Amazing Grace

I was having lunch and browsing news sites Wednesday afternoon and came across a small headline: "Dog survives gas chamber" or something close. I got curious. I clicked to see the video. There was this picture of this little dog and I could hear the commentary from the lady in the humane society (pound) who was saying that this dog survived 30 minutes in the gas chamber. I have heard someone say that before, if puppies don't get adopted for quite some time, they are "done away with". How morbid! But I never took the time to research that and I thought that was a statement without merit. The video I saw disturbed me greatly and I am sure must be upsetting to every other person, dog lover or not.

The lady also went on to describe other graphic details, such as "... there was another dog which was on top of this dog with fluids oozing, and Grace only foamed at her mouth..Once I saw that, I knew I had to keep her with me for life...." If only this lady had decided to adopt the pup 30 minutes earlier, the dog would have had a totally different fate. Its odd that they call animal shelters "humane societies". While what they do is the opposite of their definition "Characterized by kindness, mercy, or compassion ". I looked online this time and googled the topic. I was amazed to see the numerous sites regarding this topic and requesting petitions. An example is http://network.bestfriends.org/animallawcoalition/news/5838.html

Makes you wonder the value placed on a living thing's life - how disposable living things are (even human beings) - you breed them per demand and you gas them if they are out of style or in some way "defective". I don't know why the "human" society condones this.

Inglish speling

Recently the top-brass incharge of primary education had a brain wave - to disregard importance of spelling. A policy decision was made, not to penalize students for errors in spelling . A good article appeared in the local paper which runs as follows:
Marc Twane wunce sed that he wood knot trusst anywon hoo alwais spellt the saim wurd in the saim wiegh becos that sujjested that the purson lakked spontanietee abd helld veri rijjid veeuse on thingz. Langwij shud bee abowt kommunikashun and knot abowt hao two spel oar knot spel wurds. Sow it is gud that a sujjeshun has bin maid that stewdents will knot hav marx dedukted four rong spelings. what the stewdent iz beeng tessted four is nawlej off the subjekt . People whoo insist on korect speling ar intellekchual fassists and must be rezizted at awl kost. Buy mayking us awl spel in the saim weigh they ar putting langwij intwo yewniform. Langwij democrissy shud alow yew to speek and spel the weigh you lyke and let uthers speek and spel the weigh they lyke. This is not lead two anarkey and kayoss. Aftur awl, yew manijjed two undastand this perfekly wel, rite?

sudoku vs soduku ( A sequel)

Was talking to our local sudoku solver this morning , which made me think of a sequel to my
bunion vs banian. I decided to write a converstion between our sudoku solver and his dad over phone. There are usually misunderstandings over phone even for normal talk...here it goes..


ennada kanna, enna pannitiruke?
sudoku pottutiruken , appa.
soduka ? indha nerathileya ?
idhuku ennapa neram kallamellam , onnu lendhu ombodhu varikum therinja podhume..
ennikiteva soduku poduva
ennamatten, mansuleye ellam yosichuppen, ella kattathileyum podanume.
kattathileya? oh! kai viralla poduvennu solriya .Appo kal viral..
Aiyo appa, nan sudoku vilayatta pathi pesaren..
O oh! ippa soduku vaichu vilayattelam vandhirucha
Amam pa ! India la kooda sudoku romba popular_nu sonnanga
India la romba naala ellarum soduku super_a poduvangale. Unga amma idhula expert theriyuma
Amma_va? Wow ...Eppo kathukutanga
Idhula kathukaradhuku enna irruku ? Kai_a oru madaku madakina podhume..
Enna joke_a? Ellarum kailadhane podanum , aduthadhu pencil_la podanum_nu joke adikadheenga.
Ilada kanna, kaluleyum podaleme , adhan sonnen....unga ammaku kooda nee dhan moodugula soduku eduka help paniveye...

And enlightening occurs to our sudoku solver...:-)

What a day!

