Honor Killing

We read and hear lot of news everyday. But some causes ripples in your thought process and makes them go back and forth inter-mingle them. Here is one such.

I listened this in NPR on my way back from work. An Iraqi guy was narrating with the help of translator.

“Honor is everything in our society. How can our family show our faces to society? After the incident we were humiliated and embarrassed. Though she is beautiful, intelligent and nice, we have no choice but to kill my sister. What else we can do?”

It ripped my heart when I learn that “crime” her sister committed was getting abducted by some unknown kidnappers. She was away one night and released by the kidnappers.

They did not even ask the girl whether she was raped. But they decided merely the act of abducted for a ‘night’ is enough to bring down the Honor of the family. So, they decided to kill her – just to make sure their honor is intact.

Worst part is ‘Honor killing’ is accepted phenomenon and police turns other way.

The guy who killed claims he did this for the family and wouldn’t mind doing it again if required. He sounded very genuine. He also said, if it were a guy they would have celebrated with feast (sacrificing a goat). Instead they sacrificed her.

Leaving the male dominated society issues aside, (which I agree is the problem) I started wondering about how a human mind can think that killing another person (in this case a loving sister) is for good cause. What is the difference between this and a military guy killing others for his country’s good cause?

What a world apart we all live in. I was wondering how can someone believe the above said. But that is exactly the problem around the world isn’t it? People have their own belief system and think everything else as wrong.

I was disturbed, irritated and sad after hearing that. But after an hour I was sitting in front of TV and watching some sitcom and laughing. Somewhere else a guy is pulling a trigger with heavy heart. GOD help us all.

Legal terms that one should know

I am an avid reader of all novels linked to law. I have this collection of Perry Mason novels ( I think I have almost all of them) and find it really interesting the way he handles certain cases. These are some terms that everyone should know unless you have a very good lawyer and lot of money . If you have seen "Practice"( not "Boston Legal") in TV or read any of Perry Mason novels( not "John Grisham's"), you would have heard the term "habeas corpus" quite often. Infact, almost always Mr. Mason files for a habeas corpus as soon as someone comes to him to defend a case. Well, this is what habeas Corpus means.

Habeas Corpus
habeas corpus n. Law A writ issued to bring a party before a court to prevent unlawful restraint. [Source: AHD

The basic premise behind habeas corpus is that you cannot be held against your will without just cause. To put it another way, you cannot be jailed if there are no charges against you. If you are being held, and you demand it, the courts must issue a writ or habeas corpus, which forces those holding you to answer as to why. If there is no good or compelling reason, the court must set you free. It is important to note that of all the civil liberties we take for granted today as a part of the Bill of Rights, the importance of habeas corpus is illustrated by the fact that it was the sole liberty thought important enough to be included in the original text of the Constitution.

Now that we have the most important part covered and you know that you cannot be held without a reason, there is something called the Fifth Amendment. You would have seen people saying," I invoke the fifth amendment" in many of these novels.

Amendment 5 - Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

This would mean you have the right to go on a trial and get a lawyer before anything happens. Ofcourse, you may never see this happening in Indian movies. I am not sure about the Indian constitution anyway. If you see the underlined words in 5 Amendment " be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb" ,it is called "double jeopardy".

Double jeopardy is a term used in law. Double jeopardy is forbidden by the Constitution. Double jeopardy is what would happen is someone were to be charged with a crime and be found innocent, and then be charged with that crime a second time. For example, if you are charged with stealing a car, and a jury finds you innocent, you cannot be charged with stealing the car again.

There is an interesting Perry Mason Novel where he uses this . The brother gets charged with murder of a guy, though he is actually framed . Mason helps him getting acquitted with very good investigation and arguments. Just around the same time, his sister actually kills the guy and the bro takes the rap saying he killed the guy. But, he cannot be tried 'coz he has already been acquitted for the same crime!!!

Archer Fish

I have been doing some reading on how rainbows are formed. If you have time, do some google searches on rainbows, halos and glory. It is just fascinating. In the process, I've been clearing out my basics on optics. Some of the concepts, like snell's laws of reflection and refraction reminded me of the school days when I had unconsciously stuffed in all these materials into my head without understanding its significance or application. Anyway, I read about the behaviour of this interesting species called Archer fish and how it finds its prey.

To give you a quick tutorial on optics, when light enters from a less dense media to a higher denser media, it undergoes reflection (light emanating outwards) and refraction (light that passes through the denser media). The refracted light has a different degree from the normal when compared to the incident ray. The point is, to a normal eye, because of this refraction thingy, particles on the denser media appear slightly shifted. Explains why a pencil half dipped in water appears broken at the interface.

