Rain !

Incessant rain
May be a constant pain
But if you want to gain
You must refrain
from unclogging the drain
Else it is certain
your efforts were in vain

Why ?!?

One question never left my mind as I boarded the Dhanbad express to Tatanagar. WHY??
The train was 2 hours late at Chennai Central. I couldn't believe that a train that comes from kerala to Chennai in 16 hours could make it all the way to my destination in another 30 hours.! I mean come on! Look at a map if you want to. Its next to impossible. And the thing stops at EVERY single station. I mean I looked out to the left and I looked to the right! NO platform . Yet people were getting on ! I'm sure I'll find the name of the place on the way back. I mean, it has to stop there right?
Anyway, back to my question.Why? It wasn't as much a question as a continuous word that kept entering my mind. Considering that this was my first real journey away from home, I guess it was obvious why the first why came to my mind. Why do I have to go out of Chennai? Why can't I do my intern in TI India. Oh yea. My wonderful prof Dr. Burma(Name changed to protect privacy ;) ) called up someone in Ambattur and got me an intern. Only problem? No buses. I have to change to buses early in the morning and two on the way back for 6 weeks ! Yea right.! And to do what ? Help someone prepare SEM samples.No thank you !
The next why that popped into my head was very simple. Why on earth is the clearance under the seat of in a train almost the same size as the clearance under a Formula1 car? I mean how do they expect me to put my BIG suitcase in there? Of course a why for why I had a big suitcase never came to my mind. Thats because the answers obvious. DUH.
And then it began. The train journey. I happened to be sitting next to a first year dude from NITT. Now I tell you, I've had people ask my about IIT and how I must be Einsteins onnu vitta cousin oda rendavadu paiyenoda naalavadu akkavoda vootukarara oda yezhavadu paiyan oda paiyan (hehe.. long distance realtion. Doesnt matter how long;) ) before. Usually its just a couple of questions and when I get bored I politely say something that if read properly means "DUDE! enough. I'm not from mars. Let me go" . But unfortunately the dude I was was unable to understand what I was saying on another level. Maybe he didn't have another level, but being an overly polite person( yes . I am very polite. If you don't trust my words, then screw you :P ;) ) I just couldn't outright proceed to blankly say no. Of course the fact that I'd need his help on reaching jamshedpur never reached my mind ;) ;) .
Hmmm . Enough about that dude. I got very pained in the journey and kept asking why a lot of times. Now that brings me to an interesting question. Why why ? Its a three letter word, yet we pronounce only the last syllable. Why say why when you can say y ? I guess thats what makes English such a complicated language. Everything has weird spellings and even weirder pronunciations. French on the other hand, is awesome. Although there are a million pronunciations, the same set of syllables always should be pronounced the same way. Agreed there are too many to memorize but once done, you'll never go wrong in pronunciation, although I admit pronouncing their 'r' is probably the toughest thing I have ever attempted and haven't got it kkright yet, err I mean right yet.
Anyway, coming back to why. A lot of my questions have always begun with why. Why is such a nice way to start of . Its unique in the sense that its one of the few words that constitute a sentance. I've had loads of conversation with many teachers when all I have uttered was why during class and as revenge all they asked me during vivas were why ? Specifically the viva in twelfth class. Computer Science. I was supposed to be some shtudd in it, but I swear, out of 5 I never crossed zero. Not once. 5 vivas. and 5 zeros. Why ? (there we go again ;) ) . Its all cause my teachers never stopped asking why till I tripped and fell .Even thought theoretically if I tell them 1+1 = 2 and they ask why , no one can answer. I can probably hold up my fingers and go 1 in the hand , 1 in the other hand, breaking one finger and attaching to the other hand I have 2 :P. Since I couldn't really do that without risking pain( though I must admit, I wanted to borrow someones fingers ;) ) , I got stumped every time.
Why is useful in so many ways. It helps one get out of sticky situations. When you don't know what to say , you can just say why and turn the tables so to speak.
At this point, I'm sure you must also be thinking "WHY ?? Why on earth did I choose to read this post" . Well. It just means you are as jobless as me ;), or infinitely more .
WHY are you so jobless ?
Why am I so jobless ?
Why do I ask so many questions?
Why don't I get answers to all these questions?
Why did I start writing a post when I had no idea what I wanted to write about ?
Well thats just another mystery altogether. Lets just say I had time to kill and did just that ;) . I'm sure you did too. Please leave a comment so that I'll know who are all out to kill me after reading this post ;).

Why ??
Because the sky
is so high
and oh my my
pigs live in a sty?
of course I don't lie
when I say I fry
my phone to keep it dry.
bye bye bye

Heights of joblessness bring out the poet even in me ;).

