Some creative license used.

New York to Ithaca

2011-02-01T20:26:00.000-08:00

The endless road north west from New York is five hours long. Five hours that pass through the snow in winter and the thick green canopies in summer. Every bus ride is a cacophony- a cacophony of a dozen ear phones playing bad music, empty nothings from the multitude of cell phones and the droning of the bus punctuated by the old and faithful snore.

Through tinted glass, you can see the hours go by. Thoughts meander to meaningless conclusions. Annotations and re-annotations soil them, filing them to an archive, in the hope of eventual retrieval and maybe they will make the pages of a "biography of an unknown citizen" or a library bound moribund thesis .

In the contained atmosphere of the bus, there resides a smell- an amalgam of countless odours. An amalgam of the air freshner in the washroom and the odors of a million riders, it permeates your senses and sets off a million memory recalls of earlier journeys.

A waking sleep approaches, either lulled by fairies of summer or the gloom of winter. Through deep valleys and high hills, the mind drifts, powered by the currents of chance and circumstance.

At the very end, the five hour road empties into Ithaca, a small town by the lake. Journeys seem to begin and end in circular manner, till the ends and the beginnings all coalesce into a large droplet , threatening to overwhelm the reality that is journeyed upon.

Wikileaks and the pointlessness of it all..

2011-01-13T19:01:00.000-08:00

Information is often a slow acting weapon, making but an infinitesimal dent on its target .It attains its fullest purpose only when it is constantly reinforced and allowed to endure on a scale of multiple generations.In both totalitarian and democratic societies, this characteristic is often used to the fullest effect, writing over inconvenient truths and reinforcing convenient half truths.

In our own recent history, we see multiple examples of the limited effects of information. The first,much celebrated leak was that of the Pentagon Papers.Over the time since the leak, their impact moved from the front pages of a daily newspaper, to the footnotes of academia. All references to it have been expunged from popular consciousness and the United States found itself in Iraq. Information lost that battle.

A big example of the complete and utter uselessness of information is the effect of internet on China. Much was bandied of the effect of internet on the urban youth. But I have read and found that many chinese believe what their government , rather than what NY times tells them. That battle never seems to have begun.

The newest and possibly the most extreme example is the Wikileaks Cable dump. A mass of hundreds of thousands of documents, many of which will be a trove for a graduate student, but not for the average reader. The scale of this leak, in some sense puts it apart from all other leaks.

But what is the consequence of wikileaks? Its possibly another battle lost. We already see much of it disappearing from the front pages and the prime time, having exhausted the short attention span of the news cycle and possibly actively suppressed by the governments of the world. The information will continue to circulate for a long time, feeding only the appetites of governments, academia and the UFO worshipping conspiracy junkie.

But perhaps I err on the side of cynicism. Maybe all is not lost. I read today that Tunisians, angered by details of corruption in their authoritarian government, are leading a revolt against it.

But I think being the skeptic is the safe bet here. The premise that the availability of information can have an impact is relevant mostly for rational beings. Human beings are not rational. We make our decisions not on fact, but on our prejudices and emotions. Information that does not reinforce our prejudices is discarded. Only information that lingers long enough for the next generation to absorb is likely to make a difference. We live in a world, where useful information is actively scrubbed from the mainline discourse. We live in a world, where information only has a half life of sixty minutes.

"Life of a scientist": The extraordinary tale of Mario Capecchi

2010-11-18T20:38:00.000-08:00

In the dying days of the second world war, the great Erwin Schrodinger published a book- a collection of lectures. In this book, he conjectured on how chemistry and physics could be used to answer the question- "What is life?" In the aftermath of the war, this book became a call to arms, for a number of physicists who had turned away from physics- distraught at the weapons they had wrought. Thus was born molecular biology. To me, they were heroes.

For those of us who have lived in a time of peace, the tales of these scientists, who lived in extraordinary times, were of an epic nature.Its not just that they were great scientists who laid the foundation of the current revolution in biology,but that their life stories bestow upon them the aura of myth and legend.

Today, I heard an extraordinary tale in the same vein- albeit of a boy who, during the war, walked barefoot down Italy's boot and has built some of the most powerful tools in understanding how mammals(mice, humans) develop from a single cell to an adult, how they fall sick, grow old and die.

Mario Capecchi (pronounce Kapeki) was invited to talk at Cornell today. It was meant to be a popular talk and not a science talk. To me, it was one of the most amazing stories I have ever heard. Mario Capecchi was born to an Italian-American mother in 1937 in Verona. His father died during the war in North Africa, fighting for Il Duce. His mother was part of an anti-fascist grouping and knew that her time alive and free was limited. So ,she gave her daughter up for adoption to a French family. She sold the rest of her belongings and gave it to an Italian family so that they would look after the four year old Mario if anything happened to her. Sure enough, she was dragged away by the GESTAPO to the concentration camp at Dachau. A year after she was arrested, Mario Capecchi was thrown out of the house he had sanctuary in. He was five years old and it was 1941! for the next four years of the war, he wandered his way south, alternating between orphanages of unlimited horror, chicory and dry bread crust and the streets where he along with other orphaned children stole food from the carts. Eventually, he was "held" at a hospital, bereft of his clothes, so that he wouldnt run away . In 1946, on his birthday, his mother, who he described as having a gift for the dramatic, arrived to take him away. She had survived the concentration camp and had spent a year searching for him. There really must be miracles. The story was reminiscent of the climax of the movie "Life is beautiful".

In 1946, Mario Capechhi was brought by his mother to the United states. He apparently waited to see if what the rest of impoverished Europe thought of the US was true. In a voice filled with emotion, he declared "People in Europe thought that the streets in the US was paved with gold. I found more, I found opportunity!" He grew up in a large Quaker commune and seemed to be deeply influenced by them.

Mario Capechhi obtained his PhD under James Watson and went onto join Harvard medical school as a professor. He described Harvard as a university where "you are asked every day as to what new thing did you find today?" He believed that this curtailed the kind of research of fundamental importance and encouraged trivial pursuits. He also noticed that while Harvard had many brilliant scientists , they failed to work in synergy and were constantly in apposition to each other. This perhaps conflicted with his Quaker upbringing. So, at his first opportunity, he moved to Utah State University- a move tantamount to academic suicide for many!

By the early 1990's the techniques invented by Mario Capechhi's lab, in collaboration with two other labs had made the manipulation of the mouse genome a routine technique. Their work has been foundational and has made possible several thousand research break throughs in recent years. In recognition of this, he won the Nobel prize for physiology in 2007. After the Nobel prize ceremony, he met a lady who turned out to be his sister, the same sister who had been given away for adoption in 1937!

I worked with mice for three years. Mario Capecchi wrote the lab manual that we all used and did many an experiment which we cited. His name was always deep within my head. I had always greatly admired his work. I always wondered what prompted him to move from Harvard to Utah. I always wanted to know who he really was. Capecchi the man was on display today. Mario Capecchi is in my pantheon of heroes.

(CREATIVE LICENSE WAS NOT REQUIRED. )

If you want to read more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100800252_pf.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Capecchi

Hanging Warren Anderson

2010-06-17T16:49:00.000-07:00

Of late, the media (Facebook, blogs and television stations) of the affluent classes has woken up to a tragedy called Bhopal.The Indian middle classes have learnt about Methyl Isocyanate, Union carbide and probably even about a place called Bhopal. There has been much finger wagging, shows of outrage, anger, soap opera like news shows and the normal disgust we reserve for our ruling classes. At the center of this storm is one man- Warren Anderson- and the story of his escape. Our sensationalist journalists have been going over board pinning blame for his "escape" to every Tom, Dick and Harry who operated the levers of power in 1984.

However, I have a single question- Why do we need to hang Warren Anderson? To me, it seems that its vengance. Vengance not because his company's profit guided zeal lead to the death of thousands, but because it is in some way, an insult on our recently rediscovered self respect.

I argue, that its not Warren Anderson that we need to hang. In his stead, we need to hang our own heads- in shame!

For years now, we as a nation, have remembered Bhopal only on anniversaries and court cases- just like we remember Gandhi and Independence day for the holidays they bring.We have looked on while the contamination at the factory site has leached into the water table and created new generations of victims, who will pin upon themselves not only the ribbons of Bhopal,Dow and Union Carbide,but also the apathy and inertia of our government. Its a crime, that years were spent, trying to get Dow to clean up the site, but that the goverment did not take upon itself to clean up the site. Sure, the site belongs to a third party, but the land belongs to India and the people being effected are Indians. This is a crime that our government is guilty of, yet we seek to hang Warren Anderson.

Warren Anderson represents a creed of people that will cut corners to make money. The government, is responsible, for overseeing and regulating the actions of such people. The media is responsible for the constructive criticism of the government and the society it governs. Yet, a

quarter century after Bhopal,we still stand at the edge, waiting for a disaster to strike. We still have to live our nights in the industrial cities with the putrid smells of unknown gases, released by industries out to make a fast buck . Its a shame, that we have no active agency that aggressively ensures the safety of the public. A The government stands dumb. The media is vocal, only in pursuit of individuals, but not issues. We, the people, are also to blame. For the media only shows us what we want to see and many of us, with the voice, are apathetic- for the thousands who died were not our aunts and uncles, but were only maids, rickshawpullers and menial labourers.

The fourth estate, our representatives and us are all out to hang Warren Anderson and the people who let him escape. For, in them, we have a scapegoat, a fall guy for the crimes of our government,our profit driven media and our apathy. Someone called his escape "a systemic failure". I would say that, our misplaced zeal and our inability to identify with our fellow citizens is the real failure. Warren Anderson has long been dammned! We on the other hand, are slowly dragging ourselves to the gallows.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and started to love James Joyce

2010-06-16T18:00:00.000-07:00

This essay has two lies. One, I never stopped worrying about James Joyce. Two, I have never started to love him.In all truth, this essay has little to do with James Joyce.Actually, I must add that it has nothing to do with him whatsoever.This essay has nothing to do with various waterbodies of consciousness. It may in the end, have something to do with pseudo-nihilist literature practised by unnamed characters in the rubber monster movies of twentieth-century Japan.Ihope it has the same effect on your as Mothra and Godzilla had on Tokyo.

This essay is neither about Nora Barnacale nor her "sensual epistolary" correspondence with her husband or third wave feminist interpretations of her alter ego- Nora Joyce.However, I would like to mention that she thought, very correctly,that her husband wrote books that only her husband could read.Now, some of you would have begun to assume that I am a boor,culturally uncouth and probably uses literary masterpieces as litter for cats.But I can promise you

that its not true. First, cat litter usually has calcium bentonite. And since most paper is made of cellulose, its pointless to use James Joyce's books as cat litter.Second, I have no cats.These two observations, that flowed through my conscious about 10 seconds ago should convince you, that I do not use the books of that Irish drunk as cat litter.

There may be those of you, who believe that I am book burner.I have had several hair leveling episodes with my bunsen burner, but I defenitely dont burn books.In fact, I inspired no book burner and curiosity did not lead me to ask at what temperature, paper burnt. Though, I sometimes wonder, if I should know if the gods we worship are mortal. But,I digress.