What does archer fish do? It stays inside the water and squirts a jet stream of water on its prey which hangs onto a grass or some form of vegetation near the surface of the water and knocks it off. Once the prey falls into water, it quickly rushes to the place where the insect fell. Sometimes, the archer fish goes out of water, of upto 20-30 cm and grabs the prey by its jaw. The mystery here is that, for a fish inside the water, the insect should seem to be in a different place (due to refraction) and yet, the archer fish accurately streams the water to the target with greater accuracy. One solution that partly explains the situation is that, by snell's law (ni*sin(theta-i) = nr*sin(theta-r)). So, when theta-i=0, theta-r=0, which means that when the light enters perpendicular to the media, it doesnt shift inside the denser medium. So, if the archer fish is perpendicularly beneath its prey, it can exactly pinpoint where the prey is. However, it has been studied that the archer fish is able to predict the prey correctly even when the prey is at an angle. It is just interesting to know how nature works in mysterious ways....

Spaced Office

In day to day work, I cannot stand people who dont wish to understand what is being conveyed. One category of people genuinely do not understand stuff, which I can agree. But, the other category of people stay by their ideals and do not bother to listen to what the other person has to say. As a caretaker of this free world, it became my moral responsibility to quantify such behaviours..:)

In a professional setup, I categorize people into two groups. One of them is the educated group and the other one is the trained group. Educated group comprises of people who can venture into any given problem and try to find a solution. Their abilities are often not bounded to a specific field. The educated group tries to understand new technology or new software and what not and reason out if it makes sense or not. They do not admit to stereotypical existence. The problem with the educated group is that they may not be greatly specialised in a specific area. On the other hand, the trained group contains people who are extremely specialised at their job function. However, they cannot open up to new technologies. They are very monotonous and if they have come across a technology that worked well for them, they just stick to it and even campaign that it is the best technology around. It is difficult to convince them to do things that dont fit their specialisation, not because the new tasks are different, but it is just that they wouldnt budge to trying out new things.

Personally, I think both of them are key components to running a team. But, the more the educated people get, it is better. This is something that resonates in me when I hear about offshoring. I always hear people saying that we can train people to do things. I completely agree. But, I believe, a trained work force cannot be an innovation incubator. For a growing company, the number of cross-links within the company for each new individual increases exponentially and implementing new methodologies are a necessity. I think, people should be trained to be in the educated group...what an oxymoron ? As individuals of unparalleled potentials and the highest calibre, I think this is something that deserves our attention...:)

Hello HDTV Shoppers...

In the high paced techno world that we live in, we are posed with all sorts of technical jargons everyday. One such thing that has caught up a lot of attention recently is HDTV. Having bought an HDTV myself several months ago, I did some research and thought of collating my thoughts on the topic. My friend Srihari deserves a lot of credit since he already did most of the research and gave me the right insights to buying our TV. One of the fundamental misinterpretation that leads to a great deal of confusion about HDTV is the distinction between display technologies and HDTV transmission standard as such. The display technologies that you will hear most often are LCD, Plasma, DLP and the conventional CRT. It is completely different from the HDTV standard as such. What it means is that, you can watch HDTV channels on any of the aforementioned display media.

As one can guess, HDTV contains more information about a picture and hence needs more bandwidth. In this context, you shouldnt confuse between aspect ratio and pixel information. As most of us know, HDTV has an aspect ratio of 16:9 when compared to 4:3 for a conventional TV. Most people think that, the aspect ratio is the reason why HDTV has better quality, which is blatantly false. Aspect ratio just defines the width to height ratio. It was 1.33:1 (4:3) previously and for HD it is 1.77:1 (16:9). This just means that the screen will be a little wide angled. In a normal TV, the resolution is mentioned in terms of 640x480. This just means that there are 640 pixels in the horizontal column and 480 lines (vertical). You can see that the ratio between 640:480 is 4:3. This could mean that, you can create an HDTV with, say 640:360, it would still obey the aspect ratio rules. Anyway, the standard pixel count for an HDTV is 1920x1080 (around 6.75 times more pixels than a regular TV), and you can see that the number of lines to be scanned has increased from 480 to 1080 as well. There are intermediate points chosen and marketed in the names of EDTV, SDTV etc., Some manufacturers try to take a HD-transmitted data and down convert it to, say 720 lines and market it as HD compatible TVs. When people refer to 480p/480i/1080p/1080i, the p and i mean progressive scan or interlaced scan and the number preceding it denotes the number of lines. EDTV is a nice sweet spot till sometime back since it can provide DVD quality (852x480). When you watch DVD in a HDTV, it just does extrapolation (up-conversion of pixels to fit HD quality) to fill all the pixels. One should also bear in mind that bigger TVs still have the same number of pixels in a row, only bigger. This is the reason why the bigger the TV gets, you should watch it from a distance (8-10x the diagonal size of TV) to have a better quality. Otherwise, you will start distinguishing the pixels.

