Eurekha!!

I have been fascinated by Archimedes since I was a kid. I watched a wonderful program on PBS (www.pbs.org) called ‘Infinite secrets’ on Archimedes, especially about his lost work called ‘The method’

A brief history about ‘The Method’, this book by Archimedes is supposed to be on his best. This work is not about the results but about ‘The Methods’ as the title obviously suggests. It is about how he thought about ‘stuff’. This is about how he came about the concepts like pi (22/7), area of a cone, calculus and the famous fluid displacement experiment.

The concept of pi has always baffled me. Why is nature so much dependent on this single mathematical constant? Staring for simple area of a circle to the complex calculations to calculate the wavelengths of gravitational waves which are supposed be remnants of the big bang.

Was this nature designed using this mathematical constant pi? Whoa, whoa, hold on to your guns! I didn’t say anything which would make my physics teacher jump into a black hole, I just said that this ‘pi’ thing is very interesting. One more interesting thing is the ratio of 22/7 is unique, there is no other ration like it in the mathematics that we know of. In fact the scientists think if ever make any contacts with ETs we could talk mathematics to them and the language would be language of ratios and I could bet my geese on ‘pi’ would make it to that list.

Sorry for the digression. Yes, I was talking about the book ‘The Method’. This happened something in 200 B.C., Then world lost interest in science and the fads like religion became more fashionable. People started killing each other, burning down villages and doing all other lovely stuff because they believed in a different God ™. This valuble Archmedian book fell out of everyone's interest and no one knew what happened to it till another five centuries.

This book ended up in a monastery in a desert in West Asia. A monk there had big project in his hands, like copying bible over and over or some other terribly important project which would have could have put 'worls out of its misery'. But, half way through this project he ran out of parchment. He did any God ™ fearing individual would do, he washed clean this unique centuries old book , ‘The Method’ and tore it up and made a prayer book out of it. Such a wonderfull service to the world, isn’t religion wonderful? Not only these religions and myths close our minds, but impede the progress of civilization. I used to think this was methophor, but, when I saw these acts of stupidity I had to belive. I was so mad on these religious zealots who thoght a paryer book is more important than a invaluble sceince book.

The world would have been truly better without religions.

No, don’t hang your battle swords as yet, the foolishness didn’t stop there…

To be cont…

Revenge vs Forgiveness

My rant about revenge yesterday got me thinking. Would I rather kill the Grinch for stealing the Christmas or will I forgive him? As always, I don’t know. I consider myself as a man of second chances. I would love to give people second chances, hell, I got lot of second chances, or else I would writing this Blog in a dingy cell with blood of cockroaches in some prison in India.

Is forgiving or forgetting viable options? If they are so viable and implementable why aren’t we forgiving each others and forgetting about the rapes and tortures? Would Iraqis forgive Americans for the tortures in Abu Ghraib? Would USA forgive Osama Bin Laden for 911? Would Indians forgive Pakistanis for all the wonderful and colorful bomb blasts? Would Kashmiris forgive the Indian army for all the torture and rape? Wouldn’t we live Utopia if that happens? If it is so realizable why am’nt I giving my address as Utopia?

My roommate asked me a question the other day, why do we study history? “Simple”, I said “to learn not to step on the same shit again”. Exactly, so ‘forgetting’ is not an option. Once bitten twice shy. Seriously, did we learn anything from history? Not that I know of. No wait, I know one thing we learned as civilization, that using humans as fuel for furnaces is not such a good idea, but bombing them from 10,000 feet above is still game.

Back to the issue, so why aren’t we forgiving each other and carrying on as nothing happened? If hindus could have forgiven Muslims or burning 58 Hindus including small children for just being Hindus, the worst riots in history of India wouldn’t have happened.

But why is it really hard to forgive? Personally I find its really hard to forgive, and I don’t know the reason, being a staunch evolutionist I think we humans evolved by believing strongly in paying back in the same token rather than having beer with the plunderer of your village. So, stretching the logic now, will forgiveness be seen as a chink in my armor? Would I be called a ‘Girlie man’ by the Terminator?

Did the jury come to a verdict? No sir, still the verdict is hung on whether to forgive or not. Apparently we haven’t been forgiving each other much , and it has been the working philosophy of human kind since we crawled out of our caves for better or for worse. So, should I forgive and get on with my life or whatever I have left of it? Yes, by all means sir, it is your choice. Choice is easy isn’t it? You may ask, I would say, you haven’t had a sandwich at the Subway.

RAGE and Revenge

I guess today was my turn to get the finger. I was driving to Lake Lousie ( A beautiful lake some 200 kms west of Calgary) I was in the passing and driving at 120 kmph. I was talking to friend and didn’t glance in the rear view mirror for stretch of 20-30 secs and before I realized what was happening a car suddenly cut to my lane. I didn’t even have time to realize what was happening. Everyone in my car managed to let of shill shriek. I instantly went back to right lane. My friend later told me that the driver in that car gave me a finger. What did he achieve by ‘fingering’ me? What did achieve by cutting in front of me? Other than scaring the wits out of us?

