A fifth of Americans can't locate US in the world map- Answered by a teen pagent contestant

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7620686268212703476

Food for thought

Here is an interesting experiment.

Background: Imagine that we are in a forest and there are N tigers roaming around. They have not eaten anything for the last 10 days and are very hungry. As a rule they will eat any meat except their own. Let us assume that rabbits are popular food among the tigers.

Constraint: If a tiger eats a rabbit, it will be automatically convert into a rabbit. Now it is fair game to other tigers. The tigers are aware of this constraint and will act rationally. Self preservation is more important than satisfying immediate hunger (thanks to Mano for pointing this out).

Scenario: One rabbit accidentally enters the area where the tigers are prowling.

Question: Will the rabbit ever be eaten? If yes what would be the general condition under which the rabbit is likely to be eaten or not?

Relatively Simple

We went to a Thai restaurant today. There is this person in our team who always goes for the spiciest version of the food. Believe me, this is the kind of spiciness that you should really avoid... This particular place even has a scale from Thai Hot to 1 star Thai Hot all the way to 5 star. This friend of mine was trying out the 5 star. In comparison, I was trying the mild version and was sweating all over... The idea of tomorrow morning is already haunting me..:)..Anyway, I was wondering what it would be like for him to taste my mild fried rice. Would it be spicy for him or just plain bland? There are often times when I have wondered why the quest for something, more often than not, changes our baseline definition of our current state. For example, when someone is poor, they want to become rich. But, when they get richer, they still want to get richer, or rather, they still think they are still poorer. Expressing one's thoughts is another example. The more effort one puts into understanding something that looks complex, their perception of simplicity changes.

I was reading up on Relativity by Einstein. For the person he is, he considers certain elements of his thought process to be very simple and rudimentary, so that even a caveman could understand it..:) But, my understanding, or should I say, my perception of what he is trying to say baffles me. If not anything, the only thing that I learnt from this book is that the perception of things change dynamically. In other words, nothing changes in absolute domains. It is just our perception. Think about it, when we get richer, our definition of richness changes. As we get faster, our notion of time and distance changes. As we learn something that is complex, our definition of simple changes. Complexity becomes the new simplicity. In Einstein's words, if Gulliver had shrunk or expanded when he entered Lilliput or Brobdingnag according to the scale of its inhabitants, he wouldnt have noticed anything different. In real life, interestingly, thats what happens all the time. Our scope and vision transforms itself based on what we know at that point of time. Though this might sound like a "simple" statement, this is one of the fundamentals which was key in formulating the principles of relativity.

Some fun for the summer

I thought this video was decently done thought others might enjoy it. The editing is pretty neat, though the dialogue delivery calls for more. But sure as hell was fun watching.

Video

Head over heels

A friend of mine suggested that I do a search on google for the word (retupmoc), computer written in reverse order and lo behold, the output

Google Search Results

Now click on the first link

Entering the first link

now that is super cool. I'm pretty certain you guys must have noticed this before but no harm in enjoying it yet again.

Time Flies?

I was thinking about the expression, "Time Flies by Quickly" slowly... One can look at it at a piecewise level of granularity or in wholesome. Let us try to analyse it. If time flies by quickly, that should mean that every day, hour, minute and second involved should fly by quickly too. Is it true? Usually, when we are less occupied, we feel boredom. What it means is that, we are striving hard for time to pass by and it really doesnt "fly" by quickly. However, when taken to macro level, we look back and if we dont have anything interesting to report, we think that time flew by quickly, when it really should have been the other way around... Another view on that would be, if we are very much involved in doing something, we dont realise how much time was spent. That would mean that, if we are doing something that we like, we lose the notion of time and time does fly by quickly. Interestingly, in this case, we have a lot to report as we look back. So, it seems to me that, our notion of time at a piecewise level of granularity is not the same as looking back after a period of time in its entirety. Where is the discontinuity? Something to think about??

Gotta Blog...