According to FCC, all TV transmissions should eventually become HD in the next 4-5 years. This deadline has always been a moving target. However, with better display technologies and lower cost, people are already switching in large numbers to HDTV. Needless to say that one of the key thing to be considered before buying an HDTV is its cost to performance ratio. You can get the best performance with LCD/Plasma (L/P) displays since they are light, thin and have better quality. Plasma TVs have historical issues of burn-in (a condition where parts of display which gets used more often and displays worse over time). Plasma display makers are making conscious efforts to get over that problem. LCDs are equally good. However, cost for L/P televisions are fairly higher (around 2 to 3K even for a 42" TV). Dont be caught by LCD projection TVs. Projection TVs are a completely different beast. Basically, it is about projecting a smaller picture through a lens (transmitive or reflective) onto a bigger screen. The main advantage of a projection TV is that it costs considerably less than its L/P counterparts. DLP (Digital Light Processing) is a technology from Texas Instruments which uses micro-mirrors to do image projection. It has no perceptible quality difference compared to L/P with no burn-in issues, no pixel level issues and the cost is almost 50% lesser than L/P (46" DLP costs ~$1300). However, it is not as thin as the L/P TVs. Also, the quality is determined by the spacing between micro-mirrors in a chip, which is of the order of 1 um now. 1um is a large enough space to dilute the resolution of the TV. Not perceptible to naked eye unless you have very good eyes..:) Finally, you will have a choice between HD-ready-TV and HDTV. In the case of HD-ready, you will not have a built-in HD tuner. Its not a big deal. Most of the cable receivers, dish-network receivers have an HD tuner inside. So, you dont need it unless you want to watch things through OTA (off-the-air) antenna, though dish-network HD-receivers have an antenna input as well. You can always buy an HD tuner seperately and hook it on to your antenna output.

To sum it up, be prepared for the following questions when you buy an HDTV. Size? The bigger the better. For anything above 35", CRT shouldnt even be considered. It is just massive and gets very heavy. Between 40"-45", L/P and DLP all fit into the domain and it is a personal choice, given the money to performance aspect. If it is anything above 45", projection TVs are the best option. You can choose between DLP and LCD-Projection TVs. We have a Samsung HLP5685 (56" DLP) and it absolutely amazing. It is probably a good idea to buy the warranty for atleast 2-3 years for these TVs. I havent touched upon the different cable standards that connect the HDTVs, but then, I hope you will figure it out pretty easily when you buy these TVs. Above all, the experience of watching HD-quality cant be explained in words. It just needs to be experienced. So, go for the best !! Happy Shopping !!!

REALITY CHECK

I AM ALIVE
I can SEE,HEAR,TALK
I can WALK
I can SMELL,TASTE
I can THINK
I can SLEEP

Some of the things that we take for granted in life including LIFE. Be thankful that you can do all these things . There are millions around the world for who this is not a simple task . I remember the days when my sister always used to scold me for not finishing my dinner and wasting food,chiding me with" Do you know there are millions who starve without dinner?". My thoughts used to be "Yeah...blah..blah.., whatever". Next time, when you complain about a head ache, think about others who get migraine head aches and suffer for days together. Next time, when you complain about walking a few steps to get something, thing about disabled people who would love to just walk around whenever possible, if they can. These are just the basic necessities in life you take for granted. Of course, we can extend it to money etc.... and lot more.

Above all, the next time when you have a bad day and wonder why life is treating you so bad, think about millions who are fighting for their every day survival and be THANKFUL that you are ALIVE !! . The most volatile thing in this world is LIFE.

Must we commit to something?

I have often been told that commitments are important and once you say you will do something, it must be done. I wanted to explore this line of reasoning. The dictionary defines commitment as an agreement or pledge to doing something in the future, an act of committing to a charge or trust. But does everything we say qualify to be a commitment? The answer is, perhaps not. Could we say (speak) something that we do not commit to? Sure, why not?

