Desiderata

This poem has a quietly powerful calming effect. I first read it a long time ago, but I keep coming back to it.
http://hobbes.ncsa.uiuc.edu/desiderata.html

Things all grad students should do early on

1. Create a file system for printed papers that you have read in alpahbetical (or any other indexable) order. When you read a paper, write comments on it with a pen. Mark main contributions, shortcomings, a bad assumption, an ingenious proof, and anything else that catches your eye. When done reading, put it in its place.

Take it from a veteran that in time you will remember almost no details of a paper that you had once read in depth. Keeping a commented version makes re-reading much faster. Not to mention that disorganized papers are nowhere to be found where needed, and are responsible for much paper wate.

2. If your work involves simulations, use version control of some kind. Softwares are available for every platform.

3. Again, if your work involves extensive simulations, learn about reusing code. Tons of well-written code is available online.

That way, you will get much more work done. Or, if you prefer, you will get more time to spend on "non-academic" activities such as blogging :)

Would you?

Writing a chapter in a book is a lot like a marathon, where you start with a lot of enthusiasm and excitement, but the end drags...

So the book goes on. Right now I am making a glossary and an index. The index particularly inspires me to poetry.

"Let us sift through some more
Piles of manure
Lousy it may be
Our responsibility
But if the stakes were high
Would you? Would you?"

A matter of ethics, I will quote the original. Listen to the song. If nothing else, you will enjoy my poem more.

Inspired by: Would You?

Artist - Singin' in the Rain soundtrack
Album - Singin' in the Rain
Lyrics - Would You?

"He holds her in his arms.
Would you? Would you?
He tells her of her charms.
Would you? Would you?
They met as you and I,
And they were only friends.
But before the story ends..."

"He'll kiss her with a sigh.
Would you? Would you?
And if the girl were I
Would you? Would you?
And would you dare to say,
'Let's do the same as they.'?
I Would. Would you?"

"And would you dare to say,
'Let's do the same as they.'?
I Would. Would you?"

Cheers,

A problem with the pentacle

A pentacle consists of 5 straight lines as shown above. A node is where any two of these lines intersect or meet. Therefore, a pentacle has 10 nodes.

That was the notation. Now the interesting part. Assume that a huge pentacle is drawn on the ground, and on each of its nodes, we have a gun with which you can shoot another node that is exactly two hops away. For example, in the figure, you can shoot A from C or vice versa, but you cannot shoot B from either A or C. Once a node has been shot, you cannot use it to shoot at another node. The goal is to start from any node and to keep shooting (only one shot at a time) until only one of the nodes remains. Can it be done? If so, how would you do that?

Hint: The solution to this problem is based on a simple strategy. Can you prove or disprove that this strategy is the only way to solve this problem?

Never pity yourself

You cannot be among the top with a victim mentality.

- Aaz

Twelve Angry Men

An old man's testimony has the potential to put a youth (the accused) in the electric chair. However, his testimony seems to disagree with certain facts. But why would he lie?

text from:
http://classweb.howardcc.edu/jbell/ideabook/angrymen.pdf

"...Juror #9 then said that he had watched the old man for a long time in court. He noticed that he had a tom jacket and walked dragging a leg. He believed that the old man had never had any recognition, that nobody knew him, and that it was a sad thing to be nothing, so maybe he made himself believe it for his "15 minutes of fame". Juror #5 then changed his vote to not guilty..."

In the entire movie, I found this to be the most astute bit of reasoning. Why? Because very few people can perceive and interpret human nature as it is. It may not be easy to commit murder, but it is incredibly easy for an unfulfilled person to push a man to the guillotine for "15 minutes of fame". Doesn't the person feel guilty? Of course not! He has wiped out all memory, and overwritten it with belief. Why should he care for a world that does not care for him?

conserve your muscles

It takes seventeen muscles to smile and forty-three to frown,
and none to stare expressionlessly.

Make hay...

May hay when the sun shines.
When the sun is not shining, don't make hay,
but for god's sake do something else!

