lack of fear but the ability to overcome it, humility is not the lack of arrogance, but the ability to overcome it. As we become more and more sure of ourselves, we disregard authority, of everyone around us. As we become powerful, even more so. Why do you think that global problems are so hard to resolve? there no one to scold the 2 idiots and make them say sorry. Plus, the slight problem that things that people do as adults tend to become hard to tide over by a simple sorry. Maybe they are, but we attach more to them than as kids. Maybe resolving things this way would be easier, but we'll probably never find out.

So, the next time you try to look at that little kid and think you're better, think again. They have a lot more things you can never have, and can be someone you never will.

Things getting hotter!

The topic of global warming is the hot topic these days (pun unintended :D). Especially singers the world over seem to be concerned more than everyone else about it. Why singers is something that escapes me, some other people, notably politicians are always averse to talking about it. In fact, the biggest user of fuels, the USA actually refuses to commit to any changes. The fact that emerging powerhouses, China and India, also do not wish to do anything, doesn't help anyone. They can probably hide behind the argument that their fragile developing economies cannot take the load. While the USA hides behing their fragile developed economy. Actually a lot of people also place doubts on the accuracy and truth behind claims that our actions are responsible for global warming. Some data has been thrown around that it's actually become cooler at some place, god knows where. My hometown has become progressively hotter in the summers and colder in the winters, rainy season is now dry (it rains more in the winters), and the list goes on.

The wonderful work of researchers is evident. Someone (Aaron Levenstein actually, who's he??) once said that, "Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." . I'd like to add, like a bikini, what's revealed depends a lot on ur vantage point. You can make interesting conclusions from the same statistics, even completely contradicting stuff.

Still, no one can deny that the earth is definitely heating up. And sense dictates, that like any other natural calamity we try our best to avert it. But, most world leaders seem to be convinced that this is not the case. From what I know, this phase is usually a precursor to a coming ice age, meaning the ice caps at the poles will melt completely, flooding the planet, and eventually freezing to ice. Kinda like Day After tomorrow showed, but a little less dramatic. Well, maybe we'll be around to see whether things actually happen the way it's claimed. Maybe it will, the earth hasn't lost its supremacy to any puny creature as yet, it has ways to show who's boss.

The big fuss about religion

Whether you like it or not, religion remains one of the most powerful phenomenon in this world today, and, has occupied this position of power and prestige for most of known civilized human existence. The kind of blind belief that religion can attract is, in the least, quite amazing. Even though most people would like to believe that religion has been separated from state, it's not true (ya, even in the predominantly christian west). Need proof? for islamic nations, it's simple, but even in the USA, evidence is clear. According to current rules, the USA enforces a limitation on the AIDS funding it provides that one third of it must go to spreading awareness on abstinence. Though some would find this contentious, this is something that stems primarily from religion.

Even more interestingly, most interpreters of religion, i.e. the clergy, defend their right to interpret it the most. Clergy will never tell you to go read the religious texts, even if they do, they find it ok till your interpretation matches theirs. Anyone who has even a basic knowledge of any language, knows that language is inherently ambiguous. Even the same sentence can say a lot of different things depending on the context, and our frame of mind. But first, one must understand the need for religion. For this, I'll borrow from my previous post, the purpose of life. Simply put, it's a question that tends to haunt us throughout our lives. And interestingly, we always wait for that one enlightened one who we wish would come and tell us all the answers we need. And religion tends to pretend to be this one. Though it's irrelevant to this topic, I also feel that this urge is also our basis for our love for superheroes, even more so for ones who are commoners who rise to the challenge. Getting back to topic, this stems from our inability to decide. To quote "Taken", a choice is the death of all other possibilities. And we dread making a choice as it means losing out on the other 'goodies'. So, I actually dread having more options than not having sufficient ones. Having a lot of options usually tends to lead to a lot of heartburn later on whether your decision was correct. It's this insecurity, that religion, and for that matter, most of society exploit for their benefit. They tend to provide answers sanctioned by higher beings, or, just everyone else. Answers that will make you belong, to a group at least. Our herd mentality is legendary(refer to the Gaussian paradox, my post). We find security in the company of others.