Actually, I will digress. I find this strict conformity to one subject, is detrimental to my mental well being.This detriment makes itself apparent as a jelly like,sharp ooze.Most of this ooze, is from my disgust at our contemporary treatment of Al-Jabbr.Al-Jabbr, among other things,made gold from cabbage (and thus caused famine in germany),lent his name( for 89 dinars) to a vital weapon(algebra) in the fight against fourth grade super heros, created the Zebra (that too on a sunday) and wrote the instruction manuals for most of these achievements in a language that only he could read. Today, we call this langauge gibberish.You may all, by now have fiugured out that Joyce bashing is a strange attractor.For the object of maintaining subtlety, let me emphasize- Al jabbr wrote stuff only he coudl understannd. we called the gibberish. James Joyce wrote stuff only he could understand. We call them Ulysees,Dubliners and masterpieces.

Now, I must end. At the end, we all realize, that we are in the same place as we were in the beginning- in front of a comp. Some of you may rush the barricades, to nail me. But, Iwill tell you that they are no barricades. They were destroyed by Mothra and Godzilla's elder son, just yesterday- over who should get Iran's stockpile of NREU snacks(not really enriched uranium).

ps-dedicated to two physicists,A.Douglas,C.bergen,sixteen pairs of twin poodles and my old freind- count Duckula.

Travelogue 1: Long journey home

2010-02-03T17:22:00.000-08:00

Long journeys are dangerous. On such journeys, if you are Bilbo- you can kill dragons. If you are Rama, you kill Ravana. The rest of us make do with lost luggage, jet lag and empty bank accounts.

Now, even if you dint do the traveling, you may suffer the ill effects of some someone close to you doing the traveling- sort of similar to second hand smoking. First, you might have to get up at unearthly hours to open the door (either to the car or the house). Second, you might have to help pack their suitcases etc. Third, you might have to read their boring travelogues. Right now, I am inflicting, upon you, the absolute pain and boredom of reading my travelogue.

A few aeons ago, I crossed one ocean, a couple of seas and continents to come to Amrika. In light of the long time interval that managed to pass itself by and in part due to the availability of a paid vacation( vacca= latin for cow, ation= the action of, thus vacation= action of being a cow), I took the greatly unexpected and shocking decision of going home.

My first limb of the journey took me from the middle of nowhere to new york to get a bite off the big apple. The stay here was mostly uneventful with the exception of a friend driving up the wrong side of the street. While this accident caused a panic attack in the car, a similar action was carried out voluntarily and with much sangfroid, on the streets of Hyderabad, while discussing the lack of lane discipline on Indian roads. I must also mention that I -the common NYC taxi commuter-was, most probably, swindled to the tune of a few million (8.3 to be precise) dollars by the cab driver (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/12/nyc-taxis-overcharged-pas_n_497662.html)

My flight from NYC took off without much drama and flew well enough. The few sore exceptions included a lawyer sitting next to me. Her excellency would not switch off the phone till the plane flew over the atlantic- where I believe the cell phone signals are a little weak. By the time I landed in Frankfurt, I had consumed two dinners,four glasses of juice, twelve pounds of boredom and thirty six winks - interrupted only by 500 days of summer and a snoring snooty lawyer.

Frankfurt at 5 AM on christmas day, was all you would expect of it. Vast empty lobbies with occasional, but large concentrations of Indians- flying to Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Mumbai and the washrooms (to brush their sparkling teeth). The only exceptions were solitary Indians, manning check-in desks and snack bars. The ones at the snack bars were not really mallu but insisted on giving me euros as change for the dollars I paid.

Now, in due course of time, it was time..for me to fly on further. There was a long line of Indians who waited to charge into the plane..so they could find cabin spots for the millions of tons of hand baggage they carried.I often wonder whether the 'Vimanas' of the Indian epics failed to make it to the modern era primarily because ancient India failed to discover the concept of limiting cabin baggage.

During the halt, I looked at each humanoid entity, to determine which would share my seat. It could have been the exceptionally pretty woman, it could have been the economist I gossiped with or even a normal non-entity. It was however, a male of the species. He was the type who had spent a couple of days in various airports- delayed by storms and the like. That was by itself not particularly tragic. It was also not tragic that he dint remove his heavy jacket during those storm ridden days. It was however, tragic that he decided to unbutton and remove his jacket- the moment he sat next to me. For a screamingly long instant, Dante's last level of hell opened its gates to olfactory senses. In that moment, the agnostic that I was, made a deal with God to see if he was really almighty.

The plane took off and turned south east. "Le Tormentor mon olfaction" of the aisle seat slipped into the seat and into a deep sonorous sleep. In the midst of the smell hell, the roof leaked!Yes, the roof of an Airbus, A340...pride of the Airbus family..leaked water that dripped onto me at regular intervals. But then, lo and behold!There was a miracle. A passenger on the seat behind me, my guardian angel, got up and sprayed "Le Tormentor mon olfaction"with a deodorant. Perhaps, god exists and is almighty.

Then, the plane flew on, the food flew in. As I flew over the Black Forest, there was a cake,over Turkey, I was served some sweet meats. Over the Caspian, I was served some eggs. Over Iran, there was some tea. As the procession of food went by, I came closer and closer to India. I could no longer sit in my seat. Neither could any of the other passengers. For it seemed like half the passengers knew each other, but were according to impeccable german efficiency- seated separately. Children (about 25-3o year old) were separated from their parents. Friends were divided (for about 8 hours). Yet, no wall or fence (that the germans could come up with) kept them apart.

At last, without any drama, the plane touched down. I was nearly home..er, the new airport was a few light years away. But, I was home....to be contd...if I have the mood, time and the boredom.

If Shivaji came back.

2009-11-21T00:19:00.000-08:00

The council of the afterlife carefully examined the application, and debated over it for a few years. Then they granted the applicant's wishes, with all the regular conditions ofcourse.

On a remote hill, in the centre of India,amidst the broken fortresses, a King of old reappeared.
His name was much celebrated, for he was the high king of the Marathis, and a few centuries after his birth- the overburdened bearer of its pride. Curious, he was- about how his land was and whether it had prospered.Now, his wish was granted. He could observe and speak, eat and drink. He could ofcourse claim that he was Shivaji...but who would believe. Even in the land of superstitions and Shivaji worshippers, he would be yet another actor. He had sixty earth days ofcourse, before he would have to beam back to the other world.

Much aghast he was, at the broken state of his proud forts. One after another, they were just mudpiles flying foreign flags and guides speaking strange tongues. The marathi they spoke was a strange too, but several hundred years would normally do that. He walked the land..through sugarcane and paddy, highways and hotels. He was crestfallen, to learn that there was a king no more and that his precious state was ruled by outsiders...from that ancient source of evil..Delhi. His work had been broken.

On a lonely rock, atop a windy hill, he lamented the loss of his kingdom. While in his anguish, in the far off distance, he beheld a mighty city...stretching down to the sea, glowing brightly in the overcast monsoon darkness. Over many a days he drifted into the city. In his time, this land was just wet marshes and islands. In the harbours, he could perceive a great many ships flying the same foreign flag. As was his reason for coming, he spoke to many- the fishermen who spoke his tongue, the driver of the horseless carriage who spoke another and the fire worshipping man who spoke a third. Mumbai the city was called.

He learned of how the world had changed since he departed to the next. He learnt of the British, the fight for freedom, the birth of a new India and the importance of Mumbai in this new nation.
It was not clear , whether he appreciated it completely. But, his opinion was no longer of importance. He had only come to see how his land was prospering.

He found that there were still some who claimed to defend his country for him. Infact, they seemed to believe exactly what he believed on his death bed. He wondered if they were his true successors. One day, he went to a large hall, where the shadows of people moved and spoke...larger then lifer they were. The shadows were descriptive of a man(we will refer to as A) who claimed that invaders from other parts of India had to leave his state. Shivaji, the courageous, found it hard to understand why A was being deified by an actor who was from the far north and a director from the far south, the very people who A wanted to be kicked out. It made little sense to Shivaji. Infact, it would make little sense to any one, why A was being deified.

Shivaji's time on this world, was once again ticking to an end. He,as was his nature, wanted to one last time defend his old country. He joined A's army and marched on a tall building. He put his club to good use and was once again in his element- the fearless king. In marathis defending outsiders, he saw traitors. In outsiders working to make Mumbai and themselves prosperous, he saw parasites. Such was his worldview, for he was from a time when the Marathas- feared warriors, fought hard to save their independence and their way of life. That, that time had gone, was not appreciated by Shivaji.

A's activities had set the city afire. Out with all those people who cant speak out tongue, they cried. Shots echoed in the distance, as the local government struggled to bring control. Shivaji ran now, trying to find as many invaders before the messengers of heaven arrived to get him. In the darkness and the melee of battle, Shivaji looked like one of those men from the north..yet, he did not realize it. At one corner, stood the army he had fought proudly for. Into their waiting arms he ran. He let down his guard and smiled. The smile froze, as he noted that a large sword had pierced him in the heart. He felt no pain, for his body was only a vehicle for his spirit. The body lay limp and the spirit of Shivaji drifted up into the world of the afterlife above.
He beheld with his senses, his lands once again...far they stretched, further then he could imagine. Beyond its ancient boundaries, the lands of his country stretched on. It seemed that his lands had grown and become part of a larger land...with wide hills, quick rivers and thick forests.
A light dawned on him. His time had passed.

Postscript: No offense to mighty Shivaji.Offense meant to several morons, who inhabit the 21st century but use brains produced in the 17th.

Remembering Mrs. Gandhi, for what ?

2009-11-01T18:30:00.001-08:00

I was seven months old when Indira Gandhi died.My dad apparently cried. A lot of other people cried and a lot of others- died. On the occasion of the twenty-fifth death anniversary, many have used the occasion to write essays that have been ubiquitously titled- Remembering Mrs. Gandhi.

My title does not imply disrespect, though I cant claim to have any real respect for her.
I am just disconcerted by modern day perspectives of Indira's contribution to India as described by several news outlets. It reminds me of the slogan- " India is Indira". We remember only her achievements,but not her crimes. Yes! crimes. I will not get into any of the hearsay and rumors that have circulated about her and the way she governed. She was an Iron lady etc and fought the Congress syndicate to become prime minister. So, yes, she was a hard knuckled politician. In this character, she was responsible for the dismissal of the first democratically elected leftist government in the world (in Kerala). She was also responsible for the rise of the extremist movement in Punjab, one that eventually lead to her death.

She also ushered in the era of institutionalized political corruption and incompetence.Her abolition of elections of Congress leaders ensured that only her cronies,not people of talent, were in power. By annointing Sanjay Gandhi her sucessor, she made a mockery of democracy and set an example that Shivsena, TDP and DMK have managed to replicate with much efficiency.

Then, ofcourse, there was the Emergency. India has actually had multiple emergencies. However, only one is reffered to as "The Emergency". In her hunger for power, the Iron Lady hammered democracy into cutlery to serve herself,her family and her closed circle of fawning courtiers.Much has been said about the emergency and I will not go there, except to wish that we dont ever go through another again. I dint live through one and dont want to live through one.

Those of us who want, remember her as Kali- the decimator of Pakistan. But I urge you to consider one important statement. Liberating Bangladesh was no doubt a great military victory.
It possibly increased the confidence of Indian citizenry, but arguably made no lasting contribution to India. On the other hand, her methods to guarantee her political power have poisoned democracy, governance and India itself.