At the reception

We had a few uninvited guests at my wedding reception. Free food! At most weddings, they go unnoticed, since most people automatically assume that they are acquaintances of the in-laws, but our case was different. There were less than ten guests from my wife's side. So, these folx were easily identified.

What makes them easier to identify is that they eat voraciously, and if you stare at them, or approach them, then they try hard to disappear. In a place like Kolkata, it is not unlikely that they have been publicly bashed for this before. Poor people.

Anyway, three of them were cornered by the organizers of the event (none of this was actually witnessed by me). Two slipped and ran for their lives, fearing the worst. The third, we kept him seated under supervision of two of my biggest cousins, and let him go after most of our guests had left. Here is how the conversation with him went.

Who are you?

-I am related to your aunt?

What is the relation?

-I am related...

Where do you live?

-Tollygunj (a fairly large area)

What do you do?

-I am a driver.

What is your car's license plate number? (saying this my cousin pulled out a diary as if to check)

- W... (All license plates in West Bengal begin in WB...)

W... after that?

-(with a resigned look) X... Y... Z

Anyway, before we caught this fella, he had almost finished dinner. He was on the ice-cream. On the whole, he must not have felt too bad about the whole deal. Neither did we. :))

From J.K.Rowling

"People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right." - Albus Dumbledore

On hunger and fishing

The other day, we were discussing how bad governments sometimes deliberately paralyze the education system. Chris came up with a nice way of putting it:
“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime. But if you can prevent a man from learning how to fish, then he will be very grateful if you ever gave him a fish.”

While checking my phrasing of this proverb, I came across this. Not quite so enlightening, but entertaining nonetheless :)
http://www.amatecon.com/fish.html

Peaceful Coexistence

Peaceful coexistence is a beautiful idea, but if I had to choose between peace and coexistence, I would choose peace.

History

In one of Satyajit Ray's stories, the following was the description of a 'wise man'.

"He had extensive knowledge of the past, and he was aware of the present. Using these, he could predict the future."

Indeed, human nature has not changed much in thousands of years. Nor has the fundamental nature of our problems changed. We are faced with similar tough choices to make. As a consequence, in the words of Mark Twain:

"The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."

I think that the single most important reason to study history is to help us understand human nature and instincts, so that we can predict the future, and possibly take steps to prepare for it. Sadly though, history is never taught with such a goal...

The nature of nature
is not limited by the limits
of our wits.

Workplaces

It helps to have more than one place where one can work. Sometimes, working conditions in a place can become a barrier to productivity. A simple example is when you and your officemate(s) are comfortable at very different temperatures. Sound familiar? I have personally been lucky in this regard, but not everybody is so fortunate. Of course, temperature is a small issue. Bigger things crop up from time to time, making life miserable.

Ideally, a person should be able to work in any circumstance. But then, none of us is an ideal person.

Love her...

Love her the way she likes being loved, and she will love you the way she likes loving you.

Belief

Several movies have put forward the idea that if you can really believe that you can do something, then you can do it. The idea certainly appeals to our minds... such power... if only we could believe!

But untrue as the proposition may be, there is great power in belief. Indeed, a mathematician might say that although the existence of belief may not be sufficient to achieve an arbitrary goal, it is nonetheless necessary. That almost sounds pedantic :)

Time and again I have pondered over the nature of god, or a supreme power, and I have arrived at the same conclusion that such a power is unlikely to be interested in human affairs, and give instructions such as those given by most religions. God lives in our beliefs. We think of god subject to the limitations of our wits. God is as powerful as our beliefs. And the power of belief, although it may not enable us to violate nature's laws, is still enormous. It is the power of belief that enabled dictators to justify the killing of tens of millions of people, and it is the power of belief that helps billions of human beings to lead a reasonably honest life in a world where there is little other than human law to punish villains.

question and answer

Q: What would you like to be when you grow up?
A: I would like to be lucky!

...the team worker...

his idea of teamwork was a team that worked on his ideas...

