25 Random Things About Paul Dirac, the Original Quant.

1. Paul Dirac has said, "There is in my opinion a great similarity between the problems provided by the mysterious behavior of the atom and those provided by the present economic paradoxes confronting the world."

2. Paul Dirac has also said, "The methods of theoretical physics should be applicable to all those branches of thought in which the essential features are expressible with numbers."

3. And then, Paul Dirac has said, "Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star."

4. Dirac once stated, "God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world."

5. Paul Dirac was convinced  that the quantum world could not be expressed in words or imagination. Its beauty reveals itself only in mathematical formulae. . To draw its picture would be "like a blind man sensing a snowflake. One touch and it’s gone".

6. Dirac liked Mickie Mouse and Blondie, but found Peanuts hard to understand.

7. An atheist, Dirac was buried under a gravestone chosen by his wife, Manci. It read "because God said it should be so".

8. Dirac told Oppenheimer: "Oppenheimer, they tell me you are writing poetry. I do not see how a man can work on the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition. In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand. In poetry you are bound to say... something that everybody knows already in words that nobody can understand."

9. At Paul Dirac's home silence was observed at every meal, so that he could concentrate on eating, and no drop of alcohol was allowed anywhere, even in recipes.

10. When Manci, his wife-to-be, wrote Dirac an angry letter asking why he had replied to none of the questions in her previous correspondence,he drew up, in tabular form, an explanation of why he could not use the endearments customary with lovers, since they were not literally true.

11. Paul Dirac's elder brother committed suicide, for which Dirac blamed his father (though Dirac clearly regarded his brother as an inferior, had not spoken to him for some years and would pass him in the street with an expressionless stare).   After Dirac won two scholarships to Cambridge, it appeared that he would lose his place for want of £5. Dirac’s father gave his son the money and made him understand that he had launched the boy’s career. After his father died in 1936, it emerged that he had not given Dirac the essential £5, although he could have done so, having hoarded more than £7,500, some 15 times his annual salary. The crucial fiver had come from the local education authority.

12. Dirac did not do talk. His fellow students invented a unit, "the Dirac", for the smallest imaginable number of words someone could utter in an hour.

13. "I never knew love or affection when I was a child," Dirac once said.

14. The only time Dirac was known to have wept was when Einstein died.

15. In the question time following one of his lectures, a student ventured that he did not understand an equation on the blackboard. Dirac remained impassive until prompted, and then replied, "That is not a question, it is a comment."

16. Looking at an impressionist painting, he remarked, "This boat looks as if it was not finished."

17. Dirac told Heisenberg: "I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest, and as scientists honesty is our precise duty, we cannot help but admit that any religion is a pack of false statements, deprived of any real foundation. The very idea of God is a product of human imagination.... I do not recognize any religious myth, at least because they contradict one another...."

18. Urged to read Crime and Punishment, he worked through it sentence by sentence, and concluded it was "nice", though "in one of the chapters the author makes a mistake: he describes the sun as rising twice on the same day".

19. Visiting Russia in the 1930s, he remained unaware that millions were dying of famine as a result of collectivisation and he dismissed British press reports of Stalin’s purges as exaggeration.

20. In post-war Cambridge, although still the Lucasian Professor, he was an irrelevance. They even took away his departmental parking space.

21. Manci, Dirac's wife, was [Nobelist] Eugene Wigner's sister. She would storm into meetings asking:"Where is that idiot?" Manci always called Dirac an idiot.

22. Paul dirac's grandson leo dirac has a blog; writes on business and technology trends

23. Werner Heisenberg and Dirac were sailing on a cruise ship to a conference in Japan in August, 1929. Heisenberg was a hedonist who constantly flirted and danced with women on the ship, while Dirac suffered agonies if forced into any kind of socialising or small talk. 'Why do you dance?' Dirac asked his companion. 'When there are nice girls, it is a pleasure,' Heisenberg replied. Dirac pondered this notion, then blurted out: 'But, Heisenberg, how do you know beforehand that the girls are nice?'"

24. The street on which the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, is located was named Paul Dirac Drive. There is also a road named after him in his home town of Bristol, UK.

25. Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac,  (8 August 1902  20 October 1984) was a British theoretical physicist.  In 1933, at the age of 31, Dirac became the youngest theoretician to win a Nobel prize.

Peace in the Anti-World

When you read newspapers, which are essentially about conflicts between ideologies and people and money and power and things like that, you can't help taking a position. Sometimes you are sure where you are, and sometimes you are not so sure whether you are right. This uncertainty is the wavering of your moral compass as it searches for direction through the hazy mist of information.

But you know one thing, there is a kind of short-cut you can use. There are not many, but there are quite a few people, if you look at their track-record, they have been consistently wrong, just by checking what they say you can find the position you must avoid.

Arundhati Roy is someone who is just great at it- here she is at The Times of India., ranting against an imminent genocide.

But still there are some things I don't know who is in the right, such as Tom or Jerry, Godzilla orthe Dinosaur, Predator or the Alien (or is it the Terminator?), and very importantly, Martians or the Earthlings.

I am sure Arundhati Roy will raise her voice on these issues also and save the world and establish us all on the One Person Nation.