Lagaan in chinese

2009-10-12T20:21:00.001-07:00

Nobel and Ignobel

2009-10-06T19:38:00.001-07:00

Nobel and Ignobel were brothers, step brothers infact. Nobel was the nerd. He invented dynamite, gelatin-the explosive that is not made from cows and wrote a play called Nemesis. The play about an Italian noble (not nobel) woman was so horrendous that his wife eloped with his step brother and his well wishers burnt the rest of the copies of the play. Depressed,broken, but not bankrupt...Nobel was on his death bed. A french newspaper greatly exaggerated reports of Nobel's death and wrote about how he had invented weapons that killer faster then ever before. (this was wierd, since the death of even the most blood thirsty, but victorious despots only leads us to express our sorrow..but not our happyness). Our man Nobel, read his obituary, was upset and to link his name with something better...created the Nobel prizes. Oh! Nobel laureates, wake up. You are winning bloodied money. (not to say that I wont take it, if they give it to me).
(Note: Indian readers will also know the name Bofors. Nobel, at one point of time owned bofors).

Now to the step brother.Ignobel was a ladies man who made a living running a circus in Russia. He was infact, the creator of the Russian circus.He never liked his brother.

In true filmy style, they fought each other. It was a long and deadly vendetta.It was also not much helped by the fact that Nobel's wife eloped with Ignobel. Anyway, after Nobel's death, Ignobel, still hale and healthy, decided that his name too should live on.Thus were created the Ignobels, in memory of the fun he had.
This year's Nobel and Ignobel prizes have been announced.

Its always fun to start off with the Ignobels, awarded by a very interesting journal called Annals of improbable research (http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/index.htm). This year's chemistry prizes went to Tequila diamonds and a brassiere that can be converted into a gas mask. I think that tequila diamonds are an excellent idea. I have had the horror of multiple encounters with that vile substance and guess that another grad student like me came up with the idea of putting it to better use. However, I wonder what happens to the catterpillar at the bottom of each bottle. I am told that there was no tradition to pickle a caterpillar in the bottle.But at some point of time, an enterprising salesman realised that the americans would drink more of it , if it came with something wierd.

Now to the bra, its clearly for women who work in really hazardous environs. Why else would you need two of them?Further, whats gonna happen to the men? This is just sexist. Its just more evidence of the feminist plot to take over the world.

(note: to people who like annals of improbable research,I also suggest http://www.jir.com/ )

Moving onto the Nobels, the biology/physiology/medicine prize went to a trio- Elizabeth Blackburn and her student Carol Grieder and an independently working person Jack Tsoztak(or something like that). They solved a pretty important puzzle and much deserved it. As usual, the Lasker awards, given to them in 2006, predicted their nobel well in advance. I will direct you to wikipedia for all the facts about telomere and telomerase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomerase). I will add what wiki doesnt say. Telomerase was once the magic bullet to make us live forever. However,only diamonds from tequila are forever, we may at most die another day- with or without telomerase. Despite this horrible fact, many biology students have had a love affair with telomerase- brief for some, longer for others.

There is also one other lore about telomerase.Carol Greider is often portrayed as the greatest phd student that ever was- since she discovered telomerase on Christmas eve-hard at work while everyone else sang christmas carols. Cornell was also all abuzz becase Dr.Jack was once a grad student at Cornell...in the aeons long forgotten. This nobel prize also marks another important trend: the rising number of women in biology.

Now the physics nobel went to people who got us fiber/fibre (do you speak british english or american)optic cables and CCD. CCD brings to us digital cameras in their most ubiquitous use and the Hubble space telescope in its most exotic use. While it is debatable whether it deserves a nobel, its in keeping with previous nobels going to technological developments like PCR, rather than a fundamental scientific advance. Now, the Fibre optic cable nobel is bound to cause some heart burn. While, Dr. Kao undoubtedly made several critical technical contributions, several others including an Indian called Narinder Singh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narinder_Singh_Kapany) made pioneering contributions, which have possibly gone unrecognized. However, I am not competent to understand Dr. Kao's contributions and will leave it as such.

The chemistry and peace prizes are yet to come. I wonder who the peace prize is gonna go to. I am betting that it would be a somewhat not so well known figure, so in short..i dont have a clue.

I stopped studying chemistry 5 years ago.I will stop at that. Nobel prizes in Literature are usually for books that are of the Sylvia Plath school of literature- i.e books you wouldnt read or write if you were in the right frame of mind. Some of the authors are so obscure that some judges openly boycotted the final choice. However, in truth , there are many a nobel prize winning book that make a good read. My candidate for a nobel in literature would be Bill Waterson, for Calvin and Hobbs...which must be one of the greatest pieces of American literature ever.

However,here is a true prediction for a future nobel prize: Yamanaka and others who have discovered the technique of making embryonic stem cell like cells from adult tissues.

with that..........I end this rambling discourse.

Note: Some creative license used.

Around the World in stereotypes

2009-06-27T21:24:00.000-07:00

Around the world in 80 days was one of my favourite books, as a child. So, in honour of those days, I today watched a version of this movie starring David Niven. The movie, and in retrospect, the book, should be labeled "Around the World in Sterotypes". The movie starts in a Gentleman's England where the maintenance of standard time, the drinking of tea and the exhibition of sangfroid that would put a million fictional spies to shame is all the rave.
First stop in the movie is Spain. Spain has his august highness, a moorish prince and ofcourse a bullfight. I was willing to accept this deviation since the man playing Passepartout was a real life Bull fighter of some fame called Cantiflas.
The next major stop is India- which is ofcourse replete in elephants, holy men and human sacrifice .Through the twenty minutes spent by the movie in India, I dint see anyone who was not involved in some sort of activity that involved religion or mysticism.It almost seemed that no living Indian was normal. Hong Kong made up for its lack of exotic features via ostrich drawn cabs. What ostriches were doing in HK, I really dont know.
Much comment was reserved for the United States, which is reffered to by Philleas Fogg as " a very primitive country".I had a hearty laugh when Fogg reprimands his man servant for tipping a waiter at an SF bar with the splendid line- "Do not spoil the natives."I wonder what Fogg would have to say if he realised that you have to spoil them with 15% of your money each time you go out.There was a 2 second Frank Sinatra cameo. He was playing the piano in the bar.Maybe, it was just before he approached the Corleones to sort out his problems! No movie about the wild west is quite finished without the red indians. They are at first peaceful. As the ticket collector in the train explains, "You can say that by the peace pipes they are smoking".The wild west is wild, with falling bridges, falling rocks and ofcourse more hostile indiansHowever, the tactical maneouvering of the indians is rather limited because of fenced off farm land lying next to the rails. To end it all, life in the United states is ended by the cavalry riding to the rescue. There were some skunks, which I think is an important feature of life in the United States.

When I finished the 3 hr long movie, which could have been 2 hours or less, I just wondered about what Jules Verne must have thought about each country as he wrote the original book. Much of the book's alure is the adventure of traveling through strange lands.Jules Verne was by any standards, a well read man. He would have probably cherry picked facts to make his book a blockbuster. The lands he describes arent that strange anymore. But, it brought to me an important realisation- spin doctoring is an ancient art, further- its useful in any era.

What is India

2009-01-15T16:23:00.000-08:00

For twenty-one of my twenty-three years, I lived in Hyderabad( a city in the state of Andhra Pradesh).I was brought up, never in doubt of my identity as an Indian. But I never ever asked the question of what makes an Indian. This question, I posed to myself after many an important personal experience.

Over the last two years, I stayed in Bombay, working at an institute which attracts people from India and beyond. Many an experience here made me ask that question. A Taiwanese student who had come for a conference after meeting half a dozen people from all over India- remarked that they all looked so different. We are also different, yet what makes us a nation?

Nations all over the world have been mostly constituted on that basis of the ethnic nature of their populace. In a few countries such as the United States, different ethnic groups are mashed into one. I argue that India stands apart, a society of not one or two different ethnic groups ( as seen in many countries), but a collection of disparate and diverse groups. I feel proud that India, essentially a freak, a unique example in history stands strong as a nation- nearly sixty years after its birth.Again, what makes an Indian?

Is it a common pre-modern history that contributes to this? We do share a common pre-modern history.The Mogul empire,the gupta empire etc. did bring unify large parts of India.But i argue that many European nations were once part of the Roman empire, the French empire etc, but they all don't claim to be a part of a common country. Fifty years of attempts have brought them only to a community. No, our common pre-modern history is not what welds us together.

I have heard from many a people that its a religion that unites us. This is a supremely fallacious argument. We have the second largest Muslim population in the world. According to the introduction to the law of the land that Indira Gandhi got added,we are a secular nation. I agree that the secularism is maintained in place not only by government policy but by the actions of one religion discriminating against another. Anyway, further, an overwhelmingly large majority of south America is Catholic Christian, but they never failed to unite. We could have had multiple republics within India which were of a Hindu.No, religion is not an argument.

......to be contd.

Continued at long last....

I must confess, after writing the first part, I realised that I had no real clue as to what India is and what defines us as a nation state. My inspiration to finish this, ironically comes from a recent BBC documentary called 'the story of India'. In it, is described the march of India and its population from prehistory to the modern era. It then stuck me that there were two common features or threads that run through the whole of the subcontinent, two important features that make India. Also,some of my current arguments may be at odds with what I have previously written. Its part of an evolving argument I am having about what really makes India and who is an Indian.

Our ancient history:
Of the known history of the subcontinent, modern geopolitical India has been united for only for a small fraction of time. However, culturally, the subcontinent has been united for most of this history. I will make no claim to Indian culture being a North Indian or Aryan synthesis. However,all I will say is that the geographical limitations placed by the mountain ranges in the north and east and strong native cultures in the west created a real mixing pot. The cultural influences of the north would spread south and and southern cultural influences would spread north. As the centuries passed by, though they were some differences, the Indian subcontinent as a whole could be considered by certain metrics to have similar cultural features.
Important among these are the spread of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religions. There is ample evidence that while these spread to the south of India from the north, there was a great schools of Hinduism and Buddhism in the south. From the south spread a multitude of dance forms to the north. This cultural synthesis is one of the most important features of India.
One important event that cannot be brushed over is the role played by Sanskrit as a progenitor of multiple primary languages in north and central India. However, I agree that Sanskrit probably had lesser influence of Tamil or that it has been purged over the ages.( My understanding of the linguistic relationships of Indian languages requires more reading and I will make no judgements.)Sanskrit would have provided a conduit for ideas, a factor important in the homogenization of Indian culture.

Now, the important question is - How does this part of Indian history really affect modern India? It might be argued that several Indian political and cultural practises. Hammurabi's laws have often been held up as the progenitor of law in many regions of the world and has probably affected us also. However, some of the greatest influence on our laws, both those in the constitution and those that are social are Ashoka's edicts. Why else would we use his symbols as our national emblems? The concept of peaceful coexistence has also been an important feature of Indian foreign policy. Arguably, therefore, these concepts have also deeply influenced us through the generations. As the 'story of India' made me realise, we are the projections of three or more millenia of history.