Twin primes

For a moment I thought I had proved the twin primes conjecture...

The conjecture is that there are infinitely many prime pairs differing by 2. eg. 5,7 ; 11,13 etc.

I started with Euclid's proof of the infiniteness of primes.
Assume for a contradiction that there are finitely many primes. Without loss of generality, assume that there are exactly n primes p1,p2, ... pn in increasing order.
Then, (p1.p2...pn + 1) must be a prime since it has no prime factors, contradicting our assumption.

In the same way, (p1.p2...pn - 1) must also be a prime if n>1.

Doesn't that give us a pair of primes (p1.p2...pn - 1), (p1.p2...pn + 1) for every n that differ by 2?

No, it does not. Why?

TV for sale

Some people... anyway, here's an ad I saw recently:

TV for sale. It used to work great until last week when the channel got stuck at number 3. $25.

Hmmmmmmm. $25 per channel. 100 channels. Do the math.

Photo rules

I screwed up. I screwed up big time. There are (at least) 3 fundamental rules for taking good pictures. To consistently take good pictures, one must check these 3 quickly before each click in the following sequence:

1. correct choice of f (aperture) for a desired effect
2. correct exposure
3. hold camera steady

Other rules may be
4. choose proper film for the photo setting eg. 400-1600 for night pictures with people
5. use grad filters if necessary
and many others.

I screwed up in 2. I took a picture of a small bright sunlit flower in front of a dark shaded background. My experience told me that unless I underexposed considerably, my subject (the flower) would be a blur of bright light. I underexposed 2 full stops. The image came out nice. From then on, until the end of the roll, and well into the next one, I kept taking pictures 2 stops underexposed... some of my best compositions came out horribly dark.

taking responsibility

I was watching TV and came across a reality show 'Runway' in which some designers compete through their fashion creations. Today's episode was about teamwork, and one of them got eliminated for being the weakest on that count. But that's not really what happened.

It came down to two persons. One had spent several hours crying because she cracked up under pressure. The other simply said that she was slower at sewing than the others and perhaps she herself should be eliminated. The judges agreed, saying that this being an industry, you are supposed to sell yourself, not eliminate yourself. The crying lady got another life.

The decision seemed ironic to me. Here is a person who is willing to take responsibility, who is humble, who instinctively dislikes to pass blame, and who has a kind heart, and she is eliminated on a test of teamwork! I think that I should love to work with such a person as my partner, rather than work with someone who is emotionally immature, or is prone to throwing tantrums.

Somehow, American TV has time and again given me the impression that qualities such as humility, willingness to share responsibility for failures, and not passing blame, are considered weaknesses in this culture. That is perhaps not true is actual work environments, because without these, teamwork is impossible.

Some Buddhist schools, on the other hand, cater to the opposite extreme. Taking responsibility is held sacred. In some of their teaching stories, I came across scenarios where an individual took responsibility quietly and calmly for mistakes that were perhaps not entirely his. And he was served as a model to readers. Isn't is true that taking responsibility for mistakes that you have not committed is a form of dishonesty? It misleads others and just happens to hurt you also. Perhaps the message of the story was that when it comes to taking responsibility, you must check your tendency to get defensive and make excuses. But the example came out as a little extreme to me.

The question

The question is not, ‘‘Is there life after death?’’ The question is, ‘‘Is there life before death?’’

Bouncing ball

quoted from 'The Teaching Stories of Grand Master Wei Chueh'
***
One of the monks was troubled with his wandering thoughts. Not knowing how to deal with them, he had no peace and asked the Grand Master what to do.

The Grand Master said, "Thoughts come, and thoughts go. Just ignore them. Like a bouncing ball, if you don't hit it, it won't bounce."
***

To add to the message of the story above, I quote from an abstract of Zen meditation "Repelling wandering thoughts is like bouncing a ball-the harder you try, the greater the force it bounces back. The right way of dealing with wandering thoughts is to ignore them."