Let us assume everybody said something without intentions to do it, or, everybody said something and intended to do it, but just changed his/her intentions over time. How chaotic would the world be? The airline agent would say, “I’ll block your tickets for the cheapest rate” and rightfully forget to do so. The father could say he would be at the daughter’s wedding, but could rush to work because he preferred that. At any point in time, one must wonder or predict whether the speaker would really do what they said they would do.

I believe it is a much better world, where people intend to do what they say they will do and further do what they said, where people are committed to delivering on their words. However you might not agree with, “Do unto your neighbor as you would have them do unto you.” Lets assume you really did not care about others not committing or not keeping their commitments. Do you still have to keep commitments? I definitely believe it is favorable to do so.

A person’s credibility is based on the ability of a person to commit to something and to deliver upon it. If a person repeatedly commits and fails to deliver, people’s reliance on him/her will reduce drastically. People would start taking the slacker less seriously and trust would decline on his/her ability to keep commitments.

For techies, I’d like to present another analogy. We all know about how commitment control is implemented in transaction processing. What would happen if the database did not commit transactions? This could have serious and unpleasant consequences in real-world businesses. We know its implication and as software developers we take up the task of using commitment control seriously whenever we code OLTP systems. Software that has no commitment control or improper commitment control is termed as unreliable, useless, buggy, and inconsistent. The goal of commitment control is consistency and integrity. This can be extended to humans. Without it we are unreliable, our integrity is questionable and we cannot be trusted.

Commitments do not have to be written or carved in stone. Commitments could be verbal or even a thought in one’s mind. Commitments could be towards yourself, towards your future, towards financial or governmental institutions, towards your family. The important thing is to think twice before committing to something, but when you do, make sure you make your best attempt to deliver whatever it is you committed to.

Black Hole

As part of my physical existence in this virtual world forced me to think about what it means when we talk about memories....moments... I read somewhere out on the ether that things that you learn or undergo early on in life stays with you. I think it is absolutely true. As we grow, I think we weave strands on top of what is already construed as a dubious underlay, or rather use that as our foundation. Unwinding all those strands back is as if, we are trying to break our foundation. I dont know if that is possible. I dont know even if one should attempt such a thing.

The biggest problem with our unconscious mind is that, it is always original in its thinking and it is pure in terms of what it wants to do. Is it what people term as conscience? I always have a secondary shadow around me telling me about things that I ought to do. I mostly go against it, and later feel that, may be I shouldnt. Is the shadow my real self? Am I just trying to fool myself by not accepting the norms of my shadow-me? I've heard people saying that, one should follow their instincts. I keep wondering... Does brain apply its cumulative knowledge of ours to come up with a right way and yet, based on the physical contexts of environment comes up with another solution to the same problem? That doesnt make sense. How can there be a conscious and an unconscious based solution to the same problem out of a single brain. May be, its just the way it is designed. One knows that keeping their hand in fire would burn it. But yet, if you are in the middle of a group that you would want to impress, what do you do ? One could rationally argue that both solutions are okay from different perspectives of mind. Coming to think of it, most decisions of ours is just a reflection of how much one wants to overcome the preset ideals into venturing into new things that poses more curiosity, thus fulfilling their fantasy of the unknown. Isnt it always about the fantasy of the unknown that keeps our curiosity ticking. It is not the end result, it is just the means that we are interested in. If we stop following the path that fantasy sets in, may be the world will totally be a different place. I think we will probably be all animals if we dont have fantasies.

I sometimes wonder about the life that an animal passes by. It eats and sleeps and mates with all the possible opposite genders of its own group and eventually dies. Our life is a lot similar from a macroscopic view, except that, as part of our evolution, I think we inherited fantasy. That said, it is a vicious cycle, for we all fall victims to our own fantasy. Sometimes, though we realise that the fantasy is over, we still adhere to it, starting another fuzzy thread. We end up having nested fantasies to the umteenth degree. That keeps life all the more interesting and yet, meaningless. But, who really cares, for when you die, your thoughts in the context of your own self dies as well. If mind doesnt have a physical structure, and if it was really a shadow, wouldnt it continue to exist in ether. It could even keep ridiculing the various path that fantasy took you through. But then, isnt it always about the path rather than the end. No matter how long you travel, if your start and end at the same point , the displacement is zero. Afterall, a human's life is nothing but a vacuous dot. These vacuous dots, however are like black holes. They are infinitesimally small dots with infinite density in an immeasurable universe. Nothing, yet everything...

India - Call centers

C-Span showed a 3 hour program long ago about development of outsourcing in India and also included a significant portion about how call centers trained their new recruits to change their accent, the speech mannerisms, courtesies, etc. It went further to show how employees were willing to be referred to "Sam" when their actual name was Shanmugavalli! The program itself was unbiased and only reported the facts, not taking any slant at commenting about the practices.