Medieval and Modern Indian History:

As Northern India came under the infuence of various Islamic Dynasties, North Indian cultures diverged from the more insular Southern India. Language, architecture and religion were heavily influenced by Muslim invaders coming from the west and central asia. This is a defining point in Indian history creating a point of divergence between southern and northern india, a divergence that would need to be bridged. The divergence and some could claim- animosity between the south and the north is so huge that they might have really been two independent nations. So, why are they one nation? Why do people on both sides of the Vindhyas consider themseleves Indians? I think here in lies the importance of a few good men who brought India together at Independence.
There are many who claim that it was really the British who united India. But they forget, that at independence- Kashmir, Hyderabad, Goa and Pondicherry werent really a part of India. Also, they forget that most of the princely states were given the choice to secede and form independent kingdoms. So how did the Indian national identity crystallize? There exists a reasonable case that this identity arose due to the actions of a few men.

Indians are prone to hero worship. Indian religions and culture, more than any other mainstream culture, has portrayed god in human form- or shall I say forms. In an extension of this habit, we have considered a few men- the likes of Gandhi and Nehru to be demigods. One provided the culture of ancient India moderated by the modern world while the other provided the modern world tempered by ancient India.Modern India rallied to them. As far as I see it, the British provided a medium through which these men reached out to modern India. Its probably the love of these men that fashioned modern India- bridging the gaps that arose between the vastness of the Indian subcontinent.

Post independence, we were all conditioned to believe that diversity was the normal state of existence. Regional heros became national heros. Thats what I think India really is, a melting pot. Thats where I think we are heading- towards a synthesis of north and south, old cultures that never die but are only refashioned by modern gods.

I hope I have done a modicum of justice to this topic. I am not sure I have touched all the important points and more importantly, my ideas on this topic are still evolving.

Ice and snow

2009-01-11T15:10:00.001-08:00

Ithaca is picture perfect when it snows. Cosy cottage like houses, pine trees and beautiful lonely lamps, all blanketed by white snow. Hurts the eyes by day, glows deceptively warmly in the moonlight and forms snow men when the university is in session. From the hilltop, you can see the world white. From the warm indoors, you know why the poet fluffs about fluffy snow. You can see the ploughs clearing the road and a lone hooded pedestrian walking through the falling cotton fluffs.
When you become that lone hooded pedestrian, you can hear the tobogganing and snow fight shrieks. You hurry and scurry, seeing the rabbits that dint hibernate. You get out of the falling snow, shake your shoes and reenter the warmth of the home.

When the mercury goes up, you can hear the snow cakes on the roof fall. You can see the snow on the trees cave in. As a few more days go by, a million salt whitened feet tread the road, turning snow to slime, making you wish that ice and snow could sublime. The feet that tread, encrusted white with salt, slip and slither down the sidewalks. The cold wind blows and the slime freezes into ice, tripping the lone walking man. Now, why dint Frost ever write about the downsides of snow and ice?

I am not yet bored of winter. It is dull and grey, but when the feather like snow falls to the ground, I am still enthralled. But not too long can the thralldom of winter hold me. Come March and April, winter will pierce my senses and make me long for the warmth and color. But then will come April and May with spring warmth, brightness and warm rain. And as they say, Rains in spring, flowers in summer bring.

I wait.

when Gladiator wanted to meet LOTR

2008-06-26T21:12:00.000-07:00

Oh! its wearisome. People made two good movies: LOTR aka lord of the rings and then Gladiator-vice versa etc.
Now, some others, you know- the more creative of the lot...wanted to make a third.So, they obviously and most brilliantly decided to mix the two.Viola...you get 'the last legion. With Ben Kingsley, a small unknown kid, Colin Firth of the Pride and Prejudice and Shakespeare in love fame, Ms.Aishwarya Rai Bachan of the Bride and Prejudice (or shall we say'Ludhiana se LA balle balle) Infamy come together to bring us a pathetic movie that could have been brought into existence only by Merlin's magic. It requires talent to make such distilled nonsense.

The movie is essentially the search for Ceaser's sword ( and my toothbrush) which is supposed to hold in it unimaginable power (not using my toothbrush can also have devastating affects). So the last 'emperor' of the western roman empire- Augustus (or augustulus as history knows it)- this young brat who already knows valour and oratory and all those fancy things - finds the sword. But as he no longer has an empire...sets out in the company of Ms. Rai ( a paid bodyguard from Byzantine empire), Mr.Firth( an idealistic commander of a non-existent army), Mr.Kingsley ( Merrrline) all set out to britannica to find legion of roman soldiers who went missing. Along the way, we see signs of roman heritage- you know the same things we see today- acqueducts, statues etc. Both Kingsely's role, the quest for the sword and the broken statues reek of LOTR.

Anyway, they reach england, fight battle, the last legion which doesnt want to fight, finally fights, turns turtle (you know, the great roman tactic) and then, the young king, who was actually an emperor, takes the name of pendragon (son of dragon) and throws the sword which was so carefully guarded into a stone, where the sword gets stuck....as we continue watching this rainy saturday afternoon movie, there is a young boy being tutored by Mr.Merlin aka kingsley(who thought his role of a warrior shaman was mysterious and interesting) named...............yes, you guessed right- Arthur...we have king Arthur. It was a very emotional moment for me.Even, Rai has her bollywood moment and everyone is happy.

I hope they dont make a prequel( and name it the 'second last legion') or make a sequel (and call it the return of the last legion).And, Ms.Rai, you werent a great bodyguard.Punjabi bridal roles are just about good for you.

Declaration: I am not Anti-bollywoodist, sexist or exorcist.

Graduate Student's Guide to Ithaca-getting here and geographical location...you know what i mean

2008-06-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

Now now, getting to Ithaca is fun.Lots of fun. There are a lot of people who besmirch it by claiming that its in the middle of nowhere. But gentle sirs, apologies.....thou art all mistaken.Please note map above to find that we at ithaca, are not in the middle of nowhere...as a matter of fact, we are several miles from it...you know, that fancy measure of distance the americans use.
Anyway, getting back to the map, the blue lines are streams and lakes.Use this map to get to ithaca ofcourse. You will find the directions to the middle of nowhere in almost all tourist guides.

Transport to getting here: There are always a sufficiently large number of propeller driven planes ( were any of us born when they were still being used?) that land on an airstrip here that is like out of ones of those war movies...you know, secret agent lands on small airstrip, the brave pilot screeches his brakes to a halt, something along those lines. For the less adventurous, you can ofcourse just take the bus from the great port city of New York. You get into a bus, which goes in and out of a tunnel and drives down the highway for a boring 5.5 hours. However, do the trip by day and you get to see all the woods you have to get close to the middle of nowhere. You can then, call yourself a babe in the woods.
For the railroad inclined, we are sorry to you.We have a train, but its essentially a toy train.Ezra Cornell did once build a rail road, but quite a bit of it quit and became a jogging trail...very nice one at that too.
For the aquatically inclined among, you.....well, there is quite a bit of hope. Down, the hill,o'er the great finger of Lake cayuga, lies a path to the Eire canal...(well, it does get a bit eiree here, but we manage) and ofcourse from the eire, we can reach the sea...cant we?

If none of these things suit you, we are building a mass transference system...scotty,er...shall i say subramaniam ( from IIT, madras) beam ' em up.

ps- No offense meant to all ithaca lovers.

Graduate Student's Guide to Ithaca

2008-06-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

In view of the upcoming anniversary of one slightly eventful year at Ithaca,I have decided to write a "Graduate Student's Guide to Ithaca".With detailed directions on even how to get here, this might also be used for all you other lesser mortals (God is not so vengeful as we make out, he may just forgive you all). So, the coming few posts will address atleast the following themes: Ithaca's Location and getting here instructions, Geography and looks, Cornell University,Wild Life and ofcourse my personal favourite-the lovely weather. I havent yet decided if there will be others to add, but I might just condescend to add a few more.

:)

skunk worked

2008-06-18T22:24:00.000-07:00

It was a dark and not so stormy night. The moon was hidden by some busy clouds, running hither tither under an invisible influence.I, ofcourse your favourite protagonist was wondering why. I heard nothing, yet through the corner of my eyes, i detected movement. In the darkness, I knew, I had been hit by a skunk's spray.Luckily for me, I was protected by my favourite bag, a fully hands shirt and a new pair of cotton trousers. That saved me a lot of irritation. The Skunk's spray,a sulphur compound- smells just like a good distillate of the worst odours you can think of. No, its not like the sweat that pours out your smelly neighbor, your dog's pee or even the most evil smelling thing you can think of.Its not a loud smell. To express in terms of sound, its just so highpitched, your nose blows up.
This, spray, which has been evolved as a defensive mechanism doesnt apparently work against its greatest enemy- the automobile.Anyway, all of you, please stay out of the skunk's way.

After the Left

2008-06-17T05:26:00.000-07:00

Energy theft is rife, a capital crime.Electricity is available for emergency needs and public transport only.The rest of us make do as best we can with solar energy and dark streets.Economic growth is ground to a halt. Industry sputters out just the minimum produce. Rationing is back in a big way in India. Welcome to India of the future.

This is one possible reality in the near future in India if we allow the Indian communist party their whims, fancies and fantasies. The communists, intellectual and unselfish, always thinking of the good of the nation and humanity as a whole, worried about the evil influence of the United States, never in pursuit of votes have started a rather principled protest even Satre would have been proud of. Bravo yechuri, bravo both you Karats.

Urrgh...every time I think about, I feel something jarring in my brain. I think they are almost treasonous, every one of the communist party members. They oppose everything, every single logical thing that is required to keep India moving forward. The welfare state has not been sustained in the west. What makes them believe that we can build one in India with a population many magnitudes higher?

And their foreign policy, must have come straight from a tablet they found alongside a dinosaur's fossil. While I agree on the need for an independent foreign policy, their policy smacks of just the opposite. Their entire policy is just to stick to what Indian needed to do in the last century: oppose everything the west does.People, wake up.Colonialism is over. The great evil aka United States, while using us, might also be of use to us. The Cold war is over. Wake up.Were you all sleeping, my dear communists? Its not too hard to believe.

Now, the nuclear deal. We obviously have vast reserves of oil, coal, uranium all that. Coal and uranium are available in supermarkets and ofcourse oil is in every backyard. All you need is a hand driven pump to pump out all the oil.We have so much oil. The communist party in its sublime brilliance has seen all this.Why do we need the nuclear deal with the united states then? Humorous man thou art manmohan. We ofcourse have gas to get from Iran. Even if our own resources run out, we can get it from Iran.We ofcourse forget that the price of all fossil fuels is sufficient high to fill it in nice big tubes and wear it around your neck instead of gold. And also, not to mention that the pipeline bringing gas from Iran has to pass through a nation that we have fought four major wars with in the last century. Again, Karat-were you sleeping, all comfortable in your airconditioned house?

Communists, either you are morally corrupt or just plain old stupid as stupid gets. Please dont ruin my country.Please. If your lofty goals are true, why dont you just go to countryside, use your money and your brilliance, help the farmers make more food, more money and live happily. I once knew a person. He was smart and communist and preached us alot of it. When the time came,when there was a dying institution below waiting to be taken control of, he was there- a circling vulture. All ye communists, you are just that....vultures waiting to take over nations when they fail. Please dont work towards making them fail.