Mystic River- A Question of Power and Responsibility.

Yesterday I  saw the Clint Eastwood directed film, "Mystic River'. I found it depressing for the most part, and I could not understand what it was about- there were too many threads pulling in different directions.

But the film came alive for me, at this part, "The King's Wife" chapter in the DVD.

(Jimmy Markham learns that he has killed the wrong man. We see him standing with his back to us, a cross tattooed on his back from the nape of the neck to halfway down the back. This is the first time we see it, and the writing gets powerful as he starts to talk to his wife who slowly walks towards him).

Jimmy:  "I killed Dave. I killed him and threw him in the Mystic. But I killed the wrong man. That's what I've done. And I can't undo it."

Annabeth: (Embraces him from the back, over the cross) "Jimmy. I wanna feel your heart. Last night, when I put the girls to bed, I told them how big your heart was. I told them how much you loved Katie..."

Jimmy: "Annabeth..."

Annabeth: "Because you created her. And sometimes your love for her was so big, felt like your heart was gonna explode-"

Jimmy: "Please stop."

Annabeth: "I told them their daddy loved them that much too. That he had four hearts, and they were all filled up, and aching with a love that meant we would never have to worry and that their daddy would do whatever he had to for those he loved. And that is never wrong. That can never be wrong, no matter what their daddy had to do. And those girls fell asleep at peace."

Jimmy: "You said, "Last night", you knew?"

Annabeth: "Celeste called, looking for you.She was worried something might happen. She told me about Dave. Told me what she told you. What kind of wife says that about her husband? And why'd she run to you?"

Jimmy: "Why didn't you call?"

Annabeth: "Because it's like I told the girls. Their daddy's a king. And a king knows what to do and does it. Even when it's hard. And their daddy will do whatever he has to for those he loves. And that's all that matters. Because everyone's weak, Jimmy. Everyone but us. We will never be weak. And you... You could rule this town."

You know which part perked up my attention? The part where she says, "...And a king knows what to do and does it. Even when it's hard. And their daddy will do whatever he has to for those he loves. And that's all that matters..."

You know how we have argued here in this blog and elsewhere about the rights and wrongs of Bush, Israel, Sri Lankan Army... Some of us believe that the strong have to show restraint, and others that there could be no talk of restraint when it is taken as a sign of weakness.

So, I told myself, "Ah-ha!, this could apply to Bush. He did not have perfect knowledge, perfect wisdom, and if he did what he did out of love for his nation...- "....their daddy would do whatever he had to for those he loved. And that is never wrong. That can never be wrong, no matter what their daddy had to do...And a king knows what to do and does it. Even when it's hard. And their daddy will do whatever he has to for those he loves. And that's all that matters..."

Is that so? It seems a justifiable argument.

But what does this tale that she told her children accomplish? "And those girls fell asleep at peace."

This is what is so great about good films. They always leave something unsaid, something you want to find out for sure.

Mission: Kumbabishekam

Run around. Collect eight different types of soil viz: sand from sea, river and lake, crab's nest (not sure about this, may be powdered conch), soil from snake's (termite) mound, soil stamped by elephant, soil dug by a bull with its horn, soil where the sacred Darbha grass grows;

Make long and thick ropes by twisting green Darbha grass, long enough to connect the homa(m)peetams to the moola vigrahas- these are the lifelines that transfer the powers that are invoked up by the homams and mantras to the vigrahas, making it fit for worship; the thicker the better;

Do hundreds of such and other things. Put more than a million rupees, coordinate people who don't even sit in the same room for a minute. Do this through a whole year.

Then you can conduct a Temple Kumbabishekam. But you are not finished. You still toil for 48 more days to conduct post-implementation rituals, so the temple fully is fit for worship.

Making this happen, though not comparable to launching a rocket, is indeed a mammoth task.

I was lucky to witness one the week before, and since I knew the family who executed, funded and sweated for it, I got to know all about this directly. If you are the religious type, you will say that they were blessed to have gotten a chance to do it in their lifetime.

The Kumbabishekam was for the 'Meenakshi Sundareswarar' temple of Lord Shiva, who resides with Godess Meenakshi in Kuranguputhur (a small village near Mayiladuthurai on the banks of River Cauvery).

When the germ of the idea solidified into a decision and an agreement was reached in the family to undertake the consecration of the temple, everyone was happy,they felt it was a gift to have such a chance to do a virtuous act, but no one had any clue about how demanding it could be or what exactly needed to be done. Almost everything to do with it was big: the number of things to buy, the number of things to do, the money involved, mobilizing people, getting the consent and support of villagers in sensitive decisions...

When sought, the Gurukkal handed over a 50-page notebook that contained the list of items to be purchased, since it was only a small temple. The steps and processes that make use of these items require a library, most of which the Gurukkal and Vedic Brahmanas know by heart.

Undaunted, the family, along with the support of the villagers, spent more than an year to achieve it. They starting with renovating the old temple, then they installed new moolavighrahas and vimanas, and arranged every other thing. The temple had to be completely re-built, except for the original Shivalinga, the only vigraha to survive a heist that took place a few years ago.