However, in more than one instance I have heard snide remarks about this in my classes, where students are predominantly non-Indian as are the professors. One Professor brought a video clipping so students could be exposed to other countries. It must come as no surprise that the video showed cows on the road, the unimaginably noisy traffic (you know how that goes) and the most poverty ridden-neighbourhoods from our country. Also the Professor narrated her experience of riding the autorickshaw and her terrifying experience when a man was trying to sell her snakes on the street. People laughed. I couldn't see why nobody appreciated the multi-purpose dynamically shifting lanes. People have to go to Six-Flags here (and not to mention pay through their hats for the tickets) to experience what we do when we travel to and from office in India everyday. I somehow attributed the snake-selling story to the fact that the Professor was Chinese..

Another thing to be ridiculed was the fact that many representatives from the call centers change their names, so it will be easy to understand for customers from the US. This snide remark totally offended me. I feel its a significant sacrifice for people to be referred to by a name that is not their own. I wouldn't change my name even when I got married, and I have retained my maiden name. I don't see any reason why that should change. I am sure a number of people feel the same. When reps give up their own name to adopt a new one so the transition of the call to a foreign land remains seamless, I feel its customer service at an extreme end. I don't disagree that there are many experiences that I personally had, when I felt call centers must work more towards enhancing reps' knowledge about the business they are dealing with. There was this rep who was quoting car rental prices and emphasized "unlimited miles" many many times! That is not a real differentiator, everybody offers unlimited miles.

The few of us in class from India made every attempt to nullify the effects of the video to paint a more fair and true picture of our country. I suggested to the Professor (who made the snide remark) that maybe he would like to call me by my full name henceforth (no, not bumblebee) which is considerably longer? The mood was light and their were peels of laughter from the class. The Professor admitted that this was a "politically-charged" issue and he immediately backed of the topic. In the past, I have also been asked if riding an elephant is the preferred transportation method! There are numerous other ridiculous stories and I don't want to recall all. I was wondering what similar experiences others might have had in this regard and woud love to hear some.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall...

It was spectacular! Colors and shiny clothes, prim and proper princes and graceful damsels, elephants, palaces, islands all on ice skates. It is that time of the year again, when Disney on Ice comes to town. For those who are new to this, this is an ice skating extravaganza with Disney's costumed characters.The excitement on every kid's face was enjoyable. Many of them were dressed as fairies and even hadmagic wands. Even adults were almost kid-ish. The whole show was expertly practiced and executed. Nobody slipped on the ice (some did deliberately as a part of the show-especially Cindrella's wicked and clumsy step-sisters).

Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cindrella all came one after the other. I was totally transported to a different world, as were a number of people around me. All the fairy tales we read as kids came back rushing to me. It was amazing to see a little girl screaming "no, Snow White!" when she was about to take a bite of the poisonous apple pie. The girl had tears in her eyes, when Snow White went on to eat the pie and then swooned.


The characters on ice seemed so casual, yet they were impeccable. I wondered how many times they would have rehearsed this. It seemed so hard to believe - especially when I think of the ice skating lessons I took just 3 years ago. Just skating slowly with arms outstretched was difficult enough. I can still remember the number of times I fell. It looks so easy when we see figure skaters on TV. I remember thinking that the trick is to let go. I tried that several times, but only fell on my backside. Ouch! I realized then that you must have some balance. I admit, I was severely challenged in that area!

Many times (every time I fell-make that many, many, many) I questioned why it is I felt this would be easy and why at all I joined those classes. But looking back, I am glad I did. Now, I appreciate those figure skaters all the more and I am glad I had that first hand experience and I would even try it again. It seems every experience brings some new knowledge and new perspectives.

Who is the real culprit ?

I was filling up gasoline yesterday and the ATM/Credit Card machine at the pump asked me for my zip-code. This is not the first time it asked for it. I've always filled it up as part of my regular routine without thinking too much about it. For some reason, probably due to lack of things to brood about, I started thinking about the variations in pricing in gas-stations as we go from one to another. It is strange that, even the same branded gas station in an area have different prices.

How is gasoline priced ? (I am consciously not using the word 'gas' to keep people in the same page than deviating their minds to more effusive counterparts) Consider 3 gas stations in a area approximately 0.5 mile apart. If you are not very price sensitive, you may not care which gas station you are going to choose. Also, if you happened to be in an area which you are not familiar with, you probably wouldnt take a chance to find the lowest priced gas station. However, for a gas station owner, eventhough there is a constant demand for his product, he really would like to know the prices of the other two gas stations in his vicinity inorder to maximize his profit.