I love history, and so know much more about it than most usual people. An interesting fact is, that Christianity itself was born a few centuries after the birth of christ. It was born at a council conducted at the time of Emperor Constantine. Now this emperor is one of the legendary rulers of history, he carved out his empire from the collapsing roman empire, and built the foundations for its successor, the Byzantines, and Constantinople, or modern day Instanbul in Turkey. It's famous walls were of such repute that very few ever dared to even challenge it, and while europe went through the Dark Ages, Byzantium was a haven for new thinkers. And while his empire was safe from outsiders, it was torn by some civil strife within. Romans took pleasure in rounding up christians (which at that time had multiple sects having vastly different beliefs) and putting them in the colloseums, and basically killing them gruesomely. This was the time, when romans were mostly jews. This had started to turn by Constantine's time, and christians were a large enough number that could not be ignored. Hence he organised the first Council of Nicaea(google it), where bishops argued, and decided that Jesus was divine, and not mortal, and basically most of what you see today, including his teachings etc.

So, interestingly, current versions of christianity are basically what a few people felt at some time in history, as the "correct" beliefs, a choice. What, Jesus actually wanted to tell people, we may never know, and whether he was a son of god, well, lets not even get to that, no one can answer that. The point i'm trying to make here, is that most, if not all, religions are attempts by some enlightened to answer the important questions of their time. And after that, these answers have been twisted and filtered by others to what they see fit. And over time, more people have tried to interpret and and fit the phrases to current problems. It's kind of like Microsoft Windows, it's changed so much over time, that little of what it originally was, remains. The same is true of religions. The original texts were translated into different languages, and again went through multiple sequences of interpretation. The Church, islamic leaders, and others, have changed their interpretation of the texts over the ages, sometimes under pressure from others. Otherwise, how come religion has changed its attitude towards women, no god came over later to tell people to change the texts. Religion is really a function of its texts and the needs and demands of society. To put it very crudely, it's like a very, I mean very long running play. Which is why, it is necessary to read and understand the religious texts on your own, if you wish to make them the basis of your decision making. And to be completely correct, you also must understand the historical background in which these were written, otherwise it's an incomplete picture, like trying to recognise someone from a picture of their butt. But it's necessary to do so, because most of what you hear is someone's interpretation, and that someone stands to lose his job if you bypass him. The clergy is like a fast food chain for religion, to serve the needs of people who have no time to pay attention. And don't get me wrong, it tends to get interpreted to suit the needs of people in power. As for considering the clergy holy, that's almost laughable. If you look at the number of cases against clergy of any religion or country, especially those of sexual exploitation, you'll find my statement correct.

The reason for my writing this is that religion has done more to split up this world than any other force. A large part of our problems are due to people sticking fast to their stands, and trading insults over whose religion is better. The problem is, innocent people are brainwashed into doing rash acts in the name of religion, which don't serve god, but only the selfish wishes of some. So next time, before trusting any holy man or clergy, remember what Sigmund Freud said, man first thinks about his primal needs - food, water, survival, and to the clergy, keeping you from the texts is most essential for fulfilling this need.

Quotes

Some of my, and others' quotes

"There's a big difference between tourism and immigration"

(me :D)

"One ring to rule them all, One ring to find them,

One ring to bring them together, and in darkness, bind them"

(The one ring, LOTR)

"After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible! Yes. But great"

(Ollivander, Harry Potter)

"The beauty of war is that it simplies things, it simplifies them to a binary choice, life, or death"

(me again!)