Some years ago, when the temple was closed and kept unused due to various reasons, some (ultra pious ?!) sticky hands managed to check-in empty-handed and uninvited, and took home literally 'heavy' stuff. The villagers say that the person/ gang who stole the things even approached them indirectly, to 'sell' the vigrahas back to the temple for a price since they found it difficult to sell them in the black market; it is also spoken about that the thieves even dumped some of the statues in a lake in the region, that were too huge and heavy to hold and hide).

As all herculean tasks always require, the people who were involved in the kumbabishekam had to jump hurdles, leap fences and penetrate walls and mountains. And they did it, all with grace and great elegance. It is a peerless feat which they have accomplished.

Doing things, making a change- it happens all around us. It might not be glamorous or spectacular, it could be as simple as repairing an old temple. But then, when you get a chance, you need to be a part of it, but not as a spectator.

I brought this home from Kuranguputhur.

Do something. Be happy.

Rajesh Ranjan Means Business

Ever felt those credit card loan recovery people are actually licensed goons?

Here's an advertisement of a visiting card designed by Rediffusion DY&R.

Please note that the thumb is broken.

Source: Ads of The World

Mothering Sunday

Today I think Mothering Sunday is celebrated in Britain as Mothers' Day. With nothing better to do, I read some news about it through Google News Archives and found this report from Argus (Melbourne, Vic) dated 21 May 1921, at Australian Newspapers Beta

"MOTHERING SUNDAY."

"I am a full-aged man, fast growing old.

and a 'cleric' at that, but I did love my

mother. I do love her. She,died when I

was 12, but she is still with me. . On

Mothering Sunday I always wear violets in

her memory. Is that sentiment? Then

blessed be sentiment."

The above extract is contained in a letter

to the "Kentish Express" by Mr. J. Ed-

ward Harlow, who recently conducted two

Mothering Sunday services, one in Faver-

sham and the other in Canterbury. During

one service two choirboys sang "Home,

Sweet Home." Mr. Harlow explains that

Mothering Sunday is a day in praise of

one's mother. "Two or three generations

ago," he says, "in some parts of England

apprentice sons and daughters returned to

the old roof-tree on Mothering Sunday . . .

The custom declined. Until just before the

war one heard of it only here and there.

I wish from my heart, as one mother's son,

it could be revived. Supposing that on a

given Sunday morning every year all the

mothers found on the breakfast-table, say,

a bunch of violets or a letter from their

children. ... It would make music in a

million mother hearts."

I don't know, we are celebrating Valentine's day with a vengeance, may be Sri Ram Sene should give a leg up to Mothering Sunday? After all, Sri Rama went to forest in obedience to his mother's wishes. So, may be this is a good day to give your mother a letter, or if you feel too embarassed about it, something in violet... It might make music in your mother's heart, who knows?

I can hear you say, who cares...

Positive Deviance.

I don't know whether you know about this already, but I read about Positive Deviance in a book by Atul Gawande.

(I was talking with a friend about how we don't ever think a original thought. We both agreed that it happens about once or twice a year, and it is soon forgotten out of apathy. But the good news is that there are lots and lots of people who do think original thoughts, and they do great things. We can learn a lot from them, even otherwise, it feels good that they are doing the thinking for us.)

Atul Gawande is a surgeon and he talks in the book, "Better- A Surgeon's Notes on Performance", about how difficult it is to get doctors and nurses to wash their hands. What with deadly MRSA (medicinenet.com), this is a big problem, and if the doctors and nurses keep their hands clean, lots of lives could be saved. But it does not happen.

Gawande writes about Pittsburgh Regional Health Care Initiative, where Paul O'Neill, the former secretary of the Treasury and CEO of Alcoa took up the challenge of making the medical professionals comply to regulations on cleanliness. Through some innovative strategies, he succeeded to some extent. But he did not succeed as well as he needed to. He quit frustrated, things went back to bad.

So, Jon Lloyd, a surgeon who had worked on the project, got thinking about this. He came to read an article about a Save the Children program to reduce malnutrition in Vietnam.  It detailed the antistarvation program run by Tufts University nutritionist Jerry Sternin and his wife Monique. Jon Lloyd thought the experience of the Sternins held a lesson for Pittsburgh.

What the Sternins found was that solutions from outsiders do not work. So they decided that the solutions have to be come from the inside. They took people to see homes where the children were healthy and well-nourished and let the people know what the more successful among them were doing. It worked. Within two years, in every village that the Sternins had been malnutrition had dropped by 65 to 85 per cent.

The Sternins called this, "Positive Deviance Approach". What they meant was that there were always people who did better than others in any group, and you could learn from these positive deviants.

So. Lloyd enrolled the Sternins to come into the Pittsburgh Program. They held discussions with small groups at every level. They did not give any directions or orders, but what they did was to ask for information what can be done. They were mining for solutions from people who were working at it. ""If we had any dogma going in," Jerry Sternin says, "it was Thou shalt not try to fix anything"."

The long and short of it is that ideas came pouring in, people learned from one another and at the end of it, the rate of MRSA infections dropped to zero.

This reads good, right? There is lots to know about this, so I am giving some links here:

(At the individual level I would like to think that if you are self-aware, and keep your eyes open, and learn from people who are doing well, chances are that you can do better- you have to be open in this, and the mindfulness part is most important, I feel).