No idea! If he wanted to teach me lesson a loud honk would have carried the message loud and clear, but a finger? No idea, may it made him feel good. It made him feel that he has extracted revenge. I recently read that revenge is literally sweet. Scientists found that when we humans extract revenge, the pleasure regions in our brains are all active and light up. We take revenge to feel good. Not only that. People watching someone extract revenge also feel good. Strange isn’t it? Maybe not, if look back, revenge has been the underlying thread running throughout the history of mankind.

Both in Ramayana and Mahabharata, famous Indian epics, the main theme is avenging the wrongs done to the good guys by the bad guys. World wars were big revenge fests. There is no need to look that far, the current flag waving posturing we are witnessing is nothing but revenge.

Sure revenge feels good, but doesn’t this cycle avenging and ‘re’venging continue forever? Doesn’t Israel and Palestinian conflict come into mind when talking about this? Does one justify the human bombs who detonate themselves in markets and kill innocent children and civilians? or in turn does one justify the Israeli tanks firing mortars at Palestinian children throwing stones? Both the parties justify it as revenge, where does this buck stop?

No, I don’t know, Gandhi said it stops with him. One of the main mantras of his Philosophy of Ahimsa is 'no retaliation'. Does this work in real world? It worked in India though. I guess so, but, I believe that we could have gotten independence much earlier if we had kicked some good English butt.

As for me I would sleep tight if that dude who gave me birde would be pulled over by a cop and fined a good couple of hundred $, wouldn’t that be sweet?

Cyclones and Hurricanes

Would anyone of you want to be the guy sitting in a shelter and watch helplessly as his boat and house are battered and torn apart by Hurricane- Ivan as a garbage bag torn apart by a pack of dogs? I certainly don’t want to be. I would be a sick bastard if wanted to get badgered by a hurricane.

I have confession to make, when I was a kid I was big fan of cyclones (we call hurricanes cyclones in India, a gift from the Queen I guess, may God keep on blessing her (sic)). I always looked forward for them, October and November is our cyclone season. Nellore, the place I grew up is in the cyclone alley and infamous allover India for bearing the brunt of cyclones every time they pay a visit to India. Nellore was not on the coast per say but a good 30 km away from it.

My house in Nellore faced east and thus the coast, The big living room looked out into the east, I used stare into east in vain hope for a cyclone. I am not sure why I hoped for a cyclone, it may be that I could a holiday from school, it may be that I could see the awesome power it packs or may the deepest reason is to enjoy the destruction it causes.

One cyclone was so huge that it rain 100 cm in one single night! 4 feet of rain? Everything which could hold water was overflowing, from the river to the small container in my backyard, the whole city was flooded. Lot of people lost their livelihood, fields got flooded livestock got washed away.

One of the ecological disasters happening and waiting to happen is this current fad of aquaculture. The lure of easy money makes decent people do some really filthy things. They dug up the one the most fertile regions in India. The fields which have been producing one of the best varieties of rice are now filled with brine and shrimp is grown. So when there is flood, theses act like small reservoirs and hold the flood for a little while and burst with awesome force causing heavy destruction.

I surely miss the hurricanes, of course minus the destruction they cost. As I kid I knew about the destruction they caused but somehow it didn’t matter to me, now it does. I was the other day thinking could cyclones be mitigated somehow in the ocean itself before landfall? Did anyone work on this?

After moving to Calgary all I could hope is for big snowstorm, every winter morning I peer through my bedroom window hoping for one foot deep dump.

Bad-Guys are coming!!!

"Compasiinate conservative".Is it me or does this statement mean that that all conservatives are not compassionate? Bush-Cheney team is so full of compassion that Cheney recently threatened that if the voters don’t make the right choice of voting ‘right’, They will be punished by the terrorists.

We as a society have always been cowering with fear. We Indians have Pakistanis, Pakistanis have Indians, America had Communists and Russians had capitalists. How true does Orwell’s 1984 sound. The society in '1984' is always at war with something else.

We do live in the same Orwellian society, now the bad guys are the terrorists. Just use this Bogey-Man to make everyone fall into the line. This Technique is what Cheney is using; Bad guys are waiting to attack.

I had a very interesting experience on a visit to the USA, I was visiting ‘The Alamo’ in San Antonio. It was here, where one of the heroic battles in American History took place. At this palce mexicans concentrated their attak on their bid take back Texas, and the American soldiers at this Fort 'The Alamo' held them at bay for 40 days or so till they could get reinforcements.

Coming back to the story, Mexican-American family with a two year old son walks in and looks at this big toy model of the battle. The son asks his mother who are the bad guys. The mother points at the Mexican soldiers and says that they are the bad guys, the little guy jumps in and says aren’t we Mexicans?

Seriously who are these bad guys whom we keep hearing about?

Do we as a species need an enemy to keep us motivated? Or do we need an external threat to band together? in other words do we need Pakistanis to remind us that we are Indians? Do Americans need terrorists to make display their flag and sing their "God bless America"?

I guess we need this Bogey-Man to knock our doors once in a while. We give our best when our existance is threatened. It all makes sence, we needed a Bogey man as a evolving species and we continue to need him.

We have been using this Bogey-Man technique to make childeren drink milk. Cheney is using the same technique to make American voters vote 'right', I guess just sticking with what works.