The fascinating thing about science is that, no matter how well I think I understand something, I always get revelations when I hear a different perspective. This perspective from a book that I am reading (Five Equations that changed the world - Michael Guillen) on einstein's (and 4 other scientists) life is too difficult to pass. The fact that I am writing about it makes me feel like I have understood it better, though, I am pretty sure I will blog something that looks very similar as time progresses. But, this one is a "gotta blog" thing... (Title has been used)..:)

What was the fundamental problem that einstein solved? There are 2 parts to this question. During einstein's time, there was a big confusion on how speed is measured. Also, there was a confusion of the way mass and energy were related. As we all know, speed is measured by distance covered divided by the time taken. This holds true as long as you are a stationary observer. What if you are moving too? If so, people thought that objects appeared to move faster or slower based on whether you move towards the other object or away from it. For example, if an object moves at 100 metres/second speed and if you are moving towards or away from the object at 1 metres/second, then you will observe that the object moves at 101 metres/second or 99 metres/second. As long as you account for your speed, the speed of the object is constant. The only exception to this principle was that, scientists observed that the speed of light remained constant irrespective of how the observers moved. That was the puzzle. Why is it that speed of light remains unchanged? Einstein started out with the premise that, light speed is absolute and doesnt change. When the observer moves, his notion of space changes. What it means is that, what is 1 meter for a stationary person isnt the same if he is moving at some speed. Then, the question is, how much does space shrinks/expands by? He found that it is equal to 1 - (0.5*v^2/c^2). What it means is that, if you are travelling at say, half the velocity of light, 1 meter shrinks to 0.875. Since the velocity at which objects move in earth is very small (even speeds of the order of 1000mph), the shrink factor is so small to be negligible. If one travels at the speed of light, the universe shrinks to 0 which doesnt make sense. So, einstein concluded that it is impossible to travel at the speed of light...

The next question was about mass and energy. Before einstein, the law of conservation of mass and energy had already been proven. But, no one knew how mass end energy were related. They seem to vary similarly under different conditions, but yet, the unifying knot wasnt identified. All conservation laws states is that, you can't destroy energy or matter. When you seemingly think you destroy matter, you just transform it to a different form. Thinking along similar lines from his space-time theory, einstein discovered that mass/energy expands (the reciprocal of space/time) as an object moves faster. If you think from that perspective, you would notice that, if a body travels at the speed of light, its mass should be infinity, which doesnt make sense either. But, it also affirms that a body cannot move at the speed of light. Anyway, what einstein did was to calculate the kinetic energy difference between a stationary particle that emits radiation with a particle that moves at a speed of 'v' and equated it to the amount of radiation emitted. This boils down to the equation 0.5 (R/c^2)*v^2 where R is the radiation energy emitted. Since kinetic energy is 0.5*m*v^2, he reasoned that the mass lost due to radiation should be equal to R/c^2 which infers that m = E/c^2 => E = m*c^2... When I started typing, I thought I was all clear... But now, I am not... I will let someone in the group to enlighten the last part of this blog...:)

Past & Present...

She: Are you upset?
Me: Yes, I am...
She: Why?
Me: Why should I not ?
She: Tell me... I am your wife...
Me: You are my wife...
She: What?
Me: You told me to tell you that you are my wife? Didnt you?
She: Ha Ha... Okay, What are you doing now?
Me : Thinking...
She: What are you thinking about?
Me: No one can possibly express all that they are thinking...Because, when they are telling it, they are going to be thinking about something else and so on and it will be an infinite loop...That, is a true statement...
She: Are you mad at me?
Me: No, not now.. and, that, is a true statement...
She: So, you were and now you are fine...
Me: I am fine now... and that is true...
She: Okay, stop it ...
Me: Ha Ha Ha...:)
.
.
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[Me = Me, She = Shoba...:)...]

Abstraction

When I look at evolution of new technologies, one commonality that attracted my attention was that they all strive towards abstraction. When it gets to solving a problem, we want the problem or rather the solution to escalate to a level where all the underlying levels are either already solved or taken care of by someone else. For example, a calculator is a fine example (may be a very shallow example..:)). When you use it, you implicitly assume that it is doing the right thing. You dont care about the algorithm or circuitry it uses. All you care about is that, it gives you the right result. And, a CEO or someone who gets the results from an accountant who uses the calculator probably doesnt want to know the sequence of calculations that were used as long as he gets his result and so on. For someone who is a benefactor of technology, it is a boon to not having to know all the underlying mechanism. But, for someone who develops the technology, is it true?

In life, the interesting stuff happens only during transitions. I think, managing transitions is what life is all about. Whenever people talk about anything, they
only talk about the first few minutes or hours or months or the last few... Anything that happens in between is either overlooked or not talked about...The reason why transitions are more exciting is probably because it is also the most vulnerable part. Anyway, that was a digression of my thought flow... What has this got to do with abstractions? When technology goes through transitions, things dont always look good. As abstractions are abstracted, they are unstable and some people almost always dont want everything to be abstracted since they lose a sense of control over what they do. So, technological transitions suffer this major hurdle as it paves it's way through.