---

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This is the Wikipedia article on Positive Deviance.

This is the website of Pascale-Sternin, where they say the objectives of their website aims to document current applications of PD around the world, to encourage exploration of new applications though dialogue, and to help connect PD practitioners and other people interested in the Positive Deviance approach. It includes  case studies provided by the individuals and organizations using PD.

Here is a management perspective on 12 Manage The Executive Fast Track

You can find the seven characteristics of the positive deviant at The Positive Deviant Network (sampler:Passion, High Moral or Social Purpose, Seeing Holes vs. the Net, Moving Towards, Not Away, Rapid Cognition, Checking the Edges, Low Regard for Social Convention)

Excellent material is available on PDF at Harvard Business Review. It is titled "Your Company's Secret Change Agents" and is written by Richard Tanner Pascale and Jerry Sternin. It is worth exploring, I feel.

"The human brain is on the edge of chaos"

I found it at PHYSORG.COM in an article, "The human brain is on the edge of chaos". I have always felt like that, but I did not know that is true with every brain.

Now, I am not familiar with things like Computational Biology, Chaos, Randomness etc., but what I read there is astonishing, I wanted to share this with you.

I would love to share this in Google Reader with my comments, but none of you bother to look in it.

So this has got to be a blog post, it is a waste of resources, so then, please appreciate the kind of trouble I take to get to you.

There is something called self-organised criticality- it means that systems on their own organize themselves to act out at a point somewhere at the edge of randomness and order. This comes out of complex interactions in natural systems- such as avalanches, forest fires, earthquakes and hearbeat rhythms.

And scientists at the University of Cambridge, the Medical Research Council Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, and the GlaxoSmithKline Clinical Unit Cambridge, say that the same thing happens in the brain also.

I mean, the brain has something to do with perception,  memory, analysis, self-awareness and things like that...

See what the co-author of the study, Manfred Kitzbichler says:

"...self-organized criticality is intuitively attractive as a model for brain functions such as perception and action, because it would allow us to switch quickly between mental states in order to respond to changing environmental conditions"

What does this tell about the self-organised criticality that is found in things like avalanche, earth-quake and forest-fires?

Okay, our brain is also destructive like those things, more often than not, but other than this similarity, is it that the brain acts out a natural process, and/or nature is also intelligent?

Can't find the answer.

You have any ideas?

Communication Skills

I have a grouse against people who don't know how to give directions...

I wanted to know the location of Karur Vysya bank and so I called a friend to know where it is.

"It is somewhere past Hot Chips", he said. It could be anywhere.

"Coming or going?", I asked.

"Going", he answered. I had narrowed it down somewhat.

"Going where?", I asked.

""Towards Mambalam", he replied. It is not of much help, because there are many ways to Mambalam past Hot Chips.

"Which way?", I asked.

"The way you usually go", he answered. Now, there are two or three or even fours roads I take, depending on the traffic.

We got stuck there. Okay, it was my fault, but he had no idea where it was, it was vaguely somewhere in between Hot Chips and Mambalam. My further questions made him say the same thing louder and louder, as if that makes it easier to understand.

Have you noticed how some people, if they think you don't understand what they say, they raise their voice as if that would get sense into your head? Now, what do say about the way their brains work? Is it that they think  sound is like light, the more you throw in, the more it reveals? They are the ones that bust an artery or something, sure.

And there is the opposite type. Their voice gets tight and tense as they see it is not easy to get into your thick head. Their voice gets lower and lower and their clenched fist almost comes through the phone, the bunched up muscles of the abdomen are almost visible. This is the type that get ulcers I think.

Why is it difficult to say it nice and easy, "I don't know"?

Indian general elections - Beggars can't be choosers

Elections are just a month away and two big parties are already in a spot of bother. BJP started badly with a tiff between Jaitley and Rajnath before Varun chipped in to worsen things further. Their alliance partners in Bengal, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh have ditched them. Have none in TN. Karnataka was their only hope in the south before their distant cousins showed their faces to the world in Mangalore. Gujarat and MP might help them shore up the tally but Rajasthan may pull them down as Gujjars haven't done with it yet. Looks like their fortunes will slide further down with troubles in UP. Our primer minister in waiting may never make it to the top chair.

Few months back I thought Congress is in for a tough test. But BJP with its internal bickering and poor management gave wonderful opportunity for Congress to consolidate their strengths. But their bloated ego is not allowing them to do that. They are friendless in UP and now are doing it to Lalu in Bihar. Congress is going to field 27 candidates in Bihar. What a joke? Congress must realise that it has little or no presence in some states and that include TN, UP, Bengal, and Bihar. Importantly these 4 states alone send nearly 190 MPs to Lok Sabha. If we do some finer analysis taking into account states like Gujarat, Madhya pradesh, Tripura and Kerala, where opposition is very strong, then we may find that Congress has a presence on its own in only about 250 to 300 seats and even in 3/4th of those seats opposition has average to very good presence. A surprise may be in store for them in Andhra Pradesh. It's a clear math that Congress has to beg to reach that magical mark of 272. Beggars can't be choosers and they can't have a ego.