Gaye Firdaus Barruye zameen ast,

Hameen asto, hameen asto, hameen ast

(If there is heaven on earth,

It is here, it is here, it is here)

(Humayun, Mughal emperor, on Kashmir)

The purpose of life

This is one question, I believe everyone has asked themselves atleast once in their lives. Believe me, I've asked this question many many more times than that :D . From childhood, we're brought up to believe that we can make a difference, that we can change this world. In our parents' eyes, there is probably no one more deserving for anything, or more intelligent, than us. We even spend most of our childhood and adolescent life to further such goals of achieving more. Yet, this one question tends to stop u dead in your tracks, knock you down while you search for some hope or answer to cling on to. That's because the question tends to go hand in hand with other questions like "am I doing the right thing, or choosing the right path". I think even a lifetime of pondering is unlikely to give you a satisfactory, or more accurately, a mind pleasing answer.

If we go into some thought and facts for answering this question, things don't look as good. History tells us that "making a difference" is something that changes with every civilisation. Our current society tends to measure this by power and wealth. Don't get me wrong, these are the more prominent factors in defining success over the ages. But, some other factors tend to trump these over time. For example, Spartans, or even the samurai, gave more preference to bravery on the battlefield than money or power. Then if you go into mathematics, well, mathematics and statistics are never known to let you down easily. They tend to hit u in the face with knockout punches. Quantum physics and statistics paint a picture of nature playing a game. Where nature tries out every possible alternative, or so to say, an answer to a question. Since there are so many of us, it can be taken as a continuous curve, which in most cases, is close to my favourite Gaussian curve(see earlier post). Then, we must wonder, if we are only an infinitesimal speck in a curve, then what's the point of undertaking any activity?

Well, then, after the bad news, the good news. This statistical curve( or hyperplane in many dimensions - for u purists :D) tends to change itself over time. Society tends to dictate what most people will choose and this is a kind of average or mean of the curve. So, the choices some people make will change this curve. One must also wonder, why do people choose different options?? some answers can be found in the study of Game Theory, a marvellously simple theory that answers many complex questions with simple logic. Even a layman can understand its intricacies with ease. Then, I also must quote something I heard in Steven Speilberg's mini series called 'Taken' (ya i'm a sci-fi fan and sort of fixated on aliens), that "a choice is the death of all other possibilities".

So, in the end, what is the purpose of life? It means different things for different people. To me, it means the fulfillment of your one truest desire, be it money, family, career or anything else. A life lived while suppressing your desires is probably not quite worth it. You get only one after all. Some (and, well religion) might call this the wrong way, but does not even religion ask for total devotion to it as the best way to live life? So you might say, what about your parents who slogged their entire lives without enjoying themselves to earn so that we may not have to undergo the hardships they did? well, in doing so they made improving their childrens' lives their topmost priority, and someday go and ask them so, they'll tell you that they find even more happiness in your achievements, than they would have found in something else.
Some even say, that those who look for the purpose of life are doomed to never find it, while it'll drop into your lap if you're not looking. Seems weird? try looking up at the night sky once, look at a star and u'll notice lots of other stars near it, look towards them, and they'll disappear(It's not a trick, it's called peripheral vision, rods are better at finding low intensity objects - google it). To conclude, I'll quote one statement from 'Taken' again, "In our lives, we ask questions that we know we may never find the answers to, but finding answers is not that important, what is important is that we never stop asking questions"

Wars and terrorism

Some give the credit to the oldest profession, to, well we know what. But I believe we've been having wars and fights for about as long. Which makes the soldier as roughly the second oldest profession. Soldiers have always been the focus of our attention, be it accolades or derision. And they've always been needed, wars have never been a rare quantity in our history. And if you ever track what wars actually accomplish, they mostly cause more wars. The most famous of these are the crusades and ensuing battles over Jerusalem. I always found them interesting as religious wars never quite die out. And one can consider the modern day phenomenon of terrorism as an extension of the conflict. The current "war on terror" as dubbed by the media always reminds me of a story in Hindu mythology. It's the story of a demon named Raktabeej, which literally translates as blood seeds. His power was that for each drop of his blood that fell to the floor, he would be born anew with a thousand times strength. Eventually, the goddess Kali slayed him by collecting all his blood in a tumbler, and drinking it while she was fighting him.