Proximity to a freeway exit, shopping mall/complex, etc., might influence the pricing decision. All it comes down to is to bet on the laziness/psychology of people and price it high enough. But, the problem is not as simple as that. Since the parent companies know all about these tricks, they zone different places and price differently based on where a gas-station is located. Anyway, we shall restrict the scope of this problem to just the final price to consumer. For people who live near the vicinity, since they are going to know about the price savings at the other gas stations, eventually they will start switching. At this juncture, it is clear that, all the pricing decisions in a given gas station depends on the mix of people who visit it. If you enter the zip-code, the gas station owner can judge how his revenue is distributed across the different and price accordingly. If a gas station has been visited by a lot of local folks, it would make sense to price a little lower than the nearby gas stations. Also, if you decrease the price considerably, you can see the impact of attracting far-off customers or lack there of. Interesting thing about this whole thing is, prices at gas-station have very very high sensitivity. Irrespective of a 1 or 2 cents difference, people switch between gas stations.

On an orthogonal note, most states have a law that mandates that the price at the pump should be atleast 8% marked up. This is to avoid big guys like Walmart who recently attempted to slash down the prices to attract more customers. It is interesting however that the parent oil companies have a 41% markup on an average. Who owns and benefits from these oil companies is another subject of discussion...So, the gas station owners are not really the culprits for increased gasoline prices.

PS:
If you dont know already, you can find the cheapest gas price in your area from http://www.gasbuddy.com

Food for thought...

I get inspired by reading about Scientists and their life history. Feynman is undoubtedly one of the top person in my list. I was going through a book called "No Ordinary Genius" by Christopher Sykes and I found certain things that really induced my interest and I decided that it was worth sharing. These concepts are quite simple but yet, needs a different eye to realise it, and thus, becomes quite fascinating.

All of us have studied geometry and we have computed circumference of circle and its area for a very long time. This is how Feynman's father, who is supposed to have had a real influence on Feynman taught him about the significance of "pi". The circumference of a circle divided by its diameter is a constant (pi), irrespective of any circle you pick (pi*d/d). Also that, if you pick any circle and pick identical circles and place it along the periphery of the original circle, you can only place 6 such circles. When I thought about it, all that needed to be proven in this case is that, if you place 2 coins in the periphery, the length of arc covered between the 2 coins should be 2*pi*r/6 (pi*r/3), which means that it has to subtend 60 degrees at the center. This is easy to prove. If you connect the mid point of all the three circles, you will see that the triangle formed is equilateral (with sides equal to diameter) and hence the angle subtended at the center is 60-degrees. Pretty cool...isnt it?

The following is a question that feynman was asked when he was at MIT. When you look into the mirror, things seem intermingled between left and right. However, top-to-bottom stays the same. Why doesnt the top-bottom intermingle itself was the question.. Feynman made his study and came out with an answer. It is not the left-to-right or top-to-bottom, but it is front to back. If you think about it, when we look into a mirror, the real image should be that the head should be seen in the mirror. The mirror takes the nose and the face and collapses it into the front. That is why, there appears to be a left-to-right intermingling, when it is really front-to-back.

I would like to end this with a comment on Feynman by Marc Kac. "An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they have done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. They are, to use mathematical jargon, in the orthogonal complement of where we are and the working of their minds is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely dark. They seldom, if ever, have students because they cannot be emulated and it must be terribly frustrating for a brilliant young mind to cope with the mysterious ways in which the magician's mind works. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber".

Weird thoughts..

As we all know, our mental thoughts are usually dependent on the ongoings in our life at a particular time phase. Some of them are too weird and we dont ever let it out.

I remember the instance when my parents were looking for a groom . I was 21 and I guess they were eager to get me married then. I looked at some photos and even met a couple of would-be grooms.There was this guy,US settled (no Susheela, not the one I saw when you were in my house) and his parents came to SEE me. I smiled and didn't talk much as I was not sure if I was going to end up in their list for their supposedly all-in-all son. I saw the BOY's photo , didn't find it very impressive in the first glance and during that phase of life, not knowing the importance of life,looks were sorta my main criteria for shortlisting.They asked for my resume !!YES ,RESUME and gave me the guy's bio. His height was specified as 5'4'' . I jumped up and down saying he was too short ( no Sri !! I know what you are thinking,NO smart ass comments about my height) . My parents were gaping open-mouthed at my acrobatics and tried explaining that height doesnot matter in relationships. Anyway, my decision was final. For the next few days, my thought was revolving around guys' height. Whenever I walked into the elevator at work, I used to look at all the guys around me and wonder what their height could be and how tall they look when compared to me. This went on for a few days and I used to laugh at myself .Finally, it stopped when my thoughts started drifting elsewhere.

