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.