One of the hot topics today in technology is virtualisation. Virtualisation of all kinds. In a nutshell, what businesses want to do is to give users an interface to manage stuff and everything else will be taken care of behind the scenes. For example, you dont really need to have a computer. You will have an interface that will emulate what you get out of a computer. You could ask for a computer with linux or microsoft OS with xyz applications and you will get it on demand. Your disk storage will be on demand. Your internet speed will be on demand. You will be given services which will make sure that your data is secure. You dont have to worry about software upgrades. You just pay for a single service... Abstraction of technology to a level where the user doesnt have to tinker around anything by themselves... If you are a "server hogger", you may not like this. If you are a sceptic about security, you might be concerned. But, this is the model that will be followed as technology progresses. You will hear terms like Virtual Machines, Virtual Platforms, Virtual I/Os and so on.

To me, virtualisation is just one facet of abstraction. The interesting thing about abstraction is that, businesses can capitalize on peak consumption or lack thereof. Look at airlines, they always try to oversell tickets with the assumption that not everybody who signed upto travel show up. Same is the case with internet bandwidth. You will be amazed at how much of oversubscription happens on a given link. Again, the same is true with computer utilization. How many of us use our computers to its maximum computational capacity. We all aspire for the fastest computer though..:) As technology gets abstracted to the next level, industries can make use of the inefficiencies in individual's usage so that more people think they have all the computational power they need... It is good for the consumer because they dont have to deal with installing new software or hardware which in some cases, might require a PhD even for the "skilled"... Though abstraction is fact of life, I still think there is a sort of vacuum that it leaves behind for the fresher aspirants...

Eateries

I headed home from work with such a determined mind that day, that I was going out for dinner. This happens often, but what else I had made my mind about was the fact I was not going to set foot in the kitchen that lovely Friday evening! Dinner plans were made, and we set out amidst certain excitement that comes with getting your child to stop cycling outside, and wearing something nice.

We arrived at the haute restaurant and waited for an hour outside clutching out tickets in our hands, waiting for our turn with the menus. We finally went in and sat, and when the waiter busied himself with notepad and pen to take down our orders, we gave him the first order of the evening. A special order - nothing on the menu.

A boiled egg we asked with as much nonchalance as we could muster. The sure footed waiter faltered, he stammered for a response, and said - "a-a b-boiled egg?" Yes, we beamed. I stepped in and comforted him with the assurance that I would be ordering something from the menu. "We love your food", we told him before he broke out sobbing. I could see the pride in his restaurant shattered in his eyes.

You can take my daughter to the fanciest restaurant with the most fantastic menus, but of late, what satisfies her immensely is a boiled egg. We all ate our favourite dishes, and handed a special tip to our waiter who had gone through considerable difficulty obtaining the boiled egg from the seasoned chef.

Everytime I step into Coldstone Creamery, and order a small plain vanilla icecream, I go through a similar experience. Don't blame them - check this out!
http://www.coldstonecreamery.com/icecream/original_creations.html

0-100K in 8 years

I distinctly remember the May 1999. Awe and unknown of living in the foreign land far away from the safe nest was not over yet. Got the hang of right lane and left hand drive from Suresh and co. With the backing from pros who bought Passats & Audis when Corolla & Civic are the standard, I went to car shopping.

I will leave the car shopping in dealership to another blog. In summary, after tug-of-war, we settled on the price and I signed the dotted line to get my Acura Integra, the brand I never heard before. To sound knowledgable I educated myself to 0-60mph time, horsepower, fuel efficiency etc. (though I have to find what they meant much later).

It was Mile 0 for both me & my Acura. Driving up and down on El camino is how it started. The journey continued... From weekend Tahoe drives to adventurous long drives the car has travelled with me everywhere.

Acura saw so many things as we both traveled together.
- It carried a awe stuck early 20s bachelor and his friends across the valley aimlessly
- It moved job with him
- It saw aggressive 90 mph (in 40 mile zone) changing into to passive 65mph in freeways.
- It smiled at its driver's changing music taste
- And happy at driver's changing life status (bachelor->married->father)
- It even worked a small squirrel's part in getting its driver married to a beautiful girl(would-be mapillai is owning Acura so he must have some taste in life was the comment by cross-reference guy :) )
- It safely carried the new born around in the compact back seat

Apart from the aging issues it never disturbed its lazy owner much.

Yesterday as I was driving past Auto Mall parkway after 8 years and few months later, the car odometer touched 100000. I am happy to travel so far with you too Acura-Integra 4FGP160!