Un nouveau Commencement

Its been a while since my last post. Somewhere between sleeping in classes and sleeping in my room , I seem to have lost all the time I had. Its been more almost a year since my last post, and considering that time I didn't think it was apt to keep the same name or the same template, although I didn't want to delete my old posts. But I doubt the shady-ness of my posts will ever decrease, since my mind simply cannot accept it is too simple to understand the world. Back to blogging :D .

I'm Amazing

The human brain is probably the most amazing thing I have ever come across. Just the other day I went for a long drive with my parents in the car. I'd hardly slept the previous night cause I went to bed at my usual bed time of 2 am and was woken up early in the morning at 530. I was half asleep, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't drive now should it. So I was driving along at a surprisingly brisk speed, and since my mind tends to wander a lot more when I'm half asleep, I found myself analyzing all the things my brain was doing.
Firstly all my "major" functions like respiration, heart beat, digestion etc etc.
Next, my limbs were performing a range of activities. My hands were usually at 10 and 3(yes I know its 10 and 2 but this is my SHTYLE ;) ) on the steering wheel. They were applying just enough pressure to keep it going straight if I wanted to go straight. When there were turns, my brain was able to calculate exactly how much force to apply so as to do the initial turn and also when exactly to straighten and so on. My brain was also compensating for the fact that I was driving a power assisted steering rather than the manual steering I usually do. Thats all my right hand had to do, but my left hand had to change the gears whenever my brain realised I was over-revving the engine or under-revving it. It also had to coordinate with my left leg which was working the clutch. And speaking of legs, my brain had to know exactly when to push and how much to push and how fast to release the clutch so as to not stall the engine and yet keep going at the pace I was. Then my right leg. It had to accelerate at the right amount and also break at the right places. It also had to coordinate with all the other limbs to ensure smooth drive and also me getting shouted at by my parents ;) .
My brain was also constantly getting information from my eyes and ears (sometimes my nose also ;) ) so as to work the other limbs properly. It was also making my neck and eyes move so as to get the best possible information from the three mirrors and also from the windows and the windscreen. It had to decide when to start when to stop when to go faster when to go slower when to overtake from this information available and from its calculations.
How does it calculate so fast? I doubt that the human brain actually measures that the car in front is 1.23213123123123123(+-)10^(-17) m in front like a computer would. It approximates that if I were to slightly go faster I might not hit the car in front. And if I got too close (ie when it estimates I probably would hit the car) it has to slow down. The so called negative feedback. But in negative feedback you'd probably measure the distance each time and reduce it to zero. But thats not the case here. Its simple approximation.
For all the computational capacity of a super computer, could it ever determine whether it would hit the car in front if it increased the speed slightly? Yet my brain did it ! So if my brain was so much better than a super computer, imagine how much better say Albert Einstein or Richard Feynman's brains would be ! Maybe thats the answer to better computation. Stop measuring things. Look at the human brain. Learn to approximate :) . Or at least thats the conclusion I derived in my "sleep-drunk" state.
Woah! I was really impressed with myself now. I continued to observe all the other "great" feats I accomplished like overtaking performing a U turn, reversing etc etc and got home feeling awesome.
And then it hit me. Every one of the thousands of people I'd seen on the road were doing the same thing :( . I realized I'm not that amazing after all :'(

True Lies

What are lies?
This is what webster has to say about them:

Main Entry: 3 lie

Function: verb

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English lEogan; akin to Old High German liogan to lie, Old Church Slavonic lugati

intransitive senses
1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive
2 : to create a false or misleading impression
transitive senses : to bring about by telling lies "lied his way out of trouble"
synonyms:
Lie, prevaricate,equivocate, plater, fib mean to tell an untruth.
Lie is the blunt term, imputing dishonesty "lied about where he had been".
Prevaricate softens the bluntness of Lie by implying quibbling or confusing the issue "during the hearings the witness did his best to prevaricate".
Equivocate implies using words having more than one sense so as to seem to say one thing but intend another "equivocated endlessly in an attempt to mislead her inquisitors".
Palter implies making unreliable statements of fact or intention or insincere promises "a swindler paltering with his investors".
Fib applies to a telling of a trivial untruth "fibbed about the price of the new suit".

lie 1 a : an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive b : an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker
2 : something that misleads or deceives

Most of the statements imply that the speaker must know that what he/she is saying is untrue. But what if the speaker believes in what he says totally and yet it is untrue? Are they really lying ? If one were to take the polygraph to be a decent gauge of whether a person is lying or not, then if the person believes it to be true he isn't lying. For example if a person has been told a lie and he tells someone else, it could be taken as he is lying or he's being truthful. He's relatively being truthful and absolutely lying !!
Anyway, coming back to the polygraph, it is based on the assumption that when a person lies his vital signs change significantly when he lies because it isn't normal for him. Two problems, what if someone is so used to lying that for him its normal? or what if he believes what he is saying is true (true relatively) but actually not true ( false absolutely). In both cases the person can beat the test !
Assuming its human nature to be mostly good and all that, the second case is most likely, then what is true to the guy is not really true to someone else and vice versa. So there is really no such thing as a real truth, just what we believe to be true. Like for example that we are actually alive. We believe we are , and hence its true. But if I were to believe I were actually dead , then I might as well be dead !
Moreover, how far are exaggerations from 'lies'? So many times I have exaggerated what I was saying . Does that make me a lier? What if I actually believe what I say even though it didn't happen and even though I came up with it myself. Am I still lying?
When does an exaggeration actually turn into a lie?
One more thing a friend told me that sarcasm could be a sin cause it is very similar to lying !!!
Maybe next time I call someone a lier, I shall think about all this and refrain from it.