This story, atleast to me, has odd similarities with the terrorism situation. The problem that most of the west faces is the seemingly deluge of people who come up to replace slain terrorists. This to me has eerie similarities with the demon I talked about. And it seems like the west is trying to almost bleed the monster to death. to truly resolve the problem requires something other than war. Like Kali drinking the blood, the west needs to address the actual source of the problem. Though neither party may agree on the actual issues causing the conflict, it is obvious that a direct assault is futile, they simply have to resolve the underlying issues. And even though terrorists have done some very bad things, they have had some pretty bad things done to them and their families as well. So unless both sides come together and drink each drop of their sins, a solution is unlikely, and the future remains dark.

The men that shaped this world

When we usually talk about men who shaped this world, names like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and others are tossed about. I always feel that this is a slightly one sided view, as these are people who did good. You must also look at the other extreme, i.e. the accepted "bad" people. I quote from what Harry Potter, where Ollivander says about Voldemort, that "After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible! Yes. But great".

In recent history(the past century I mean), none are remembered with as much hate as Adolf Hitler. The wounds of his deeds still have to heal completely. The second World War shaped this new world, and caused much of its problems as well. If it were not for the war, we may not have the current Palestine problem. After the war Britain decreed that Israel was the new home for all Jews, as it was a British controlled territory. The ensuing events displaced a lot of the existing residents and caused a catastrophic chain of events which is a big factor in the terrorism the world faces today. I leave the details of the events for historians, as they obviously are contentious.

Interestingly, most of the other problems, Hitler or the Nazis did not cause. The problems I refer to are the wars between split up nations that propped up after the war. World War II did made some very important changes to the power equation of the world. Europe, was destroyed by the war, and other countries largely weakened. Britain, which was the dominant power of the world before the war, was heavily in debt to America, which effectively was the arms supplier and financier for much of the war. Britain and other countries had taken large loans to finance their campaigns in the war, and most of these came from the USA. This made the dollar the dominant power, and Britain never recovered it position of power. Its weakness resulted in the freedom of most of the nations which were under its control. The interesting concept pioneered by the British, and much of the west, was divide and rule. The new countries mostly got freedom as 2 independent nations. Be it India and Pakistan, North and South Koreas, and Vietnam. These are the big examples of the wars that resulting from the partition of the nation. Vietnam did eventually unite, but the wars and hostilities between the other 2 pairs still continue and form a large part of the terrorism and arms race problems.

If I'm right, close to 6 million jews were killed at concentration camps. No one has as yet attempted an estimation of the number of people killed to date by the wars in the above cases and the Palestine, Israel struggle. If you calculate, you'll probably find the number is a lot more than the 6 million. So who's more evil, is upto you to decide. Just remember Winston Churchill's famous quote, "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it".

So your computer doesn't work or crawls

This is sometimes the most common complaint of someone who shelled out a good amount of money for a computer. The problem lies in the fact that configuring a computer is as much a science as an art, and even experienced computer scientists may (and mostly :D ) get it wrong, or not the best possible one for the amount of money you've paid. One of the big reasons I want to write this post is the deluge of poorly configured and doomed-to-fail configurations I see being sold in India.

Now the interesting part, computers aren't that compilcated, it's just that the people who design and develop things like to show they're doing something, and some are mathematicians (shock,horror). Now I have nothing against mathematicians, but most of them have this obsession for things called "correctness" and "completeness", which is what causes a lot of your problems. This tends to create complicated terms for simple things, which in well, obfuscated english, is called obfuscation, or simply unnecessary complication. Want examples? try googling some of the common acronyms your hear. But it's not like computer scientists are mad to complicate things, some of these definitions carry extra meaning than what their english meanings imply.