Cinema Watch: Mr.Smith goes to Washington

2008-06-16T20:25:00.001-07:00

Not so long ago, Senator Thomas Jefferson Johnson (Eddie Murphy) played the role of a conscientious conman senator in the movie ' Distinguished gentleman'. Low on logic , high on slap stick , this movie- Dummies guide to lobbying and washington- made an almost forgettable ninety minute entertainer (for those who could bear Mr.Murphy).
Quite a long time ago, another movie was made, with a similar premise....with no slap stick and with probably James Stewart's finest silver screen performances. This was 'Mr.Smith goes to Washington'. A scout master who quotes Lincoln and reads the constitution, expected to be a simpleton and not to nose into a dam being built for purposes of graft, Mr.Jefferson Smith (note the similarity) is appointed by a corrupt governor to the american senate.

Mr.Smith attempts to build a scout camp at the same place as the dam leading to a tiff with the powerful forces that control the political machine. When these machines aim to throw him out of the senate on charges of graft, the movie goes into over drive.Smith, aided by a previously cynical aid ( the beauty in the movie) sets off on oratory to convince people of his innocence and the identity of the machine corrupting washington. Carrying out a fillibuster, Smith talks for almost twenty four hours but is almost forced to admit defeat by 'Taylor-made' (Taylor being the head of the political machine) public opinion. However, he goes upto one of Taylor's men who was once a principled man and appeals to his better judgement in a moving speech....forcing him to accept that Smith was right. A lasting image from the movie is the smiling speaker of the american senate who watches first with amusement and then with happiness as he sees Smith's performance . ( i think the speaker is a representation of the good that exists in every establishment however corrupt)

The movie deals with a number of themes including democracy, the freedom of the press, the purity of idealists, the immortality of hope, the attraction of innocence and the power of one. The movie is one of those where the most special effect is the acting of the protagonist, a movie which leaves you happy and inspired.

interesting lives in ithaca

2008-03-31T19:52:00.000-07:00

Living in an international community often has interesting outcomes. While I sit peacefully across the bench from a Chinese graduate student, our governments fence across the border. A british scientist i met the other day told me that we Indians speak the finest english anywhere. However, our terminology only confused my Romanian boss. While I "shifted" from one house to another and she laughed at my Indian english term for moving, my american batchmates were only much amused by the shifting. Apparently, my knowledge of english 2.0 is not too good.

Bill the Chinese waiter with the anglicized/americanized name in 'Apollo Chinese restaurant' was getting me my check for General Tso's chicken, the hottest selling commodity in this restaurant- with a reputation for greeness and recycling disposable spoons. I wondered about the origins of this dish, a chef's speciality. I found out that this dish, named after a 19th century Chinese general (Zuo Zongtang), was really and ethnically Chinese, traceable to the native populace of China Town, New York City.

more snippets will be dished out shortly, as and when they happen

india is an exception

2007-12-17T16:05:00.000-08:00

Not so long ago, I was reading about the role of language and ethnicity in conflict and separation. In this, the author said that the exception to this is India. He went onto say that India is an oddity, not supposed to exist at all, and that it sat outside all the laws that applied to sociology. More recently, a friend in political sciences aired a similar opinion. Its amazing that we survive as a nation-state despite the zillions of languages that we have...when a 'western nation with an advanced civil structure' like Belgium is fighting over language. However, unlike India, it has two languages!

see below for more details:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7148307.stm

maggi and why i shouldnt be bloggin right now

2007-12-03T19:44:00.000-08:00

Right now, there is snow blowing all over the place. To look from behind a warm window, its talcum powder blowing around in the wind. To be walking, in the cold breeze, its like a barbecue over a volcano.Anyway, there are still some psychos who are jogging around in shorts, t-shirt , ipod and ear plugs dangling down. All these joggers, i would like to stop them and call them-psychos. These are the kind of people who give ones with very healthy lifestyles, a bad name.

Now about the maggi. To all those people who dont know what maggi is. Tis a nearly-ready- to eat swiss copy of an east asian/oriental staple food that is made in india. I am sure that all the connoisseurs are by now rubbing their hands in glee , waiting to gourge and swim their way through maggi. Maggi consists of strings with a vague resemblance to noodles. Its the main source of emergency nutrition for the starved, lazy and 'horrible cook 'varieties of students who inhabit the worlds of cobwebbed hostels. Over time, the maggi made by these individuals evolves to include whatever they couldnt add to their last cooking experiments (usually other versions of maggi).

I am starting to believe that maggi is part of a global conspiracy, to replace all the food that is good in this world. I believe that its succeeding.

Sunset at TIFR

2007-11-28T13:45:00.000-08:00

forgive the bad adobe...twas the best an amateur on his first attempt to merge photos could do.

Here in the land of milk and honey, I am fast seeing the season of eternal darkness. Not to say that the sun doesnt rise, it does and drags its lazy arse over the horizon faster than a tropical person would think possible.I miss sunshine and more than anything else....the beautiful sunsets that were forever a part of the life at tifr, the sunsets we so took for granted. Alas!

report on an american thanksgiving

2007-11-22T13:41:00.000-08:00

George Bush Refuses to Pardon Turkey
Adding to the list after Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, President George Bush the Lesser, refused to pardon the presidential Turkey this thanksgiving. While the reasons for this clemency refusal is not clear, it is thought to have something to do with a alleged recent attack by the turkey on the president's pet dog.

Opinion Poll: Worries over turkey's withdrawal of ambassador
In an opinion poll, 79% of americans reported that they were worried about turkey's recent withdrawal of its ambassador. the other 21% were vegetarians.

Cornell Deserted:
Reports from Cornell university suggested that 99.2% of the students were busy thanking someone else outside cornell and hence no one was left at the university town. About 0.8% were wandering around the campus to see how many were walking around the campus. In this poll, none of the ghosts were counted.

The solitude of the socialite

2007-11-22T02:31:00.000-08:00

Tiny sharp glances scamper through,piercing through the crowds, between the pizza, beer and gossip. Glances to make note of the million imperfections of every face in the crowd. Glances to note the innocuous comment, the skirts should they swirl and mouths if they should talk. Its the world where the individual is revered but where uniformity and conformity are worshipped. The party going socialite, stands by himself and herself....alone in the crowd..all ears and all eyes....detecting glances, shielding himself and herself, slobbering and slandering. Slobbering and slandering to villify and cast down those outside the earshot. Each unto himself, slandering together with the rest about the individual who stands without. More pizza, beer, beer pong and bed. More glances for the imperfections, more voices for the slander. The clock ticks by. The lone socialite waits, watches, listens, to pick up the slandering voices that would target him and her. There may be none...yet he slanders and listens...slanders and listens.

The American highway

2007-11-12T09:58:00.000-08:00

The highway is long and winding.....its an interstate that according to uncited and unchecked conspiratorial brains, were desgined to be straight enough for nuclear armed planes to land and take off during the cold war. I bet that you need a plane to land vertically on this highway. It was nice and pretty in the couple of afternoon hours that the sun hung up there. The sun...it was nothing more than the size of a quarter, as dim as a fully lit moon. The woods, to copy Frost...were lovely, dark and deep, covered with frost and mist and all those symptoms of late autumn. I like the word autumn, it echoes much longer ...reflecting and giving a taste of the beauty, of the wind coloured by the falling leaves and the golden sun.I hate to use 'fall' to describe it.Its a word- american in body and soul. Shortened to save time,typewriter ribbons and telephone conversations. Autumn, nature's last dance before the white winter monochrome sets in.

Its early evening if you are an Indian, but late afternoon if you are american. Its very dark now...the sun snuffed by the gnawing winter and the rain. The rain is not heavy, its just a spiteful drizzle. Its probably icy cold. From where I sit, I see it only in the persistence of the windscreen wipers and in the dipping lights of the weekend traffic-wierding and snaking its way,away from city life and its cancerous existence.

The weekend traffic rumbles on, to find a place they call home, out in the deep dark woods. They ride the american road-ambition, innovation and the free market.Free to buy, to sell and to get up and run to places they wonna go. I hope I dont ever need my forgiveness, but I am on this road.This is America, the land of confusion-the land where Hunter S. Thomson is god and Robert Frost is feared and loathed.This is the land where speech is free but everything else costs.There is an Indian driver, with a North Indian accent thats driving this bus. Welcome to the land of nylon, dreams and the first amendment.

The rain is transmogrified to sleet now. I like calvin.Its the sketch of america, a nation we all ape. America is a nation, that to quote another mass manufacturer of such lines, knows the cost of everything, but many a times, the value of nothing.

note: My views in this essay are influenced by my limited experiences here,my patience and the silly undergraduate in the seat next to me who is testing my patience with three hours of non-stop gossip. I hope that either I get where I am going soon or that her battery fails, or her voice dies!

save the day

2007-11-06T16:56:00.000-08:00

In the US of A, time is always in short supply.People are always in a hurry to save it. Many an ingenious device- including instant noodles, expressways and speed dating have been invented to serve this purpose. However, the most interesting invention of all has been that of saving the day. So once a year, when the winter gnaws at your bones, a device known as daylight saving goes off line. Along with it comes a minor perturbation of your circadian rhythm. You wake up assuming that you are late for class anyway and might as well burrow back under that quilt. However, you look at the clock and you know that you are in time and that have to trudge your way through the freezing wind to class. Unlike the other circadian rhythm disruptors such as PhD and Jet lag, this is neither demanding on your wallet or your life.
US of A is an interesting place......there has been one innovative invention for every hamburger eaten, I am just waiting for the right orientation of stars, saturday night football games, beer pong and pizza-cum-hangover parties that would give rise to night time saving....I need to save my sleep you see!

Did Rama exist?

2007-09-13T15:36:00.000-07:00

I dont know the answer to that question. The ASI (A little known organisation called the Archeological Survey of India) filed an affidavit that "there was no evidence to prove “the existence of the characters or the occurrence of the events” in the Ramayana". I am unqualified to talk on length about it. What irks me however, is the way the Indian Govt and the various political parties have handled,made an issue of how ASI claimed that adam's bridge was manmade and how this flies in the face of the beliefs of India. (for more info, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam%27s_Bridge , http://www.hindu.com/2007/09/14/stories/2007091458630100.htm ).

In the first decade of India's birth, Nehru oriented India and its goverment to be built on science and secularism. This article is not to showcase the many other unscientific and/or unsecular beliefs and practises of the government and the constituent political parties.I just want to point out how well this is representative of the disorientation of policies that were supposed to shape india.

Coming back to the bridge.There is undoubtedly a body of land which can be found there, there is a controversy about whether its natural or artificial( and if its artificial it still doesnt prove that rama built it-assuming that he existed). If its man-made, its obviously a marvel that needs to be saved from any damage. So, if someone has raised,what may be a valuable argument, send a team to scientifically investigate the formation.

Without taking the action that would have most likely reduced the complications of an important project or on the other hand-shed light on the history of ancient India,a Union minister of law only makes statements like “Lord Rama is an integral part of Indian culture and ethos and cannot be a matter of debate or subject matter of litigation in court".

India claims to be a secular country.Nothing is above the court and the constitution. This congress led government is as far from the Nehruvian vision of India as was the BJP's. So, it will soon join the long list events and failures-civl code for the muslims, post-godhra riots etc- that makes india pseudo-secular and pseudo-scientific. Its a big shame !

What is India?