Tomorrow, if I see my look-alike infront of me, I doubt if I will ever be able to recognise her. In the climax scene in movies, when two long lost brothers meet, have you seen how they stare at each other and go,"Wow!You look just like me." I dont think I can recognise myself . I just dont look at myself that often. My face was a thin,long one and changed to a round,chubby face after some time. People who had seen me during my college days and who were not with me during the changing phase, have never recognised me with the change. My thoughts always revolve around how I might have looked then. Till today, whenever I see a lanky,thin,dark girl with reasonable features in SunTV, my first question to Suresh will be, "Does she resemble the Shoba of olden days?".This intriguing thought is not momentary but is always in the background.

Recently, when I was undergoing chemo, it was always difficult for the nurses to find my veins as they are thin and deep. From then on, if I see a vein in anybody's arm that is very visible, I go,"Wow ! Isn't that great " . I started noticing people's arms , including the tele actors. Suresh , having seen my difficulty started thinking the same. Well..it stopped when my chemo got over and my thoughts started moving elsewhere. If you get a chance to watch Mr.and Mrs.Smith, you will find that Angelina Jolie's veins really pop out in some scenes.

Ofcourse, some weird thoughts are better unsaid !! :-)

Turning Point...

It was a cold morning and Ram got up and had his breakfast as usual. He was getting prepared to perform, what to him, was one of the major turning point of his entire life. Being the eldest son in the family, he had to set an example and live an exemplary life. Though one could have too many credibilities to their regard, every new thing that needs to be accomplished always portrays a new form of challenge.

Interviews, Exams and Races are all about timing. You have very little time and you have to prove to the world that you are the best. You could have put in hours and hours of hard work into learning, but it finally comes to those few minutes which could turn your life upside down. It is the nature of life. Ram was not an exclusion. If he doesnt perform, he is going to be thrown out and be considered among a big group of losers. On occasions when there is just one winner, it is a paradox that everybody else is marked as a loser.

Though Ram had just shared a few smiles, he knew that she was the one. He would do anything to gain her love. To him, it was about winning someone's heart. It is not as same as everything else that he had put efforts into. On top of his already nebulous mind, worries about his parents' acceptance started creeping. Acceptance forms a major role in a societal network. Especially, parent's acceptance for a marriage is not something that can be considered lightly.

Ram was more nervous than ever. The worst part of selecting only one person in a given challenge is that the remaining people dont even run a chance once the selection is made, however capable they might be. Though, it is good in a way because they could term themselves as "winners" since they didnt really compete. A better consolation than being considered as a loser. Today, Ram had to win and that would mean that everyone else before him had to lose. It was his turn... time passes by....Yes, he DID it... He broke the bow so easily that Sita came running by to offer the garland...Ram's life changed...And Ramayana took a new turn...:)

Artificial Intelligence in a Globalised Market

Artificial intelligence and this whole concept of machines taking over man is a concept which I never understood, fundamentally because, men make machines and so, how could machines get any more intelligent than a man who is producing it. But then, recently, I was doing some reading on globalisation and its impacts and it suddently occurred to me that concepts of artificial intelligence make a lot of sense, from an orthogonal view. Though the connection between globalisation and AI is a little far fetched, I will try my best to give a flavor of how they can be compared.

The real question behind my analysis lies in this fundamental question.. What is productivity? How can it be improved? If you define productivity by the amount of (wo)man-hours spent in producing a given product, there is an area of vagueness in the definition. The missing factor is "how is the product made?". You can have a worker spending all his time into making a product in, say 1 day. His productivity is 1 unit/day. However, let us say he has a machine which can do the work in approximately 1 hr, the productivity has jumped up by 24 units/day. Ofcourse, there is a cost element to the equation. What if, you can get 10 people who collectively produce the same 1 unit output of the original man at 1/10 the cost. The productivity in terms of output per man-hour reduces. But, the cost/unit is still the same. What if you get 10 people at the same cost as the original man and they are all as productive as the original man. Now, the productivity increases 10 fold for the same cost. The point I am trying to make is that the absolute definition of productivity cannot be defined in simple terms from a black-box perspective of using man-hours. It is much more than that.