So lets get back to what I meant in the title. The most common problem is computers running slow. And I don't mean running slow later in its life, I mean slow to start with. I'm writing this on a computer with a 1.6Ghz processor with 256MB of ~200Mhz RAM, which (to anyone who knows anything about hardware) is a joke. The bigger joke is that the computer is an IBM Thinkpad. Now the standard Windows XP installation after bootup requires around 380MB of memory. So why are global corporations selling computers which will run excruciatingly slowly? If you haven't realised by now, the excess 120MB or so will be swapped in and out of disk, which is about a 100 times slower than memory. And, the even more wonderous, Windows Vista uses about 750MB at the first boot onwards. So how big does that leave your 1GB (or 1024MB) of RAM? not too big eh? Add to this, even your run-of-the-mill internet browser uses around 20MB of memory. To do what you might ask, well only the programmers know. But even this is after endless rounds of optimization, so it's not as bad.

I was introduced to computers on a 8086 which ran at something around 1Mhz, and the first computer I owned was a 386 (at a lightning fast 20MHz), with 4MB RAM and 80MB of disk. I've seen Windows grow from it's very first avataars to the behemoth it is today. I concede, it is still the easiest to use even today, amidst the onslaught of Linux, even I prefer it to Linux. It's again become pretty stable (Windows 3.1 never crashed in my lifetime :D) but it's still too big. So the best you can do, is get sufficient amounts of RAM(memory). Processors have become fast enough that lower megahertz don't hurt as much as lower MB of memory. Keep an eye out for 1 biggest number that's never advertised, cache. Most current processors have 2MB (of L2 cache, I might add for purists sake, ignore if you're a layman), and Celeron's have less of it. Even 1 MB less of this hits, and hits hard. Why? Your processor is like this guzzler, and memory and cache are the carts that get stuff to it from your disk, that larger they are, the more chunks you get to the processor, as simple as that. The guzzler has grown faster than the carts, and only very few people in the world can write programs for very few problems that keep the guzzler occupied at all times. In your usual computer, your processor does useful work for very little time, i.e. uses a small percentage of its thinking power, like we use our heads, only about 10% (it's true).

And if computers scare you, don't be, they've been designed by idiots like me and you, and just confidently use your common sense. In all the time I've experimented, I've never lost any data of worth, which you won't if you do your homework, and don't delete or format things mindlessly. So the next time you see a cryptic error, try googling it rather than call tech support, don't understand the terms? google them as well. You'll find that the answers you find will be better than what techsupp will give you. Any normal person can fix most of their problems if they just pay a little attention and devote a little time, and think what they would do if they designed something like this.

The things that ail the education system

Any Indian would be familiar with the pivotal exams of one's academic life, the boards, entrance exams, and seemingly to a lot of the press, DU entrance exams. Bear in mind, that I'm from the north so forgive me if I focus on the region's torture chambers. Students go through hell to try and succeed at these tests, and they tend to become the focus of one's life for long periods of time. I have myself gone through some of these trials by fire, and emerged, on the surface unscathed and relatively successful. And I believe, this gives me an authority to comment on these milestone in academic life. I'm personally not a fan of these tests, because, contrary to what u might believe, these tests are not always the best indicators of 'intelligence' and are not designed by hallowed individuals who can do no wrong. Actually, once you get to the higher echelons, u realise that these tests are simply a reflection of what the people at the top of academia, feel, is necessary to succeed at a something. And the execution of their best laid plans are never something to be proud of. Which is why I feel there's something wrong, because these exams tend to stratify all test takers into atleast 2 categories, our lauded winners, and the forgotten losers, and so it's essential to ensure that everything right, cause u're scarring a child for life here.