2007-06-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

a lot of nothingnesses

2007-06-21T10:13:00.000-07:00

Its been a long time since I have updated my blog. Nothing has happened since then which warranted my not so sincere efforts to convert it into a readable blog. The year past has flown past, with work, of so many types of it and so much of each type, that that there was no time to experience anything. I did ofcourse feel the nice cold breeze of the air conditioner conditioned by the swinging vanes, my own fat, fattened by sweet coffee, glucose biscuits and chaotic life styles.

With a bull dogging boss biting away at my butt, I did blurt out a thesis, with results so earth shaking that the one legged pet millipede of a local three legged human almost fell off its feet. Well, but this is how science progresses forward. My boss however feels like she has taken a spring-heeled step ahead.well, bosses are always bosses, really existing in virtual reality.I guess I dont care anymore.But i must write an entry about it.

Apart from that, in my efforts to go to the other side of the atlantic ditch, I did go to the american consulate in bombay. It was a place which reeked with so much of the 'we welcome you' things- of what would happen to you if you just so happened to forge your visa or the passport its stuck into. I smiled a bit and thought of the last scene of the movie-the terminal- where hanks goes out of the airport after months of attempts-to find an albanian taxi driver, who arrives the day before. Well, it is a world of minor inconsistencies and all that.

I hope to find less nothingness and more experience for the next blog entry.Actually, i do have one, but i still need to get myself out of the void and write it down...without the voluntarily vague and legalistic language that finds itself worshipped in my thesis.

2007-04-15T20:53:00.001-07:00

Reflecting ..............

2007-03-12T08:09:00.001-07:00

Reflecting .............., originally uploaded by bored kid.

Pic of the week: Rags and Riches

2007-03-01T07:26:00.001-08:00

new world, originally uploaded by bored kid.

Science and the art of Job production

2007-03-01T06:37:00.000-08:00

Throughout the world, from the united states of america to the not so united states of ethiopia, the creation of jobs is a big issue.People win and lose elections because of it. Kings and empires fall (Robert Mugabe seems to be a current exception though). So, it has always been an interesting problem. Economists win huge prizes and accolades. So, i have decided to concoct my own recipe for this particular purpose.

The story of how i hit on it started off with a boring lab meet where my boss was trying to outline the importance of an obsolete, ancient review on a small set of cells in the front part of the mouse brain. So at the end of the boring review of the ancient obsolete review, my boss described how a protein-gene had been named as FORSE 1 or something along those lines, but unfortunately they never found FORSE2. Science is sometimes like hollywood- sucessful and important genes get sequels and prequels and variants- those which dont get no sequels.

Anyway ,this triggered off a thought in my mind...about how jobs could be created. I think humans capable of minutely studying, measuring,remeasuring,describing,re describing, arguing, rearguing about and over arcane topics ,which will never appeal to the rest of you mere mortals,
( such as studying why there is a kink in one of the RNA molecules in one of the six hundred bacterium which metabolise nitrogen in the gut of the dung beetle) should be collected together under a gigantic building- be given all the money the government can provide plus a connection to the internet with an email id ofcourse. This innovative cream of the human race must be encouraged to buy new machines and fancier chemicals all the time.

Once ofcourse this happens, you will have an entire industry trying to build newer machines and distill fancier chemicals. Now ofcourse, that part of humanity which wanted to do science but never wanted to study dung beetle bacteria will get jobs in such an industry. They will also have a need for less fancy chemicals, less fancy machines and ofcourse computers and email. Thus, some people who wanted to neither study dung beetle bacteria or make fancy chemicals will join this industry. They will obviously be less fancy chemicals and machines-with less flashing lights and lesser numbers of colour that these people would need. Thus,a separate section of humanity would work on this, and there would be more people to service them and so on so forth.

Now, even though they may have demi-god status, dung beetle bacterial experts and those serving beneath them in the consumer pyramid would ofcourse require food and clothes.......this is where the rest of you come in.

Now,what makes this different from all other job producing schemes? The deal is very very simple. In the current world, the number of jobs being created are based on fairly mysterious decimalled numbers supposedly indicative of the health of the economy and some such things. However, the factor which limits the growth of the economy/jobs is the demand for goods and services. This demand is not always constant.
I propose that this constancy can be attained if the government spends a very large part of its budget on science. In science there is always something to study.There are billions of species. At the rate of one species per human- we already have given everyone a job.However, everyone doesnt like studying species. There are ofcourse a hundred odd elements and a multitude of isotopes. At the rate of one chief scientist and a harem of ten phd students and the other odd slave per element, plus one scientist to contest the claim made by every other, you have a few thousand more jobs.
Ofcourse, everyone doesnt like studying elements. There are people who study the universe and its constituents. At the rate of one scientist plus harem per theory and hypothesis- you have more jobs.
The best thing about this kind of an arrangement is the kind of control the govt can have. If you dont want to increase jobs this year, you can ask the scientists to create no new hypotheses or ask them not study new species. However, if you want to create a zillion new jobs, all you need to do is create ten new hypotheses per science- the percolation will ofcourse create a million new jobs ( my estimates suggest).

Anyway, Congress(I) and manmohan, George Bush and Tony Blair- realize the value of science.
Pay the scientists well.Create new posts in science,fund us and you will win every election!
heheh!

Sunday

2007-02-18T07:20:00.000-08:00

A short time ago, after being at TIFR long enough, i noticed that there was a particular degree of peace and tranquil associated with Sunday that was found on no other day. Sundays have indeed been special.
Sundays are a predominantly biblical holiday.It has never particularly existed in Indian culture, i guess.I wonder whether there was a Sunday like day in ancient India or whether they adjusted with the zillion holidays that we anyway have. Of course they dint have an ambedkar jayanthi and a Gandhi jayanthi, but i am sure they had their own set of deities and kings whose birthdays needed to be celebrated.

However,coming back to the modern sunday.....when you are a kid, Its the day of the week where your parents never needed to wake you up.,Sunday mornings were about watching cartoons early in the morning. By the time your parents woke up, the fun degenerated into haggling with your parents over how much time you had to spend watching T.V. versus doing chores at home, bringing civilisation to your room or the even more dreaded thing- studying.

It seems to me, that god- when he designed the sabbath- never actually thought about the modern education systems. After all, Sundays are spent by kids trying to balance the temptations of the television with the not so tempting homework-which has been piled onto you by a merciless teacher.

The homework filled sleepy afternoon Sundays were followed by another social evil- that of being dragged off to visit a set of distant relatives who would always seem to comment about how fast you had grown up or if you remembered as to who they were.Ofcourse! i grow up and ofcourse I dont remember you!. This was generally followed by long discussions between the elders. You would spend hours gazing away at paintings on the wall and wonder as to which looney would want to draw so many cubes and why it all resembled a face. AS time passed and you got more bored, comments on how bored you were never mattered to the parental entities till you of course buzzed them to death about it. There was however another scenario.On rare occasions, when the sun was a smiley and hung lazily in the sky, you could get to visit a house where you there were children whose company you would enjoy.However, here, you would of course be goaded to leave as soon as possible.

Night came swiftly after that. There would be the familiar shouts of "tomorrow is monday", "you haven't done your homework yet!", " why are your shoes so filthy" and so on.....
But anyways, time has changed and I have moved onto a world beyond the Sunday homework and failing which, you had the fears of Monday punishments. The world is more merciful now.Sunday is a day of rest and introspection- a day to catch up on all the sleep and the associated dreams you had...during the week.

Despite all the associated evils, Sunday is the greatest invention of western culture.

TIFR

2007-02-18T06:11:00.001-08:00

Picture of the week:
TIFR at sunset.

TIFR, originally uploaded by bored kid.

growing up

2007-01-18T11:56:00.000-08:00

Not that I have become wise, I have grown up into a world of my own. Its one of those things which dawn on you over time. It’s not a reflection of what I have done or what I have learnt but purely what the time spent here. I remember the popularization of colour TV, of the fall of the Berlin wall and the Ayodhya Mosque. I grew up through Star trek, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Crystal Maze, re-runs of MASH, Wonder years and the rise of cable television. I no longer watch television.

I remember un-dedicatedly listening to Bappi and Illayraja. I now listen un-dedicatedly to A.R.Rahman and a jumble of western noises. I remember playing around in the gardens and backyards- building dams and canals to irrigate the gardens. ‘New deal’ constructions are no more. I don’t have a garden anymore.

I remember being warmly tucked into bed by mom, and be left alone to read fairy tales, David Copperfield and Treasure Island. I remember imaging a boogeyman running around the house looking for a kid to be awake. I now go to bed, too wasted and tired by the day and by the computer to be lulled to sleep by a book.

I remember vacations and free time was a book, a bicycle ride around a vast campus or a conversation at night with dad along with a movie. Vacations now are free time spent in a million trivial pursuits, riding around on crowded roads on smoke coughing machine- without time from you for your dad or for you from your dad.

I remember that snatched chocolates, shortened play hours were the worst disappointments in life. The disappointments now no longer effect the hour or the evening but the years of work that I have spent and the years of work I will spend undoing the cause of disappointment.

It was all so good. I have never taken time to think about how good it was. It all happened too fast. Life is still running too fast. Childhood was spent exploring the wild places that abounded the places I lived in. The world is moving on. The pursuits, loves and hates of old have sunken deep into a ground left far behind. Ahead is a place wilder than what I imagined, a place of rolling hills and gentle beauty of eye catching wildness, a place where I have been promised to find wholesome wickedness and untempered good. The new world beckons, a new love, old loves strengthened and filled with new music, movies, games and fantasies.

on speeches and speech writing

2006-07-12T08:50:00.000-07:00

Theory:
Hear one speech.......and you have heard them all.

Evidence:

1. Award acceptance speeches and acknowledgements:
these are the worst of the lot:
everyone including me thank:
mother,father,uncle,aunt, my brother bunny, my sister billie, my freind funni ,my pet munni, my neighbourhood puncturewallah, my imaginary freind ingellford etc etc.
Some people also just might thank other random things:
a clever mouse researcher thanks his mice.

2.Speeches with political overtones:
These occupy a special place altogether.One would be forgiven to think that there has been no novel speech in a century.The last great political speeches were reserved to the Churchills and nehrus and hitlers and kennedys.One almost feels that all great speech writers after that seemed to have migrated to Sirius B.
Typical phrases: "Axis of Evil" !!! oooooooooooooooooooh! this is just so original. George Bush along with other mediocre non-sense seems to have accrued a speech writer who is no better than a novel writer from 1984.
Another great example is the almost exceptional speech is the one made by President Bill Pullman in Independence day- "we will not go into the night without a fight".Yeah! it might be goose-pimpling etc.However, it almost sounds like a prize poem in Class 4 where you predominantly predispose your poetry to rhyme. THis sounds like the "blood toil sweat" speech of Winston.(We will fight on the beaches, in the fields etc etc...but never surrender).A speech given by Gandalf in LOTR also sounds shadily like the "battle of britain" ( Gandalph: the battle for helm's deep is over and the battle for middle earth is about to begin. . . Churchill: The battle of france is over and the battle of britain is about to begin.)

However, all is not lost.Not all speech writers and speeches send you down drowsy lane.Some of the greatest speeches i have ever heard live- were from Field Marshall Sam Manekshaw.You know...that he is seen it all.
Giving due credit, Laloo's speeches are quite entertaining.Vajpayee....at times shows promise-before ofcourse you fall asleep.