It is quite amazing how the government body called the INS keeps us guessing. They are true example of what customer service should not be like. Way back in Feb this year, we knew from one INS window that our fingerprints were outdated and the processing was halted till we updated it. I was told to call the fingerprinting office for an appointment. The lady who answered the phone apparently had a bad day and she told me "You don't call us, we call you". I was just wondering what would happen if we said that to our clients?

Today was our lucky day to go back for our fingrprinting. There was a bunch of people before us. The gatekeeper (like St.Peter at the gates of Heaven) looked neutral, not like the usual gruff persons I have earlier met. He even cracked a joke violating their code-of-ethics of being rude, morose and robot-like. I was bewildered. I saw another lady standing in the corner waiting to answer questions visitors had and she even had a smiling face! Things kept getting stranger and I began to doubt if we were in the right place.

Inside there was a lady struggling with her two kids who were barely in her control. They were screaming, crawling and sometime jumping up and down. Except for their intrusion, the place was quiet and uneventful. The lady at the counter seemed like a grouch and obviously had enough of the nonsense and screamed at the poor Mother to be seated. By now, I began to be confident we were where we were supposed to be. I thought, there goes....

But then...The line moved faster than I have ever seen in any govermental office. The lady at the counter exchanged pleasantaries and we were quickly ushered to record our fingerprints. Upon completion the recorder even called out for QA to come on over and ensure all records and information was accurate. Surprise after surprise, thigs went on so smoothly, much better than I had ever expected. What a day! I was inspired to cheerfully write about my experience.

Can machines think

Here's a scene. you are in a room asking questions. You get replies. Following is the conversation:
u : What shall we talk about?
Reply : I can talk about anything. Ask me anything.

U: If I have a right angled triangle and two sides are 3 and 4 what is the third one>
R : Oh! we are into Phythogoras theorem. The answer is 5.

U: Good! you know some high school geometry. Can you tell me what is square root of 145.
R. Slightly greater than 12.

U : Thats really smart. What is your view of the recent war in Lebanon.
R. I think it is highly unfair. However, with different types of people inhabiting closely in a place, affiliations to different issues can cause human irritation to be high.

U : Vow!! Mind-boggling statement. Is it a good time to invest in stock market.
R: The market is the worlds biggest casino. If u are ready for risk, go ahead and invest.

U: Have you seen "Alaipayudhe Kanna".
R: Sorry, I am not an encyclopedia. Being in america i dont know what alaipayudhe means!


Well , the question is can you tell if the replies are from a computer or from a human being. based on comments we will proceed towards the actual issue, can computers think?
prof

New Members- Introduction

I started this blog last year with the intention of writing some articles of my own . While talking to a friend, it was decided that we can all form a group to make it more interesting. Since the group has expanded and just so that we can see more people blogging to get more variety ..(wink wink, mindframes , time to compete ..) I think we should get to know everyone.. there are some contributors who have become too lazy or too busy ..Time to write about yourself.. I will start with mine..

Profession: 9-5 engineer working in the mixed signal domain....Yep ! As boring as it gets...
I love: watching TV, movies, reading books , listenting to good music ( any type except metallica)
I hate: hypocrisy , arrogance, sarcasm. ( doesnot necessarily mean I lack these traits:-)
Best moment in life so far: When I realised I had fallen in love
Worst moments in life so far: Dealing with surgeries and the emotional turbulence.
How do I define myself: happy-go-lucky .... trying to take life one day at a time..and living for the moment.

Story telling

As I was driving to work, I was listening to an interesting program on National Public Radio (NPR). It was about a story telling contest and this program had the winner of the contest come and tell his winning story. I'm not big on listening to stories, but I really had nothing better to listen to and the lethargy of finding another channel conspired to keep me from switching away.

The winner came and he had a very intersting style of narration. It was a very slow and child like way of talking that initially had me disinterested. The story started 2 days after 9/11, he spoke about waking up feeling shattered and he was telling about the general mood of disbelief at that time in NYC. This particular morning, he was walking along Battery Park (I think) and he was sharing about how the skyline of NYC looked to him with the missing buildings. In a very slow and determined way - he didn't skimp any details as he shared his sorrow and the pain of the people surrounding him. Their need to comprehend what was happening.