If congress thinks they can put together numbers post-election then am afraid they are making a mistake. Comrades are sprucing up the third front, a collection of small parties with leaders whose ambitions are to win the prime ministerial lottery. It already has some strong support in the form of TDP, Communists, and BSP. Add Naveen Patnaik and Gowda to the equation, you are looking at a number anywhere between 100 - 120. Post election, the third front is likely to be the most favoured option for Lalu, Paswan, Jayalalitha and other prime ministerial candidates. Even Mulayam might find Mayavati to be his sister like and join hands with third front. With dangling carrot in front Karunanidhi might also support the third front alongside Jayalalitha.

Congress is probably the best hope at present for many Indians, both voting and non-voting. But they are not learning from their past mistakes. They don't understand that they are tolerated by many (Communits and the like) because there is a BJP. Otherwise they may have gone to dogs by now. BJP is not in a great position. It has enough on its hands. But by allowing their ego to bloat further Congress is probably giving BJP a life line here.

Come may 16th, yet another third front tamasha might unfold in front of us. If that happens who would win the lottery? Maya / Jaya / Babu / Lalu / Gowda (he still nurtures his ambition)?

Frog by the Pond...

This is an update on the Frog by the Pond post I made here previously...

Again, following Son Rivers, I went to Mathematical Poetry, where I found the Basho poem translated into an equation by Kaz Maslanka:

"Frog= {Splash (The Self- The Mind)}/The Old Pond + Noise."

You have to visit the blog to see how this equation is derived.

And Son Rivers, in his blog, gives his equation:

"Frog = (Old Pond (Enlightenment - Ego) / Splash) + The Universe"

And for what it is worth, here is mine:

"Frog x (Integral sign with limits from zero to infinity) Wetness = Old Pond + Splash"

Since I am not too sure about Integral Calculus, I don't know whether this equation will work or not. But it seems this is about right- for me.

And what is yours?

Bush Speech: Obama Deserves My Silence

It looks like we can't do without US Politics- I think it is to do with the content available on the net.

For instance, when I read what Former US President George W Bush said on a visit to Canada, it is too delicious to go unappreciated.

Yahoo! News cites an Associated Press report, where I found that Bush told his audience he won't be criticising Obama, because Obama deserves his silence- "I'm not going to spend my time criticizing him. There are plenty of critics in the arena. He deserves my silence."

And another thing he said was that he plans to write a book about his presidency. He plans to do it different: "I want people to understand what it was like to sit in the Oval Office and have them come in and say we have captured Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept.11 attacks...", he said, indicating that his book would ask people to think what they would have done if they had been President.

Bush further confessed that it was, "going to be (about) the 12 toughest decisions I had to make"- there is no clue about what the other eleven are.

What we expect from Bush is, you guessed it, Bushism. I don't think editors would let anything get into the book, but here at Calgary, Canada, he said, "I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian (emphasis mine) voice saying exactly what happened."

There. Could anyone have said anything any better? And people jump on him for that- Democratic Underground.Com- in twenty-two minutes after publication, that particular post has logged eighteen comments, mostly unsympathetic. 

Too bad that the righteously indignant are still at it- more than two hundred protesters flung shoes outside the event, chanting, "war criminal". One Colette Lemieux of the Canadian Peace Alliance says, "It doesn't matter that he is no longer president- a bank robber who stops holding up banks can and must still be prosecuted for his crimes." See? People who are too sure they are right don't ever understand when they take a wrong turn.

They could do with some self-awareness and humour. You have a very good exemplar of this in Bush- "I'll sit here all day. I'm flattered people even want to hear me in the first place."

Truth? Inadvertence or conscious? You will never guess. He knows what is what. It is just that it comes out confused- but still, he gets it right. Most of the times.

Templeton Prize for d'Espagnat for Saying the World is Unknowable

Bernard d'Espagnat, 87, a leading quantum physicist has been awarded the  £1 million Templeton Prize for his contribution to religious thought. He has worked with Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr, so he is certainly not a lightweight.

In Wikipedia, I find that he has derived some equation called Wigner-d'Espagnat inequality which has to be satisfied by the results of simultaneous trials. As it is, this has not been done- so this is taken to mean that Einstein's idea of local realism is disproved. So, d'Espagnat is someone notable, not a nonentity.

Despite what the rationally minded would say, it is good that someone is giving money for undertaking genuine research and looking  into questions that are reserved for religion.

Times Online reports that d'Espagnat believes that science alone cannot explain the ultimate reality, the nature of being. He says, "Mystery is not something negative that has to be eliminated. On the contrary, it is one of the constitutive elements of being."

Every scientist of repute says that he is filled with wonder as he ponders on the nature of the world, but we who read about science, usually find that the explanations desiccate reality of any mystery. We have found a substitute in explanations- whatever you say about how things are  does not explain why things have to be.

Dr. d'Espagnat is a Roman Catholic, who believes that there is a deeper reality beyond what we know- "... it cannot be conceptualised for the very reason that this ultimate reality is beyond any concept we can construct", he says.

It seems that he has developed a concept called, "veiled reality", which posits that there is a reality that is beyond time, space, matter and energy that are perceived.