If you look back at history, you will notice that, the cycles of low-cost labors was in turn followed by a technology that obviated the necessity of such low-cost labors. The main question here is, if something can be done very repetitively by following a proper sequence, it can almost always be optimized by a machine. As industries mature, more and more of this keeps happening resulting in the need for a larger number of highly skilled workers who handle lot more than just a sequence of predetermined events. So, in a way, the machine has already taken over a lot of man's repetitive job. As optimizations in the form of machines take place, the resultant work force is left with higher and higher skills than the regular labors. One immediate solution to rising the productivity in this group is to find people who can do the same job at lesser cost. But then, the big question is, can we incorporate the knowledge of such a worker into a machine that can learn just enough to perform a specialised job function efficiently or atleast simplify the job of a skilled worker to a greater extent. If that happens, which is highly possible, may be in the next couple of decades, the so-called knowledge workers need to find even more competitive skills to cherish. Extrapolating furthermore, in the next century or two, machines will certainly take over most of the man's skills, and who knows, if they accrue intelligence of that sort and take their "own" decisions, they might take over the mankind....

'tis the time to shop

This holiday season, as a dutiful daughter & daughter-in-law I will be visiting my parents and in-laws in India. This statement is enough to give everyone a glimpse of what I will be doing during the weeks before I leave for India. My weekends will be spent buying gifts for all relations and friends. There are some you are close to and some that your parents know. If you are married you can double that number. Sometimes I get requests to get a gift for someone who has done my parents a favor. I don't have a clue who they are but still I spend a weekend afternoon getting gifts for them.

The first time I went back I was a novice at "India shopping" as many call it. I made a list of all my uncles, aunts, cousins and all. My gifts were personalized. I thought through what each one would like. I even went to the extent of gift wrapping each one of them. Soon after I went to India, I opened my treasure box surrounded by kith and kin with eager looks on their faces. I proudly handed out my gifts to each one of them as their face lit up. Even a felt pen or colorful pencil that is "Made in USA" is enough to lit up the faces of my dozen little cousins. But none know the stress I had to go through to see that smile. The next time I got smarter, I got several pounds of chocolates, almonds and pistachios for all my relatives. Along with that I took Ziploc bags for non-discriminatory distribution. It was my mother's task to fill the Ziploc bags based on the kids in the family & the relationship with the elders. Personalized gifts were only for parents and siblings.

Fast forwarding to current day, gifts from USA do not bring excitement to folks in India as it used to few years back. Almost every educated household has a representative abroad be it USA or Dubai. Most of the parents make an international visit once in a couple of years. When they leave their suitcases are stuffed with goodies that will last for 6 months after they go back. I could say that my parents do their holiday shopping in USA ever year. Either I do the shopping for them or they do it themselves. Added to this you get everything from Hershey's to Ferrero Rocher in India. This has made life easy for me. I just get sweets from Grand sweets or Krishna sweets when I visit my relatives.

Now for my parents. I no longer feel like taking shampoos, Facial Bars, Lotions, shaving creams, Handbags, Perfumes and that endless boring list. Not just me, my parents request me not to get any of the above as they still have stuff I got them last time + they are all available in India. Since they have been here a few time they know exactly what they want. That makes life easier for me. I will get just what they ask for. It makes better sense to buy my mom and nice Kanjeevaram saree and 22K gold Jeweler than a family size pert plus shampoo bought at Costco which will sit in the bathroom shelf until I visit next year to use it! I hope some day I will be able to visit India with just my carry on luggage. Now that is freedom in traveling.

Crowded last mile

I blogged my first marathon experience in srikris.blogspot.com, please check when you find some free time (it is bit long)

Hidden Traps

We all shop online. The sequence is usually to scan through all the possible websites which offer a product and choose the one with the best price and have a reliable background. Once we do this exercise couple of times, we end up with a preferred vendor with whom we trade often. As a preferred customer, we would hope that the vendor gives us reasonably good deals. But, that is not entirely true.

As I just heard recently, internet based online shopping companies use some dubious strategies to price a customer.One of the common method followed is that, the online retailer looks at your stored cookies to find out how many other similar sites you have visited for a given product. If they know that you have been doing a lot of searching, they try and give you the best deal. If not, they raise prices. Apparently, a customer who was searching for a product in "amazon" found to his surprise that the price dropped by 15% as soon as he cleared off his cookies in the internet browser. If you log-on to a vendor's website, you are the all the more sure to get a not-so good deal. This is one of the many tactics used by vendors as a strategy to do product pricing. I am sure there are many similar tactics used. So, make sure that you do a reasonably good comparison before buying a product online. A "preferred customer" might be the first one to get ripped off afterall...