Lectures, Seminars, Anecdotes...

Had been to a lecture on symmetry and group theory given by Dr. Mario Livio, famous astrophysicist and popular-science writer. The lecture was part of a promotion for his new book "The equation that could not be solved". He gave an overview of the book in the lecture and the book is about the Quintic equation and the struggles of the 17th/18th century mathematicians to solve it through a formula until Abel and Galois jumped on the scene and told the world that it is impossible.

I dont know how mathematically accomplished Dr. Livio is, but I heard he is one of the really big names in Astrophysics today in the world. A professor at UW gave an introduction where he said that the hubble telescope, for all it's merits, also has the dubious distinction of shattering many theories propounded before. And because of the concrete evidence it provides, many astrophysicists were disappointed that the theories so close to their heart were infact false. He however remarked, that Dr. Livio on the other hand was one of those who picked up those shattered theories, combined them with the evidence produced by Hubble and gave birth to newer (and more concrete) theories about the stars and the Universe. He also said, Dr. Livio has been involved in one way or the other in any major advancement in the area of Astrophysics/Cosmology in the recent past.

Coming back to the lecture, apart from the scientific/mathematical content in the lecture, what fascinated me was the number of anecdotes Dr. Livio provided. Being a humorous man by nature, Dr. Livio had the knack of picking up related anecdotes from thin air that generated instant laughter.

For example, when asked whether we should be doing such "meaningless" space experiments at all when there are people starving due to hurricane effects, he said doing science for the sake of science had a lot of practical benefits. He said meteorology would not have advanced this far unless some scientist did it for the sake of his pleasure. He followed it up with a Michael Faraday incident. It seems Faraday was working on electromagnetism when a minsiter of his government came and asked him whether what he is doing is going to be any worthy at all for the people. Faraday replied, "Sir, I don't know if what I am doing will be useful to the people today but I do know that tomorrow you will be able to collect taxes from it!!"

And when talking about superstitions, he narrated an incident where Schrodinger and Heisenberg met in the former's cottage in the woods. The entrance of the cottage had a big horse-shoe embedded on it (a belief that it drives away evil). Seeing this Heisenberg remarked "Surely, you can't be believing in all this". For which, it seems Schrodinger retorted, "Of course I dont believe in it. But they say it protects even those who don't!"

'I will not allow IT sector to go away from Karnataka' - Deve Gowda

I am not sure if everyone understands what Deve Gowda means when he says he will not let IT sector go outside Karnataka. No, he is not talking about making Karnataka infrastructure so good, that no one would want to leave. He is talking about physically blocking the roads so that no one gets away.

Of course he is hiding the fact that he does not need to do anything from now on to accomplish that, atleast in Bangalore. Bangalore roads are already like that. You can never go anywhere once you are on the roads.

Instead of admitting and addressing the point in debate, which is whether Karnataka's infrastructure can handle the disproportionate growth, he rather chooses to talk about what was done during his CM tenure. He says he asked Narayana Murthy what the problem was and why the industry was blaming the government. What can one do with the guy?

Sathish recently had a post on how long it took to reach from E-City to Silk Board and how horrible the journey was that they had to crack PJs to survive the journey. But Deve Gowda still asks, "What is the problem?"

Poor NRN Murthy probably does not understand all this and he and his mates prepared this 6 page blueprint on what can be done to improve things. Only 6 pages. Probably that's what hurt Deve Gowda. Being 6 pages, obviously they missed out on what all Deve Gowda had done in the previous years - however unrelated they are to the topic of interest. And anything like that is not worth reading. Did Mr. Gowda actually turn around to reading it before he called it "old wine in new bottle"?

Even if he had not read the thing, I won't have a problem with that. What can you expect from the guy who slept in public meetings for the sake of the pooor? It is only the denial that makes the whole thing hopeless.

Unrelated Tidbit: I heard that all ex-PMs and their families have Commando protection for the rest of their lives (is this true?). And Mr. Gowda's immediate family is a total of 9 or 11 people. That's probably money that could be spent in widening roads in Bangalore.

In Wenatchee...

Over the weekend, had been to Wenatchee, the apple capital of the world, accompanying Lakshmi on a Teacher's Conference. America is known for associating such ad-campaign statements for towns and cities. However, I found Wenatchee, otherwise a very small town, not to be as much hype as it was apple orchards all the way on either side of the road. They did a tour of an apple packaging industry and the WSTA was kind enough to allow me tag along with Lakshmi free of cost. (The conference itself costs about $150 for the sponsoring school).

It was a very good learning experience in the end and I was surprised at the amount of technology implemented in such a small town. Inventory management in the company is done with Oracle Applications. A separate R&D division explores how taste of the apple can be measured by using Infra Red cameras without cutting the apples. Picking and boxing is done by robots (though the manager asserted that his Hispanic employees did a way better job). The GM of the company (who is also a member of the board for this family owned company) did the tour for us and gave a lot of insightful details. For example, he said a majority of his workers are hispanics and his company would support every move of the government to bring more workers from Mexico. During harvest season his company would require 2000 additional workers (to a regular workforce of about 1500 - so more than double) and in a small town like Wenatchee, he said we will be "scraping the bottom".