Merk Vernon, at guardian, writes that d'Espagnat says observing the world is like looking at a rainbow: though it looks real, how it looks depends on where we are and what we can see. We cannot really know the world as it is in itself. He writes that this is something similar to what Kant suggested- the world is a mystery that can never be mastered.

I think there are two points of view about quantum physics- one is that you have to leave it with the numbers and equations, they are not to be used to draw conclusions about the reality about the world. d'Espagnat, obviously does not belong to that school of thought, and he deserves this award for his courage.

I like this quote of his: "The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment." 

Frog by the Pond

One of the pleasures of blogging is that you find so many great blogs of great variety, anything can be done well, it seems, if it is done with involvement and enthusiasm.

I followed Son Rivers to this blog where I found Derek at TOBIKOMU – 365 DAYS OF OVERDOING BASHO, who keeps working on a haiku by Basho,

which he literally translates as

old pond--ah!

  frog jumps in

  water's sound

and reworks it every day, the last five posts being:

small grove's

pond--

a frog's leap then

water's sound

quiet pond--

a frog slips in

the sound of water

Old pond here

a small frog leaps into it.

Water sounds.

pond

frog

slurp

This old pond--

a small frog leaps in

water sounds.

Great concept. Wish him well.

And, I hope he gets to the day when he can say wholeheartedly:

Not a plop-

this unwet frog hops about

on the rippling pond.

Or something like that.

The One

I think I should thank bits and pieces" for this great work.

We want Gandhiji's possessions not what he taught us

James Otis, the US based private collector, is in the news today. He is going to US supreme court to get back Gandhiji's possessions, won by Mallya a week back in an auction. He was queried by a journalist on his change of mind and about the negative feelings it may generate. In his reply he said, he has a great value for Gandhiji and feels last week's auction caused Gandhiji's photograph on the front pages of newspapers all over the world, which will help people remember the great man's teachings and his ideals. I thought to my self, "we have Gandhiji's photo in every police station and Government offices". He also went onto say that he is prompted to approach the court now as Vijay Mallya, who bought the items in the auction, is in the opposition camp. Can it get any absurd?

What was appalling was the casual way in which Otis mentioned that repossession of auctioned items would help him to renegotiate with the Indian Government on the points he is raising. Whether he is well intentioned or just a fraud, as Tushar Gandhi calls him now, the fact that we are in a position that an individual is talking and behaving like this is shame on our Government and each one of us. There was so much hue and cry about the auction and how it is important for India to bring back Gandhiji's possessions. It's an irony that a liquor baron won it in the auction.

Gandhiji taught us on how to lead a clean public life. He taught us on individual discipline. He taught us the virtues of non-violence. He taught us tolerance. He put the society ahead of the self. When one of his sons, helped the another from the common funds he was responsible for managing, Gandhiji admonished him and sent him to Chennai with just a train ticket. He was not supposed to say whose son he is and find his way to earn and live. Gandhiji's son, whose name I forgot, slept on platforms, toiled hard, earned and lived his life for a year in Chennai on his own. All this to know the importance and how difficult it is to earn money. Have no doubts. Gandhiji lived in this very land we call ourselves, where politicians, powerful and the corrupt promote self, family and their cronies.

We don't care that we have abandoned Gandhiji's ideals and teachings. In fact Gandhiji is a witness, in his framed presence, to many crimes that take place in this country. But we want things that he possessed, back in India as otherwise it would be an insult. What a hypocrisy? We must hang our heads in shame that a foreigner is reminding us of Gandhiji and his teachings. He feels, seeing Gandhiji's photo will evoke in us the principles he stood for. Hope it does.

Happy Pi Day!

I think schools in America celebrate Pi Day today, this day being 3/14, the closest you get to Pi- 3.14 (It is recognised as such by the U.S. Congress itself). To be exact, you can celebrate Pi Minute at 1:59 p.m. today. If pi is read up to seven decimal places, it becomes 3.1415926, which gives you a chance to observe a minute of silence or something on March 14 at 1:59:26 p.m. every year.

When you hold a string straight and tight across and then run it round the circle, you can do it 3.1415926... times, which means if you want to be precise, you can't- the decimals run on and on to trillions and you can never stop cutting the string and bridge the gap to perfection.

Pi is not a chance number, here I find that Pi is in the disks of the moon and the sun: the double helix of DNA revolves round Pi. Pi is in the rainbow, in the pupil of the eye, and when a raindrop falls into water, Pi emerges in its spreading rings. Pi is in the waves and ripples and spectra of all kinds, in all colours and music. Pi is in life all around us, and when we die and become a statistic, it encompasses us in the tables of death, in what is known as a Gaussian distribution of deaths in a population; when a person dies, the event "feels" pi.

Pi has something to do with squaring the circle. Try your best with your geometry set- you can't make a square of the same size from a circle, because pi is what it is: there is no end to it. Pi is endless and the random march of decimals reveal no pattern. Pi, mathematicians say, is a transcendental number.

Pi is a challenge to the intellect. When we speak of order, we speak of something that has pattern, something you can predict, something that has completion. Pi, unruly and untiring, is of a different order.