I think i have proved to quite a reasonable extent that my hypothesis is right.Signing off before i sleep.

On liberals and liberalism

2006-07-09T03:14:00.000-07:00

Liberals and Liberalism have been seen by many to be a case of the middle path:A path chosen by cowards and ambivalent individuals to run from either extreme. I agree, its true-that many a man have used this as a transition phase while moving from one wing of thought to another.I have seen more than one freind who has swung from left to centre to right and back again.

Their reactions seem to be dictated to some extent, by which wing of society is acting in a more extreme and irrational fashion.To this extent, they are niether of the wings nor are they liberals- but are humans driven by emotional instincts.

Liberals in essence, are those, who choose to solve problems-innovating solutions unhassled by dogma of either wing of thought. Liberals are driven not just by ideology or theory but by a synthesis of rational thought and the values of human society.Liberal societies are those- which embrace free thought and free action, but act responsibly -knowledgable of the value of both. A liberal society is capable of evolution-in a stable fashion- rather than through leaps and jumps of societies seen through large chunks of history. Liberalism is continuous evolution and not revolution.

Liberals need not be moderate. Liberals can be extremists.Extremists in a way, thats subtly different to the present day connotation of the world. An extremist can be defined as a person who chooses to make a statement or to propel an event rather forcefully. We have numerous examples of such people.They include a Medha Patkar, who agitates for the millions of te displaced in the Narmada Valley.They include a Joeseph Rotblat and a Robert Oppenheimer- who gave up a promising careers to speak out against the atom bomb and the arms race. They include a Mordechai Vanunu- who gave up most of his life- to expose the Israeli atom bomb program. They include a Gandhi,a lone man in front of the tank at Tiannanmen, a technicianin a Polish shipyard and a million other men-well known and unknown.

Liberals, today, have been masqueraded as apologists for the various "outlawed" societies in this world. In other places, they have been seen as preachers of the outlawed gospel.that assumed, I would be inclined to see a particularly misled man two thousand years ago also as a liberal.

Liberalism, as I have known, extends not just to political thought, but to all other areas to where the human mind may stretch its long reach.Science is a prime candidate.On many fronts, science has been obstructed by the lack of free thought. Dogma has prevented the advance of science at speeds it could have gone.Free thought, liberal thought- the foundation of science is always not as universal as one would have thought possible.Anyway,thats another issue.Frustration i suppose, something which every dreamer in science has complained about.

The description of liberalism may well sound like an ideal arm chair idea. However,unlike previous experiments, liberalism is not a pure mechanical machine run by a irrationally rational computer or a machine run by pure emotion. It is the ideal synthesis of both.Here in may lie hope- to make make the world leap longer, faster and higher.

-a hopeful liberal

Indian law makes an ass of itself

2006-06-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

Indian law of teh same fame as:
Jessica Lal and a million different scams and scandals has fallen to a new low:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5128250.stm

A New World

2006-06-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

I have always wondered about what made "people to go to new places, to find new worlds and civilisations-to boldly go where they have not gone before." I now think that there are atleast two reasons for it:
1. The Ideal One:
the human being wants to find out whats beyond the next hill. (early man stage)
the human being wants to find whats different between his valley and the next one.(Classical Greek)
the human being wants to come back, write a book on what was there beyond teh next hill and become rich. ( The age of empire and information).

The human being wants to leave a legacy-for blah-blah reasons.(ubiquitous)

2.The Real one:
The human being wants to start his own kingdom (stone age)
The human being wants glory for himself for blah-blah and blah reasons(Age of empires and empire builders,see Alexander and Livingstone)
The human being wants to make money in a land where honey flows free and not reserved( India Today)
The human being is pained by most other human beings around him (ubiquitous)

ps- i realised that the points regarding legacy and glory are both real and ideal-dependent on teh perspective in question.

BUSH TELEGRAPH

2006-06-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

Bush says:

we believe in the equality of life.
"Killing" of embryos is not right. FINE!
Euthanasia is not right.FINE!
Three dead men,not proved guilty, are a PR stunt!
Some people are more equal than the others.

communique

2006-05-31T12:15:00.000-07:00

its been sometime since i have written. so, there will hopefully be a completed version of all my recent entries.
to start with, i realised the following things:
-i dont particularly have an opinion. i take the most fashionable stand,
-i have attack of Obsessive compulsive disorders
-i have little work to do-my boss doesnt seem to care
-i am bored

-communique ends

miscellaneous things i like for no reason

2006-03-19T08:07:00.000-08:00

Over the past few days,i have been going over all the things-which can at best be described as random and when in a pseude mood as 'surreal'.Some of the highest rated among them include:

1.Large areas- barren of human civilisation and presence.
2.Large areas which are devoid of any bright sources of light at night. I like it better when the darkness is peppered with small points of light.I liked it even more last night, when i managed to sit and stare at the flowers beneath one such small point of light.
3.Small trails going through the wilderness to nowhere in particular.
4.watching large stacks of photos(with people i recognise) with suiting music in the background.
5.jingoistic movies which i know are jingoistic
6. the idea that i am capable of independent thought.

the unknown scientist

2006-03-01T12:12:00.000-08:00

Defenition: Behind every known scientist, are many students,who work on through the night,through boredom frustration and other negative emotions-work,so that the known scientist goes places-where no other of his kindred have gone before.This is a allegy for the unknown scientist, who lived, slaved and passed out.All the "Unknown Scientist" wants you to accept is that " he gave up his today so that his boss could get a grant tomorrow".(Disclaimer: He refers to all the existing sexes and is not indicative of a gender bias.Disclaimer 2: this is not exactly autobiographical, its the combined experiences of many a student)

He came one day to be interviewed, filled with overflowing enthu
The boss was there,mouth watering, to snap up this yummy tofu
Thus, he came to the land of microscope,micropipettes and nano-brain
While in search of a place where results rain

Days passed by,Dishes he washed and rooms he cleaned
Orders he chased and boss left him phased
Experiments he did, many a time he failed
Merry was he in the game, for masochist was his name

In dark corners he sat, burning oil made from his fat
Ideas he would pitch, but a thesis he couldnt stitch
Passing by was time, No one's life was worth a dime
In these lines, right now, i am running out of rhyme.

Postscript: if it sounds merry, then make merry! that was the effort, i am not sure that it came out that way.

Equality

2006-02-23T02:02:00.000-08:00

Equality is a nice word.

I like to use it.My boss likes to use it.Activists like to use it.
My boss told me that there is no heirarchy in science.Everyone is equal in the western parts of this planet.Humanitarian aid is given, because we cannot let our equals starve.

As Orwell said, some equalities are more equal than the others.My boss is more equal than me.In the west, you are a defender of freedom and equality if you caricature one prophet and a villain if you caricature the other.

Equality is a myth.

freedom of expression

2006-02-19T20:29:00.000-08:00

Freedom is a much bandied term in the western world.I ascribe to it as much as they do.Freedom of action,ofcourse is a reserved right-to be used justly, without harm to others. For me, the freedom of expression is no different.You are allowed to say whatever you want, but we have to realise that this freedom comes with a responsibility. Controversial expressions are just and acceptable as long as they are a just critic, serve a useful cause or provoke a debate and hopefully, positive change.However, the freedom of expression is not to be abused.

Expression should not just be a medium where one side of the world assails another.

Abridged Guide to poetry as a medium for rhyme,rhythm,philosophy and bullshit

2006-02-05T04:54:00.000-08:00

(Disclaimer: I declare myself incapable of comprehending poetry and other pieces of writing implimented by certain enlightened individuals such as Sylvia Plath,James Joyce etc.No comment has been made on their collections of words.)

I was once a poet.I ready my poetry today.Most of it has the rhyme, the rhythm (the entire shake your booty mimicry).It also has lots of philosophy that I once pretended to understand.I, must however mention that I did like a couple of poems that I had written.Certain random combinations of words do make sense once in a while.Fortunately, the amount of poetry I pretended to write was in almost vanishingly low volumes.

I had a freind(name not mentioned), who could speak Spanish,English,Telugu,French and Hindi-all with the same amount of mastery.He ofcourse did publish in 'el pais' etc etc.He did ofcourse write poetry in all the languages.We were oft treated to these masterful works , crafted with all the emotion befitting a lost ant.My two favourite combinations of words from his poetic efforts were those written for a freind of mine-with whom our linguist freind was in love .
The efforts were as follows:
1. "You are my Love,You are my dove....."
2. "I like making love to you,While you are new( we never did figure out if it was
new or newd!)

As you may well have figured out by now, the linguist freind did make quite an impact on the female freind of mine with all his love ballads.
AS you may well have noticed, there is a spectacular run of rhyme and rhythm-which is so smooth that it doesnt even bother to stimulate any stimuli whatsoever.It has the feeling of a fly bored by the buzzing of a flea.
THis, is one extreme form of commonly written poetry.It proves that an immortal monkey with a typewriter and infinite time and banana supply will indeed type out Hamlet.

His poetry also alluded to several philosophical and phisiological paradoxes and conundrums-into which i would not like to go into.

If any volunteer actually wants to actually feel good about his or her own poetry, then you may indeed read my freind's poetry.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any after-effects of reading his poetry.

Research Blues

2006-02-03T12:07:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, i decided to become a researcher in whichever science i would be permitted to do. I will not pretend, my initial fascination for science had nothing to do with feynamanish curiosity. It was more of the curiosity-such as what is there inside my toy piano that sounds out the not so melodious tunes. This unstructured curiosity led to the dismantling of many of my toys.

It might be of interest to mention that only a completely random set of events landed me in biology.The random set of events directly supports paradigms described by the butterfly effect.
My interest for science was in no less way kindled by accounts of heroism and romantic bravado- of scientists who found a way against all odds.

I am no less(!!!), after reasonable struggle(15 years of painful exams), i joined mainstream research-not that i do anything of purpose.

I joined, with dreams of hypotheses and cerebration, of intellectual brain storming and artistic creativity, of everything that would keep me happy.Those dreams seem to have been left behind on the loft.

THe first half of my course was spent in a place that was magnificent with all its malaise.There were lots of hypotheses,cerebration etc on how to outwit your fellow student whose adulation was gonna win over my supervisor-and make my life miserable ofcourse.My supervisor was one of those who hadnt read a paper which had come out after his phd,so he was quite well in touch with the times.

The first few days of my seconds half has seen me cleaning tissue culture rooms,glassware and other arbid things(such as filling forms draawn up by some gorm) which has nothing to do with science.

I am here right now, listening to a Blues station, trying to read brave accounts of scientists before me-to keep my flag flying.Will I stand and be counted as one more brave hero? I dont know, i dont want to particularly know the answer to that right now-the answer might be quite frightening-considering the fact that i am not sure if i am capable of doing the tasks i am assigned to do.

This entry, by the way, is dedicated to the seniormost Phd students in my lab-who for 4 years of madness have stood there- rocks of logic admist all teh misery-of cleaning rooms and bottles,fighting with brainless gorms and bring there for their juniors-just when they needed them the most.

intelligent design-2

2006-01-20T23:09:00.001-08:00

In a lab, the only proof of the 'exciting' work that one does is a record of all the experiments that have failed. God, it seems has many of them.