Just the other day, I was reading in the papers, an article about cracking the boards, quoting last year's topper, a girl who'd scored somewhere around 97%(that's crazy marks man!). She told her formula for success was mugging up the entire NCERT books word to word, and vomiting them on the paper. Now, in computer science, this phenomenon is called a linear file traversal, i.e. u store stuff in a file (like a web page) and simply get the section that matches the stuff u're looking for, and outputting everything around it. That's a simple picture of how search engines work. Hmmm, so our tests reward being a computerized search engine, so where's the test of excellence and intelligence? It would seem our educators are turning a generation into mugging machines. But saying so would be sacriledge, anyone would agree to that.

Turning to entrance exams, I gave the engineering ones. It's quite well known that IIT's are the most reliable way to increase the quantum of ur first paycheck, which is what drives the 'best' minds there(forgive the sarcasm). problem is, that's how most students perceive it as an option. 14 years of training about the importance of mugging, doesn't quite develop a great love for any subject. Coupled with the livelihood issue, this compells the students to choose by money. And after 4 years, they choose money again, in this case, the best paying jobs, who's title has recently been taken over by investment banks, where astronomical amounts are promised to the top performers. Now this, expectedly irks the faculty, as their efforts in teaching are seemingly pointless, if u're gonna leave the field anyways. And the answer to the question of how to encourage the children to stick on, still eludes all. The problem is, the government expects IIT's to feed the growing IT industry with new computer science graduates. Problem is, the industry does little to improve it's image to fresh graduates. The pay is meagre, the job description is quite dismal, there's none of the intellectually challenging work u'd expect. Instead, the people they expect are coders, quite simply, they don't quite need ur analytical ability. That's like a frill, but that's not what they're shopping for. Which is why they lobby for 'vocational' training, aka make them coders. Ministers, then push faculty to make children go to these companies. This, interestingly, has resulted in a practice in a few IITs that some of you might find shocking, others quite right. It is to restrict the internships(and even jobs in some cases) to indian locations only, that too in companies. Now people expect that this would encourage the students to join these companies. But, if u're read Freakonomics, u'll appreciate this. After these measures, I saw even less people going to the IT sector in India. People going abroad for further studies also decreased, because now students don't have the recommendations of people from abroad, and no research project experience.

Interesting hmm? things at the premier institutes are not as hallowed as one would imagine. but the source of the problem lies at the roots, not here. The problem is, while earning a livelihood is an issue, people will choose money over everything else. Another problem is that, most people don't know anything about the branches of engineering u offer, how in hell do u expect children to choose then??!! or even have a semblance of interest, when choices are made purely on the basis of rank. so getting into textile imprints that stamp of being in a not so good branch. That obviously will hinder any further development.

More importantly, our system places quite too much importance on mugging and pure hard work. Not that it's bad, but the crux of engineering is to develop new solutions, you remember einstein and newton, because they gave solutions that no one else saw, solutions so simple, yet powerful. which is why, i feel, creativity is also essential for being successful, and even at a younger age, students must be encouraged to think creatively. because making someone mug up 21 points about Raja Ram Mohan Roy's contribution to society will not enthuse him to the actual impact of his work, showing him the impact will. because eventually, Roy will mean 21 points to him, not his work. I do understand this is hard work, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to fix. People usually counter with, why don't u do something to fix it, but understand this, I can show you a mirror, I'm not a plastic surgeon.

The Gaussian paradox (?)