Of birds and bushes

"A bird in hand is worth two in a bush"

But a bird in a bush is so much more exciting!

HR Interview

I just attended a talk on getting a job. The speaker was an HR person. I knew most of the things, but some of them got reemphasized, such as :
a. The need for a 1 page resume, and what essentials it must contain-experience,skills; and what it need not contain-publications, courses, teaching or other unrelated experience
b. In the age of databases, the need for putting in keywords that a computer can search out
c. 80% of all jobs are unadvertised; the remaining 20% receives the bulk of applications
d. The importance of networking

But the most valuable insight I go was regarding HR interviews. As a technical person, one may believe that an HR interview is less important than the others, but rest assured, the HR interviewer does not share the belief. Any person who is interviewing you has the authority to reject your candidacy, or else the interview would not be taking place. The speaker mentioned behavior traits that are strongly undesirable:
a. One or two word answers
b. Long and chatty answers, sometimes with personal information
c. Condescending attitude
d. Answers full of technical jargon. It is important to speak in the language of the other person to get information across. Speaking in terms that don't make sense to the listner conveys the same amount of information as saying nothing. Also, it is rude.

Remember that communication skills are valued by all employers.

The maze

Have you ever solved a maze? The childish ones, where one has to find a way for the bunny rabbit to reach a bunch of juicy carrots? It was mostly easy, wasn't it? It was easy. It was easy because we could look down at the entire maze, and our eyes would find a countinuous path between two points. Now, had we been inside the maze, unable to see past boundaries, life would be so much harder.

Sometimes, life is like a maze, confusing, frustrating, and it helps to detach oneself and to look at life from an elevated position. From there, one can see the options and the paths clearly. From there, one can see past the barriers of confusion and doubt.

Knowing what to do vs. doing it

Most adults have a fairly good idea of what they should be doing. Few do it. Our brain, which is so good at distinguising the correct from the wrong, the desirable from the undesirable, gives us a teeny weeny bit of self control. We repeatedly do things that we know are harmful to ourselves.

With many of us, the problem is addiction, which is more common than we may care to admit. Watching a certain TV show regularly is a relatively harmless one. Playing a video game continuously until it is won is more serious. Video games are a >$10 billion industry.If you can play 15 minutes each day, it is fine. But then, you are not the subject of this posting :)

Another common manifestation of our lack of self control is laziness. Amazing how some people get away with it. If you are in a job, you surely have seen a specimen. Does absolutely nothing and blabbers nonsense without giving any thought at meetings. Managers! Not necessarily.

While my car was broken, I had to commute for a few weeks. I would see the train from a distance. Two parallel roads to cross, the walk signs still red, the train pulling in, the knowledge that it would pull out in less than 30 seconds; getting to it almost impossible. Amazingly, when I decided to try, more often than not, I would make it just in time. If only I had the same spirit in my research... that would be cool! I'm trying... I'm trying...

A silly joke

Sorry, this one is only for folx who understand Hindi. It came with one of the many mails that go around.

Ek gadha ped par chadha to oopar baithe haathi ne poochha, "Tu kyun chadha ?"

Gadhe ne kaha, "Apple khaane".

To haathi ne bola "Lekin buddhu, yeh to Mango tree hai!"

Phir gadhe ne kaha, "Maloom hai, main apple saath laaya hoon."

-Did this make you laugh? Maybe not. The first time I read it, I found it hilarious. The haathi, gadha, Apple, Mango, the situation - all add up to it.

Good and evil

This thought has occurred to me in the past.

It never feels good to be wronged. But people respond to it in different ways. Some feel bad, and resolve not to wrong others in the same way. Others decide that since they have been treated unfairly, they will treat others in a like manner.

That is perhaps the point where the good and the evil part ways.

Hi and welcome!

This is my first post to my blog.

I was reading quotations by G.B.Shaw, and came across some witty ones. Maybe they were funny cos they reminded me of people I knew. In any case, here are a few :)

"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides,the pig likes it."

"She had lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech."

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it."