What can you do on Pi day? Wikihow gives you some ideas- "Simply use 3.14 as a unit of measure. Instead of being 31 years old, you are 9pi years old (approaching your 10th birthday). With this same approach, you can find out your next pi birthday (don't forget to celebrate it when it comes!)." It helps, or does it?

I have a different idea: let us not resist the wild and the unpredictable and the incomprehensible facts of our life: the children who won't listen to us, the friends who won't do what they say, the wife who thinks she knows you better than you do, and of course- the runaway mind; the moments that throw your life off-base, that reveal your past in a new light- they are with us. They are what make us, they are us. Let us accept them and celebrate the colour they provide to our lives.

God, Perfect in Himself, has no reason to limit himself to be the God of the gullible, He could also be the God of the sceptic. In His merciful and all-knowing compassion, He must have ordered the world so that it is comprehensible to the queries of intellect, to the laws of causation. But He has feelings, which the natural laws don't have: it could be His friendly reminder, humorous suggestion, to make a number that beats all efforts at counting and ordering- to show the linear mind that you can't square the circle. There is more to life than logic, there is place for some magic.

Pi then, could be God's Smiley.

Happy Pi Day!

Hamlet on Twitter

What do you do when someone breaks into your home? Well, David Prager knew he had to tweet.

# ok, maybe I should lock my door - I swear a random dude just walked into my bathroom and I can't believe I haven't freaked out - about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# and I can't believe I'm tweeting about it while he is still in there — in wonder of he is sleep walking - or if maybe I should freak out - about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# ok - he's still in the bathroom and Im now thinking a combo of hobo and drunk and sleepwalking dude - he seems late 20s - hmmm what next ? - about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# I'm thinking the hobo part cause I can smell BO - and I really am wondering why I haven't freaked the F out - about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# maybe I should mention I live in a relatively rustic studio apartment in SF - about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# ok - have weapon if I need it - but don't plan on any confrontation with it - about to go in - about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# haven't gone in yet ..... debating calling cops but just feel it's not needed for some reason (and probably contrary to all logic) - about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# ok - still haven't done anything - he is still in there - gonna setup a ustream now I think - standby - about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# http://www.ustream.tv/channel/revision3 - about 4 hours ago from web

# going in - about 3 hours ago from Tweetie

# if u haven't been watching my ustream -the dude passed out in my bathroom and I just dragged him out - about 3 hours ago from Tweetie

# ok - I think the drama is over - intruder is out - door is locked - think I finally need some sleep - about 3 hours ago from Tweetie

I got this from gawker. They also have a Ustream of our hero in action.

It is easy to be contemptuous of him, seriously, how could you tweet when someone is mucking about in your bathroom? But I think this Hamlet made the right choice by acting in character, and twiddling his thumbs to a purpose. By acting out in accordance with his Dharma, may be he mobilised the cosmic forces to act on the intruder who passed out in consequence.

To tweet, or not to tweet: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler for the frame to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to twiddle thumbs against a sea of troubles,

And by tweeting end them?...

In a detective novel the name of which I forgot, the hero is convinced that Hamlet pondered not the question of his own death, but the seemingness of his life. To be is to be what he is, to act in character. And not to be, is to be the seeming Hamlet, the Hamlet who finds it necessary to fulfil expectations. Hamlet sees that his need to fulfil his father's expectations is to fit into a role, to accept seemingness.

I feel David Prager chose to be himself, and in tweeting, made the right action. To go out and tangle with the intruder merely because it is what is expected of him would have pushed him into a false role, and it might not have helped him at all. As it is, the intruder passed out.

And our Hamlet makes the final tweet:

# ok - I think the drama is over - intruder is out - door is locked - think I finally need some sleep - about 3 hours ago from Tweetie

To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.



Quite so.

The Threat of Deflation: Is Depreciating Currency the Solution?

I did not think I would ever live to see these days. Who would have thought the rise of prices will fall and fall till the day when they reverse, and things start to get cheaper and cheaper? Seems that is what threatens to happen here in India. Inflation in India is about three per cent now, and by the end of this month or later, it will get to be zero. Please read athis at ibnlive.

I thought that would be good news, but not so. Falling prices may be good for me as consumer, but is bad every other way. Apparently when prices fall, your money can buy more; but the man who makes products gets less value for his goods, so he has to lay off people, which means less circulation of money all over, which helps you actually, because the producer has to reduce his prices to get your money and so on till everyone goes out of business. This may be true or not, but at least I understand it this way.

Anyway, about a week back, I read something about Depreciating Currency and I thought it interesting, I took some notes. And here comes the chance to use them.

Let's suppose that we understand deflation and its dangers. Is there any way to counter it?

One of the most fanciful is depreciating currency, based on this concept: the quicker the money is spent, the faster its velocity: higher velocity combats deflation. Easy.

How do you ensure that money which is scarce, is not hoarded, but spent?