He also made a comment on students who come in and work in the company for short terms during harvest season. After a couple of days at work, the students claim this is "real work" and are reluctant to return (sorting apples, is harder than we thought it was and is not cool)! I remembered the statement made by one reporter in CNN who commented on Lou Dobbs' tirades against illegal immigration, saying that some companies have no other way out because to stay in business they have to employ a large amount of short-term workers and the boys and girls who work at Starbucks are not ready to pick peaches. This experience was a live demonstration of that comment (or rather lament)! I don't know what kind of workers work there but if I was the director, my options really would be to either let the worker from Mexico earn the honest buck and stay in business or let him get a certificate from the US government that he is not a terrorist and shut down part of my operations. You know which one would be my pick.

For a manager (and originally a grower), the GM was surprisingly technology savvy. His tour talk were filled with technical details. You know, I am from the IT industry where managers and technical talk are like Hitler and world peace! I thought all managers were like that, but was glad to be proved wrong.

*****
Wenatchee, a little town that it is, invited us with some funny encounters. Wenatchee, lies on two sides of the humongous Columbia river. The eastern side is called East Wenatchee and the western side is just Wenatchee. When we reached there, we didn't know all these tidbits. It so happened that we went to Wenatchee instead of East Wenatchee (where the conference was). We stopped at a gas station (petrol bunk, as I used to call it) and enquired a couple where Eastmont High school was. The couple gave us back shocked looks and gasped "Oh, that is in East Wenatchee. You are in Wenatchee." I thought we were screwed because we were already late for the conference. I explained to them that there were no good directions available on the internet and asked them how long it would take me to reach the long-and-distant East Wenatchee. They said I had to go along that road until a bridge came and then cross the bridge to the other side of Wenatchee. A total of around 10 mins drive. Until now, I haven't figured out why they exchanged shocked looks for us missing our destination by about 10 mins! Maybe it was just a rural/semi-urban facet of the town and its people.

Later, when I was in the town library killing time, the guy next to me was browsing something objectionable (I think porn) on the library computer. I saw the librarians see it and they were involved in hush-hush discussions on what to do. Later one of the courageous lady of the lot stepped over to talk to him. She approached him and said "You have to leave now for doing this". The guy responded "Arright" in a very non-chalant way and started closing all the open windows (the Microsoft ones, I mean). The lady was as surprised as I was at the response. But she was also probably disappointed that her so-called strict voice and manner did not evoke the necessary reaction in the boy. After a pause she said in what looked like a continuation of the previous sentence "... And you are not allowed to come back again in the library". The boy again replied "Arright" and left.

With a look of confused bewilderment the lady went back to the main desk where other librarians looked up to her for solving the matter so easily. I could hear a "Well, that was easy" from the lady!

50 miles per gallon!

For the first time in American television, I saw a Honda Civic ad today that showcased 50 miles per gallon as a selling point.

I never thought this day would come.

Male Female Ratio...

While browsing the internet on male-female ratios across the world, I came across this website where they have listed male-female ratios among people of various racial origins in USA.

None of the ratio's have more than 10% difference. In fact many of them have less than 5% difference in ratio. I am positive that the ratio will be similar across the world. In fact, I am equally positive that it will be a less than 10% difference for all such species in the world. (Is there any species where the ratio is skewed?)

Is the only scientific explanation for this, probability?

Katrina

Watching CNN, Katrina refugees were heading to Houston for shelter. The CNN reporter said that the city of Houston was making a "great" "sacrifice" in letting people in from the neighbouring states and "allowing" them to stay in one of it's superdomes.

Kalam...

Kalam gives five key areas of development for India -

1. Agriculture and Food Processing
2. Education
3. Information and Communications Technology
4. Networking of Rivers
5. Self-reliance in critical technologies

I am impressed with the order of these 5. Importance of 1 and 2 for India cannot be overemphasized.

He talks about the importance of PURA and administers a couple of oaths among school children - one to have a vision for India's development and another not to support any religious, caste and language differentiation.

When asked who his role model is, he replies that it is his science teacher Sivasubramanya Iyer.

It is so refreshing to read news about Kalam.

Two movies and the director...

Needless to say, Quentin Tarantino has his own style of film making. From what I have seen in "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction", he considers a movie as a bunch of scenes. He takes special effort in sculpting each scene - with sparkling dialogue full of wit and humor. Many scenes are movies in themselves - with so many "take-aways".

But the movie as a whole always seems to miss something. It is almost as if that missing something is an intentional omission. There is no definite word for that something and the closest I can get to what is missing is a strong storyline.

They are good movies, nevertheless.

After the movie is over, when you sit and think why Tarantino made this movie, it is very difficult to come up with an answer. Except that, maybe he wanted to have fun.

Puzzle Time...

You might have seen these puzzles before -

USSR
USA +
-----------
PEACE
-----------

SEND
MORE +
-----------
MONEY
-----------

Can you characterize exactly when such strings make a unique valid sum?

God Hypothesis...

Nancy Gandhi paints a beautiful picture of Coonoor. She also says that God, and associated beliefs, are theories of convenience.

I recall the anecdote involving Laplace and Napoleon. When Napoleon asked Laplace why there wasn't any mention of God in one of Laplace's books, Laplace apparently replied that there was no need for that particular hypothesis.