I was by now completely engrossed and was holding the wheel rather tightly as I navigated through the dense 880N traffic. The narrator by now had seated himself and he continued telling all that he had been through the last two days. Suddenly he sees a garbage truck in the distance and for some reason this draws his attention. As he continues to observe the truck- he realises what was happening. The truck was cleaning up the flowers, candles and photographs of the missing people. He continues without increasing his narration speed, but in a higher pitch, that he was immediately filled with rage. How could this be happening? Wasn't it too early to continue as if nothing happened. Didn't he deserve a few more days of mourning- didn't the people of NYC deserve that? Why were the cleaning up the candles so soon? Not knowing exactly what he was going to do, but knowing that he had to do something- he rushed towards the garbage truck.

By now, I had completely lost track of where I was in the traffic. For some strange reason, I was there with him in the park and I could feel the rage that he was feeling and I could feel the tears that were welling up in his eyes.

As he neared the truck, he said that he realised what was really happening, as the garbage truck moved along, the workers were carefully unwrapping the candles from plastic bags and placing it in the pavements. He narrated on as he tried to makes sense of what they were doing, it had apparently rained heavily the previous night and the city workers had taken the photographs, the candle and the flowers and wrapped them individually to prevent them from washing away. Now this morning they were putting it back in its original place. When he first saw the garbage truck he had mistakenly assumed the clean pavement as something the garbage truck was clearing away- when in fact that the direction the truck was moving towards filling it back with last nights content.

He described how he couldn't control his joy and how he cried shamelessly. By now I had reached work and my car with engine running was patiently waiting for me to finish the program and switch it off. My eyes were now completely moist (inadvertently) and hearing that the truck was actually putting back the candles, I couldn't help but give the best sheepish grin I could muster as I looked around and stepped out.

I could understand now why he won the competition. His was not a story that had a moral or a point... it was just his ability to tell a story and for that short time I lived it. I saw what he say and I felt what he felt.

E-book Fair

http://www.worldebookfair.com

A little late - but the world e-book fair is available for free between July 4th and August 4th. (seems legal, but if not, do let me know!)

Please see if you can add some to brainwaves list from here!

Summer Reading List

I normally don't buy or read a book unless it is prescribed by a friend or colleague. In recent times I did not get to read anything. So, I thought of using our blog to share a summer reading list. It will be nice if the book is recently (< 3 yrs) published (not a strict rule ofcourse)

Let me start first and rest can update in the comment section.

Book: Life of Pi
Author: Yaan Martel
Synopsis: A boy name Pi Patel's journey as told by Novelist.
Comments: Awesome is all I could say. Resisting my temptation to comment more to avoid breaking the story pieces

Books: 3 of Dan Brown's novels (Angels and Demons, Deception Point & Do-I-have-to-name?)
Comments: Something to read when you are traveling or when you want to relax

Books: Couplehood & Babyhood
Author: Paul Rieser
Synopsis: VERY funny look at couplehood and babyhood
Comments: This is one book I can safely recommend to people and give it as gift.

Book: Dancing Wu Li Masters
Author: Gary Zukav
Synopsis: Advanced physics in layman terminology
Comments: Very interesting read. Lighter version of "Brief history of time"

Preserving Culture ?

This is a topic that I hear very often, not just in the Indian-American context, but also in the general media. And, usually, it is associated with watching a bunch of people who still wear very "traditional" clothes and singing "traditional" songs. One definition of Culture is as follows: "the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations". It is a very good definition in my view. And, I understand why our ancestors persisted in following the older generation. Fundamentally, there was no documentation on each and every situations and how to handle them..;).. In the modern age, when information is just a click away, or rather, a google away, what value addition does culture really provide?

I understand that history is a reminder and reflection of how we got to where we are. But, should we live history in order to appreciate it? If we look at every aspect of culture in great detail, we will find that they were formed based on the socio-economic framework that existed at that time. A lot of them do have some sound reasoning. But, on the other hand, the concept of dowry, living in a single big-family etc., are examples where the reasoning is highly debatable for current situations. Given the global outlook on ideas and thoughts, I am not sure if there is any meaning in boasting about individual culture and tradition. Though it may have some aesthetic historical value, I am not sure if it has any real value. I am not proposing a global culture, but at the same time, I think the idea of global culture will soon evolve over the next few generations. What do u folks think?