There is something called Wara, which has been tried. A coal-mine owner in Schwanenkirchen had the brilliant idea of putting into circulation a currency for which you have to pay an interest of one per cent every month. So obviously if you get your hands to it, you will want to get rid of it quickly. Its effect was miraculous. In a place where everything had come to a standstill because there was not enough money to go round:

“Indeed, one could not have recognized Schwanenkirchen a few months after work had been resumed at the mine. The village was [prosperous], workers and merchants were free from debts and a new spirit of freedom and life pervaded the town. Had Herr Hebecker used his 40,000 Reichmarks instead of Wära, his efforts would have inevitably resulted in failure; the money would have circulated through only one or two hands, each person retaining as much as possible and hoarding it because of the hard times.”

(from "Stamp Scrip: Money People Paid to Use" by Bruce Champ)

And I read that even today in Bavaria, there is something called Cheimgaueur in circulation since 2003. It is used alongside the Euro in more than 600 shops and firms in the area, 300000 in circulation. It loses two per cent of its value every quarter- they have an expiry date printed. Chiemgaueurs must be renewed with a sticker that costs 2% of its value. You can read it work here

I suppose money works like water, it flows through, things grow. It stagnates, things don't grow. More water, flood, inflation is terrible. But less water, drought, deflation is not so good either.

There is an argument that this kind of money does not give much of a stimulus, because over time, its worth gets less and less. I have an idea that people who are in charge of this should give the stimulus money to charitable institutions. They are not here to keep money or make money, but to spend it, right? So let the economic stimulus start with a charity label. Let any money made over to charitable institutions automatically be converted permanently into depreciating currency, and we will see money fly.

By the way, if in ten years time, you are asked to name the right person eligible for The Nobel Prize in economics, don't forget to mention me. I got this idea first, ha ha.

Virender Sehwag: Bashing Newts in a Fishbowl.

Sehwag is a genuinely unique player- he does not seem to belong here. He has the air of someone who has walked out of The Drones Club with a bat borrowed from Hogwarts.

He obviously enjoys his cricket- batting or bowling, he is quick to smile. He does not have the need to get into murderous theatricals like Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj or Harbhajan Singh do. His smile when he hits an awesome six or takes a magic wicket shows some bemusement- "How could he try that with me?," or, "Did I do that?"

Sehwag is aggressive, but this is not the aggression we associate with killers. It is more like the aggression of a squirrel- efficient, quick and flashy, he is having a great time at doing what he does. Fear and courage, anger and envy, they don't appear to come into what Sehwag is.

For Sehwag, cricket is not a game with rivals and opponents. They are there to bowl to him. If he gets out, bad luck. Otherwise he feels they are there to feed him fours and sixes.

There is no one like Sehwag. Despite the hiding he gives, I am sure deep inside, he feels really sorry for the bowlers. You can see that in the extravagant defensive shot he plays- he wants them to know that their effort is appreciated.

There are people who carry a load of baggage with cricket- individual pride, national honour, racial supremacy, defence of faith, technical knowledge and more. But Sehwag is Sehwag- he reveals cricket at its essential purity: it is a game where balls are bowled to a batsman. That is it.

There have been better batsmen than Sehwag, unquestionably so. But today at his brilliant best, Sehwag embodies the festive spirit of cricket- his is the joyous and unrestrained display of masterful strokes. It is a trivial accident that Sehwag is born in India and plays for India- in truth, he bats for Cricket.

God bless him.

Girivalam at Tiruvannamalai

There is something I found out when I went yesterday on Girivalam at Tiruvannamalai.

Time is really oppressive.

We were late starting, we were late eating in the hotel, we were slow walking round the hill, we were late getting to the bus, we were late coming back. And at the end of it, we had nothing much to do.

We planned to start at three. But I was able to start only at three-thirty. Not much of a difference, but what it meant was that by the time we got to the bus stand, there was quite a queue there. If we had come earlier, we would have started soon. But as it is, we started late. And to rub it in, the driver of the bus was a disinterested sort of man. He did not like to rush. So our bus took about a hour longer than it should have.

By the time we reached Tiruvannamalai, it was ten at night. We had to eat something, so we went into a hotel and found there was no place to sit. Went to another hotel, where we were rewarded with watered down Sambar and Chutney. We were late, so they were running out of dishes.

By the time we had finished eating, we were conscious that if we did not catch the bus by two, it will mean we will get back to Chennai only after six thirty or seven.

So we started walking against the clock. Stopped nowhere, just chug-chug like everyone else. I have to confess that more people overtook me than the number of people I overtook. The hill stood to our left, but no one noticed. We were busy looking at our watches, talking over the phones.

And when we finished our walk and got back to the bus-stand, there was quite a crowd, we had to stand in the queue for more than forty-five minutes. And the bus, in coming back, ran late by thirty minutes, so we got home only at around seven-forty five.

The point of Girivalam is that you do it on the full moon day, and you expect that  your desires will be fulfilled. The hill itself is supposed to be beautiful, but you can't really see it most of the times, and what with the electric lights, the moonlight is clearly faded out. So, there is not much in it to enjoy, and add to it your worries about time, it is a masochist act.

But the interesting point is that once we decide to go from point A to point B, everything in between is reduced to insignificance. What matters is that we should reach point B at the right time. It is that way in life, too.

We find a work, or a wife, and what we do with it is not seen as important as where we go from there. How much money we get, how much we make, what kind of respect we find, how well we are appreciated... That kind of questions. It is the same- I don't want to be here. My place is elsewhere.