As computer science students, something that we encounter very often is the gaussian curve a.k.a. the normal distribution. The bell shaped curve fits the behaviour of most large scale phenomenon, including human behaviour, among other things. It says that out of some observations of something (anything measurable), most will near the average value, while only some will differ by a large amount. Laymen know this as the herd mentality, if we talk about people. The more interesting part is, that there is a small percentage will be far away from the mean, equal percentages towards the left and right ends of the scale. The paradox that I talk about, comes into being when you try to apply this to human intelligence. Now, what intelligence means is slightly controversial, but i'll stick to the usually accepted paradigm. What I intend to look at is people who we call 'geniuses' and 'luminaries' as compared to others who are deemed 'psychotic' and 'anti-social'. This is where the gaussian curve gets interesting. The simple fact is, the curve doesn't differentiate between + and - around the mean, it only cares about the magnitude of this deviation. It is we who assign the + and the -. This takes an interesting connotation to this question of accepted intelligence and socially acceptable behaviour. It is society that assigns the tag of good or bad. Keep this in mind that the currently acceptable norms of good or bad won't remain the same over time. A few hundred years ago, black slavery was acceptable to most white people, before the world wars, even Hitler wasn't considered evil. Even nowadays, every goverment doesn't call all dictators evil, even the torchbearers of democracy tend not to criticize certain absolutist regimes, while reserving their contempt for others. Which brings us back to our gaussian curve. As I said, it simply measures the magnitude of deviation, not the nature of the deviation. Problem is, that deviation can be of many types, and some are more visible than others. Over time, we have assigned different worth to different deviations, and even at any time, the measure is different for different people. Killing people is accepted for soldiers, whilst not for other people. Not that I support people killing each other, but the fact is that we overlook certain things based on certain justifications. A generalist decision on all such factors is impossible, and so pointless.

What I'm essentially trying to imply is that look at differences with a fair eye, without the views society puts on you. You never know how society might change tomorrow.

December 21, 2012

I was watching this program on the History Channel pertaining to another doomsday prediction. The expected date of the end of earth was put to the date in the title, December 21,2012.

The program then proceeded to give us the people over time that have independently made this prediction. Few specifically pointed to the date, but most pointed to the year. The people who said this? the maya(or mayans), merlin the magician(yup the arthur one), one prophet in one of the native american tribes, and one gentlemen who made his interpretation of the I-Ching, an old chinese book, that can answer questions.

If you wish to find out more, you only need search 2012 prophecy, or 2012 mayan prophecy and you'll find no dearth of resources on the topic. Now I'm a pretty big sceptic of these doomsday prohpecies and prophecies in general, but I do respect the maya. You may consider them barbarians who sacrificed people (they had a belief that the sun needed human blood to rise like we need food) and had weird rituals, but they were top of the line astronomers, atleast from what I know. They had a set of calenders, that can accuratelt predict solar eclipses and other celestial phenomenon highly accurately even today. The sad part it, most of their knowledge was destroyed by christian priests who considered it the work of the devil, and hence sacriledge. Hence precious little survives from their culture due to the exploits of Mr Cortez, the conquistador who was the first to invade these lands. Whether the maya calender actually says this or it is someone's speculative interpretation of their writings is something that is beyond me to check. But if they do actually say this, it would be worth the time. The calender predicts the alignment of the earth, sun and a black hole at the centre of the milky way in a single line, that is likely to predict the shifting of the earth's poles. If that seems far fetched to you, it's known to be a regular phenomenon in earth's life, and the next flip is way overdue, this much scientists do concede. Why that matters? simply because that field protects life on earth and prevents radiation from coming through, and instead form auroras, the beautiful lights. Without it, no life stands a chance of surviving, at least not the kind we belong to.

So people, mark the date on the calender! this is something that may happen during our lifetimes, and though statistics are against doomsday predictions coming true (we're still alive yet, aren't we?), it's always interesting to see whether this one does.

Naamkaran

It's interesting how we put in so much thought over names. Fact is that I used this name after spending 2 days unable to come up with a name for a blog that I liked and wasn't taken. On a different note, I was reading Freakonomics, and read this chapter on how names don't quite affect anything, they're merely a reflection of our selves, be it our children's names or our creations. Quite simply, this is what I felt after the effort spent in trying to come up with a decent name for a blog, and so I christened it with the name. Believe me, I even tried noname, :D , even that was taken!!

And in keeping with the spirit of the naming, I'd not like to disclose my name. But I believe, a little effort and brains will get u my name.

ps: Naamkaran means christening in Hindi, that's the first clue!