Flow Chart of Life

I was thinking about the first time I started looking at a flow chart. Remember the simple ones that will have a start block, an end block with processing in the middle with nothing other than adding two numbers. Dont pick me on the initialisation. I am just trying to draw an analogy here. You got the picture.

Once you have the flow chart in mind, think about birth and death. They are basically the start and end blocks of our flow chart. Stuff happens in between. Now, you will have to remember the conditional block which checks for a condition and branches to one path or another accordingly. One way to view life is to think of it as a connection between a start and an end block with nothing but a big depth of conditional blocks with infinite possibilities under each condition. I chose the word big depth since the amount of conditional blocks that we will encounter on a macroscopic view should be finite. Only the possibilities are infinite. And, death, in my opinion is like a "goto end" statement that could be "executed" at any point of the control. At every passing moment, we evaluate conditions and decide on a path. For example, while I could have been watching a TV program or just be asleep, I have decided to type this blog, and while I was at it, I also chose to type the fact that I have decided to do the typing.

If one could somehow unroll the entire flow chart before you, all you will see is that the options that you chose will be a single line of decisions connected by conditional points that denotes the decisions that you made all the way. Can this be called the life line? Some of the interesting observations based on this analogy are these. At any point in time, you have infinite possibilities to work on. Death is just an unconditional goto statement and can happen at any time. If we can only look at how closer we were to death based on the flow, it might be interesting to see how some unchosen paths served as the luckier ones. If we could overlay the flow charts of everyone in the planet and link them at the conditional points based on each other's influence in reaching a decision at a control point, I think, we will find that everything in the world is connected. Not just the living things, but also everything in nature. This is probably how the term "butterfly effect" was coined in the first place. So, what you do at every moment in time has a significant effect on the entire planet. Your livelihood has a far more importance to the planet than you would dream of, whether you wish or not. So, live your moment before it "goes to end"...

Why I like Telemarketers...

I got a call from a telemarketer yesterday as I always do. As frustrating as it is when I hear them spell my last name to find if I am at home, I had to reason on why I do not want to talk to them. When it goes above my listening threshold, especially when they start talking about why I should listen to them (aka why I am being stupid), I hang up the phone, acting as per their well thought out perception..:)..

However, this entire process got me thinking. If I replay the entire conversation back in my mind and how I responded, I found myself remarkably honest with them. Not only that, it was an honest call from their part and they were clear about whom and what they wanted to talk. That amused me. There are numerous times when I have gotten calls from people whose real intention was not to talk to me. As well mannered as I am..;), I like to respond with some sweet talk responses, while my mind is totally onto finishing the quick conversation into handing the phone over to my other half...should I say better half..:)

Time goes by... These days, I have decided to not pick up the phone if it is not intended for me (caller id is a great thing). If I happen to pick up the phone, I try to give a straight answer on whether the intended person is available or not. If available, I just pass over the phone. My theory is very simple. When someone on the other side of the line doesnt give a damn about who you are, why should they be reciprocated with any sweet chats whatsoever just for the heck of it. The same condition is true when I call someone as well. I directly get to who I want to talk to. Not to say that I am perfect in any sense. But, I get frustrated with artificially cementing out imperfections with niceness when it is not mandated...

My Little World

When I read a story, I start to imagine all the events in the book as if I get to picturise all of what goes on. It is as if, I watch a movie, only that it is inside my brain. But, dont we all agree that we can view things only through eyes. What was I doing? Does my brain bypass my path from eye to the brain into producing these signals which made my brain to think that I was looking at things that I only imagined? But, I was infact, reading the book and my eyes were looking at the book at the time. How does brain handle these multiple events and process them at the same time?