I just couldn't resist

House M.D is supposed to be a drama on fox. Somehow, the main character played by Hugh Laurie ( a Brit playing an American perfectly) and his sarcastic comments make it one of the funniest things I've ever seen . I just couldn't resist putting down some of my fav quotes .

*Everybody lies

*Truth begins in lies

*Humanity is overrated

*There's no I in 'team'. There is a me, though, if you jumble it up

* I choose to believe that the white light people sometimes see... they're all just chemical reactions that take place when the brain shuts down.... There's no conclusive science. My choice has no practical relevance to my life, I choose the outcome I find more comforting.... I find it more comforting to believe that this isn't simply a test.

*Treating illnesses is why we became doctors, treating patients is what makes most doctors miserable

*Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is almost always somebody screwed up

*The eyes can mislead, the smile can lie, but the shoes always tell the truth

*There is not a thin line between love and hate. There is --- in fact --- a Great Wall of China with armed sentries posted every 20 feet between love and hate.

*And humility is an important quality. Especially if you're wrong a lot.... Of course, when you're right, self-doubt doesn't help anybody, does it?

*If you talk to God you're religious. If God talks to you, you're psychotic

*Perseverance does not equal worthiness. Next time you want to get my attention, wear something fun. Low-riding jeans are hot.

*I asked you what two plus two equals and a day later you tell me, 'Not twenty-five'.

*And find out the truth about who he's been dating. No way a Marine goes a year without getting some blood on his bayonet

There are loads more ! :)

Math

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is probably one of the most beautiful results in science , yet when stated in its usual form , it sounds so boring. Normally, it is stated us the product of uncertainties in positions and momentum always exceeds h/2*pi . Of course, it does imply that if you try to increase the precision of one of the two the other gets affected. Even though this seems quite easy to be mathematically understood, maybe the extent to which it could affect normal life can never be understood unless its stated differently. The form that appealed most to me was "The closer you try to observe something, the more likely you are to disturb it, hence not be able to observe it in its natural state ! " . This was in a tv show called numbers, which i find awesome cause its how to use math to solve crimes ! Sounds cool ! Anyway, like i was saying, this form of the law makes a lot of sense. In the show, the guy is trying to analyse data of how the robber is robbing banks, then just before they are apprehend the guy, he realises because he has been observing them so closely and because of the law they should be aware that he is observing them ! Of course when he tells the guy in charge, he uses the information that the robber knows that the police know to his advantage ! Anyway, if the law is thought of in this form, it seems to affect more things than just some dumb electrons flying around. For example, observation of animal behaviour in their "natural" habitat. Obviously because of the law, the more closer we observe animals, the more they are affected by us, and hence the purpose is no longer served. Hence we have to find an optimum as to how much we observe and how much we disturb. If we could somehow measure the quantities , maybe we can find a different constant like Planck's for animal behaviour. Giant panda's constant anyone?
Anyway , this kind of gets me thinking on why people insist on making mathematical statements of all these laws of "nature" ( Of course , they need not be actual laws. Again Feynman. He said that all the laws that we know off, are like some guy who doesn't know chess observing people play it. He makes up rules, until they're broken, after which he makes up new rules . ) The non-mathematical statement to me anyway seems to make a lot more sense. Another example would be newton's third law. "In an interaction between two objects, the force applied by one on the other is equal and opposite to the force applied by the second on the first". I prefer "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" . This is true for so many things and sounds as a better law than the first did . Abstraction is a beautiful thing, though I've grown to hate it thanks to MA 203 . Of course there are subjects like topology which have abstraction at their core , which i still find amazing. KSR (Great mathematician, taught me math for jee . This guy takes geometry using just his hands ! Without a board. ) spoke about topology and I've been amazed by it ever since. Imagine trying to define a point. I have always wondered how to do it. Turns out everything can be defined working downwards. A point is the intersection of two lines, and a line of two planes and so on. But since we can't imagine the 4th spatial dimension, it could be difficult, though mathematically its quite easy. That is probably the greatness of math. When we can't even imagine the question properly, math seems to have an answer for us . Of course , it poses a lot of problems, but then thats another thing.