When I walk along the pavement, I tried to pick the inside of the square slabs than the edges or the corners. Infact, I dont even pick the squares adjacent to the one that I am in. In other words, I walk in a straight line. Suddenly, a thought came to me. If this straight line of slabs were hanging in air at a very large height, can I still walk along the path.. I probably cant. Is it because the brain judges the risk associated with walking along that path? If I were given a perception that I am suspended when in fact I am not, would I feel the same way? If I were to be removed from the perception and was able to walk through the suspended path, will I be able to easily walk along the path easily?

When I eat my food, I start wondering, is it the feeling that something going into my mouth makes me feel that I am eating and the feedback from stomach upon eating or the portion of food eaten thereof that tells me that I am done eating. What if I am virtually subjected to the same feeling through some sort of machine? Will I still feel the same way? This is not just eating, but a lot of our day to day activities, like the situations portrayed in the movie "Matrix". The sense of anything is only true to the extent that is decipherable by the brain. If brain is subjected to decipher things through an external stimuli, will brain do the same thing that it normally does?

The cuckoo clock just sounded 8:00PM. Shoba is not around. Now that it is already 8:00PM, I have to start thinking about cooking. May be, I dont need to. But then, I need to find the trade-off between going out and getting food from a restaurant versus cooking something on my own. I've got rice and beetroot poriyal from yesterday. All I need to do is to cook some gravy to add the rice to. May be I can just use paruppu podi or puliogare. Hmmm... what should I do?

Valu Mouse

While shopping for a mouse at Fry's electronics, I saw a Valu-Mouse. Well, every mouse has a "Vaalu", but that mouse specifically mentions it!

PS: In Tamil, Valu means 'Tail'. With some difficulty, I resisted a conversation with valu & vaalu :)

Benford's Law

I was watching this serial called "NUMB3RS" the other night and I heard about this interesting stuff called the Benford's law. Apparently, someone by name Newcomb (1881) observed that the first pages of logarithmic tables were more worn than the rest of the pages. Dr Benford (1938) later formulated it as a theory based on his findings that the number "1" appeared with a probability of 30% in most of the statistics, logarithmic tables and so on. This is much higher than the anticipated 11% if things were uniformly distributed among the numbers 1 to 9. In 1996, Dr.Hill proved Benford's law with a formula for the probability (log (1+1/D) base 10), where D is the digit.

All this means is that, if you pick any kind of random list of tables or data, the number 1 appears more often than it is probabilistically predicted (somehow 0 is omitted). This is called the first digit phenomenon or the first digit law or leading digit phenomenon. The interesting outcome of this law is useful in analysing financial reports, income tax returns, statistical tables and most of the naturally generated data. If you try to plug-in your "made-up" numbers into any of these, it may not make up the same distribution as predicted by Benford's law. So, if you are cooking up numbers, you better know what you are doing..:)..

Leading digit Probability (from Benford's law)
1 30.1%, 2 17.6%, 3 12.5%, 4 9.7%, 5 7.9%, 6 6.7%, 7 5.8%, 8 5.1%, 9 4.6%

References:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BenfordsLaw.html
http://www.rexswain.com/benford.html
and a bunch of other websites...

Perspective

I was talking to my sister this morning. Being a slightly eccentric intellectual , she finds few people looking at things from her perspective.She is one of those persons who just gets carried away by the likes of Einstein, Feynman and Nash. She finds them to be really great people and admires them ferverently. I, on the other hand , definitely admire their intellect but rather call people with philanthropic attitude as great. Thats just my perspective.We usually agree to disagree.
Talking about perspectives, I remembered an interesting episode during one of my curves workouts. I was talking to one the ladies, who works in the SLAC lab at Sanford. She is elderly and has been working there for a long time. On hearing that she works in the theoretical physics department, I jumped with excitement and asked if she has met Feynman or listened to his lecture. She replied with a nonchalant "Yeah, I have attended one of his lectures. It was very popular and was full." ..I go, "Wow.It must have been really good listening to him." It follows with,"Yeah ..Hmmm..you know what,he was really interested in pretty women" , accompanied with an eye-roll. Hey! That what she remembers about Feynman and its her perspective.
Rights & wrongs, good & bad, best & great.....on and on...varies from person to person as per their perspective.