Records recently dug up suggests that god and his better half were thoroughly average researcher with a below par integrity level. He had the required number of failures.(I refrain from speculating on the sucess of god's present experiment.)

So one half, the better half, tried sculpting creatures that would continuously keep praising and raising the ego.So, first were created the bacterium-all they did was to eat,grow and enjoy their immortality.God realised the folly(bad planning has made experiments useless many a time after that) and made the next layer mortal.

Meanwhile, the not so better half decided that the architecture of the world required a teeny-weeny change architectural changes ,air-conditioning and other such things.( lack of intra-departmental coordination).
The seas were flooded with slimy life and other yucky things. But they couldnt speak clearly enough for the gods to listen(see-bad planning again!).You, see-they needed someone else to invent the hydrophone and niether half was good at acoustics and electronics(lack of inter-disciplinary interaction.)

So, the better half sent them out onto dry land so that god could speak to them-without the use of a hydrophone. Thus were born the dinosaurs. God liked sculptures and mummies. So, god thought dinosuars both those arts. A miscaluclation by the better half messed the connections in the brain-so instead of learning both sculpture and mummification, they started making sculpted mummies.( Smart arse humanity calls them 'fossils'.)

The not so better half was too bugged by the better half's sucess. There was a large sized domestic squabble.Stones rained on earth. Burps and other sounds emanated from deep inside the earth.
Dinosaurs ended.(Conclusion: Intra-departmental squabbles are injurious to health.)

to be contd.....

intelligent design-2

2006-01-20T23:09:00.000-08:00

intelligent design-1

2006-01-19T10:17:00.000-08:00

I am a believer.
The world we see around us is the creation of god.
Being a student of science, all this is ofcourse is based on the unharnessed power of the almost mythical- cold logic.

THe past few months spent in research has led me to believe strongly that this world was created. In teh beginning, there sat a god-alone, on his mighty throne of nothingness. He was very bored and his solitude led him to create another part of himself.

One half had a very big ego and wanted to show the other half that it was the better half. So, to describe itself, it drew two plus signs at an oblique angle. The other half was doing the same thing, but then- its pencil point broke. It could draw only one and a half oblique plus signs.

So the first half had two oblique plus signs and gained ascendancy over the other-thus becoming the better half. the better half will now be reffered to as 'XX' and the not-so-better half will be reffered to as "XY".

XX then decided to create things around.XY just decided to hang around.

contd....

regurgitator 3: rise of the morons

2005-12-25T08:30:00.000-08:00

As my fave critic once put it, some movies are created to prove that watching a blank wall is a much more entertaining and educating experience, while others are created to insult the audience's intelligence.Terminator 3 is one of them.

To start with,Guvnor Arnie feels,acts and looks like a pension drawing robot.Apparently, his party's policies to privatise Social Welfare has worked. His releif cheques seem to be too paltry as he is wearing the same clothes as part 2. Is this a result of a DeJa Vu or a residual self image?

The T-X, which is supposed to be a hot( as defined by Victoria's Secret), looks like one of those pet chewed dolls-only that its capable of changing its boob size(a device once predicted ny John Brunner in 'Stand on Zanzibar'.Nothing new!).Oh! it can also barbecue a chicken a mile away among other impressive thing.

Our protagnist, John Conner,son of Sarah Conner,is an out of work,motorbike wielding vagabond who crashes as he is unable to steer around a deer! Is this the man we are putting humanity's future into?

Anyway,the movie is an insult to us,to the machines and the ant which guest starred in the movie. The T-X has all the paraphernielia to make it a perfect killing machine.However, it doesnt have a poison syrette to inject into John when she catches him.It is also of importance to notice that none of the androids- or cybernetic organisms as Arnie romantically calls- 'think' that the optimum way to kill a human organism is to ram him through all the glass screens around.I assume that the robots which took over Sant Gobane( a swiss glass company) lobbied for such mechanisms to ensure that their company did well.As we have noticed, the cybernetic organisms(norgasm) have sucessfully followed the capitalist patterns.Arnie has carried some of his governance in to movie. It looks as if its the shape of things to come.

Another loophole is that shri.Terminator Arnie has a hydrogen fuel cell that explodes in a mini-mushroom cloud. its got the same shape as the shady mushroom that you get in a 10 rupees mushroom soup at your street corner chineese bandi! I wonder why he never used this weapon in regurgitator 2:boring day!Was he suffering from amnesia?

Oh! we also had those classic,wit soaked, intelligence dripping one liners-no one synonym-lines.He luckily doesnt remember 'i wll be back'(to the bathroom? i bet that arnie will not be able to say that to his electorate) and astala.....whatever babie! He has other intelligent oneliners which have their impact only when they ooze out of a robot running on gas and 128kb RAM!

I cant end without a comment on skynet, our freindly neighbourhood chip loose computer.Its self aware(oooooooooooh!-I see shades of a unit matrix,nai a null matrix-anything bigger would be difficult to compute).Does that imply it will be able to decide against voting for the republican party and having the capability to train itself to go to the bathroom everytime it feels like peeing? Anyway,Skynet launches nuclear strikes all over the planet and we all go to kingdom come.I will let out some of the code for skynet so that you all can build one in your backyard.Its in BASIC.Its at the end of the half view.

If the self-awareness they refer to is so basal, i am sure that even my ancient computer-running on windows(!!!!) has more common sense. THe ant which guest starred in the movie was apparently so disgusted- by the preview(imagining that it would be an insult to be associated with such a lowly intelligence) that it paid from its own personal accounts to remove the footage involving it.Thats why we dont see the ant that guest starred in the movie.

Anyway,getting back to more important things, i wonder how skynet would perform if it comes face to face with marvin the paranoid android.It would be nice to see skynet commit suicide.It wouldnt need to try too hard. it just has to spell the name of a particular austrian body builder.He forgot about the brain i presume.

Interesting scenes in the movie:

By far, the most interesting scene is at the end. TX crashes into the fallout shelter in a helicopter which i dont exactly know too much about.Following it is Sea-stallion.I was starting to wonder if Godzilla was gonna come through it next.

A scene bound to be screened in the same hall of fame as the cradle scene of potemkin is the bathroom fight. The regurgitators hit each other with every available peice of bathroom hardware.Vow! One piece of hardware hurting another piece of hardware with other hardware.it never got better.the icing is ofcourse the bit when TX is stuffed down the crapper. Mouthwash?

The real story:

i have a conspiracy theory.Skynet already exists.Its using movies like regurgitator to convert most of humanity into zombies,so that it can take over a world,without launching a nuclear strike. Its such a severe insult to every brain that each brain terminates itself. that explains the name of the movie.

I will end here. There is apparently gonna be a fourth part regurgitated.till then,chew the cud.
I will be back.

Appendix:

((((________+++++==============------------------------------incoming massage====
10 Rem
20 %^&**
30#$#%%
n0 $%$^^
no+10 end
Run
=====......Skynet doesnt want rivals........I have been monitoring the computers and the above programme is censored under the patriot act....be patriotic....
==============massage ends-----------========++++++______________))))

I hope you all will make the best of it.

ethics in science

2005-12-23T11:06:00.000-08:00

It is normal to see people over-interpreting data.This is not a crime.It is a flaw.It comes with an obsession to see every expriment create a whole new paradigm, a new niche . Sometimes,this obsession goes a bit too far.

In the past few days, I have been reading about the South Korean scientist, Hwang Woo Suk was a scientist who had almost achieved cult the status of a hero for what was thought to be a break through in the field of Embryonic stem cells and regenerative medicine.If his techniques worked, we would have been one step closer to growing replacement organs to replace any that may have been diseased.However, rather than becoming a chapter in a Text book for medicine and stem cells, he has instead become a prime case study for ethics in science.

Dr.Suk claimed to have produced cell lines tailor made for individuals.This implies, that you could make tissue which resembles a pateint's without upsetting his immune system. To get here, he not only cloned human embryos( a tremendous achievement in itself), but also derived stem cell lines from them.

After the initial euphoria died down,details of breaches in accepted ethical standards were noticed.
He claimed to have made 11 or 12 cell lines (dont remember exact number),or 11 different types of raw material to make new tissue. However, he later declared that he had lost some of them to fungal infection( something plausible) and the others, he claimed were not completely derived yet.Only two were ready.He had rushed too early with the publications. I assume that he thought that all he had written would be accomplished,but things dint exactly go his way.

The rest of the story, i leave to you people to dig out of the internet.Nature,Science,BBC,New Scientist and a host of other sites have carried sufficient information about where this story has gone.I have heard today that he has retracted his paper from the journal science.

As i have come to see it now, every scientist is wary of over-interpretation and tries his/her level best to avoid it.However, when someone overinterprets or misinterprets data,willingly, it becomes manipulation. This is one of the crimes Dr.Suk is guilty of according to the facts available to us.One case is insufficient to malign science.However,what worries me is that this malaise is reasonably widespread,atleast in some of the circles I move in.

A grad student I know, has a very promising question to work on.He presented his preliminary data at a conference.What he dint tell them, was that most of the data he had shown didnot have a control with which it could be compared! He Knew that his data would have no vlaue without the control.You could neever know what normal is,to say if the data you are showing is something abnormal.THis is manipulation.

I also know a faculty.He is guilty of manipulation.He was trying to map the lineages of a specific animal.When the data didnot match his expectation, he changed the raw material from which the data was obtained.he also turned a blind eye to potential sources of error.This is manipulation.

In the strictest scenario, the second case is not manipulation.But anything which plays with the faith of fellow researchers is manipulation.

What is worrisome is that so many gifted people have gone down the wrong track.Manipulation,rather the lack of fairness and integrity in research seems to be more prevalent than what most may agree.What we require to do is to clamp down on this behaviour and remedy it as soon as possible.Its not fair on anyone's part to expect that all scientists be fair.Its not possible since they are also humans.I was discouraged by the presence of such behaviour in a premiere institute.

However,to observers outside science,I would like remind to them that not every worker in science is contaminated by this behaviour.After all, most of us work exceptionally hard for a pittance.Many come to this field for the love of it,rather than because they have nowhere else to go. Let us not forget this year's Nobel winner-who infected himself with a bacterium to prove that ulcers are caused by pylori, or those great people who laid down thier lives to prove that yellow fever is caused by musquitos.

If anyone has to be angered by manipulation,it should be the scientific community and not the many outside it.DONT BLAME ALL OF SCIENCE FOR MINUTE DISTORTIONS.TRY TO SOLVE THEM IF POSSIBLE.Afterall, if not for science, humanity would not be here and i wouldnt be typing on a blog- the many offspring of the internet- a creation of a scientist at CERN.

drive through hyderabad

2005-12-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

Citizens of the world,welcome to the roads of hyderabad. We pride ourselves with holding live training sessions for IAF pilots being trained for quick reflexes and for shuttle pilots heading for the oort cloud. It is ofcourse no secret, that the pilots in the Bruce willis brain buster, Armageddon were trained here.

The roads of hyderabad have been remodelled to mirror the game road rash. there is a conspiracy theory that several aliens from texas are conducting a secret experment on the citizens of hyderabad. everyone here has been afflicted by a strange mind disease that makes them all into characters in a computer game. Several images have been released, of aliens who look like George bush,sitting at a Y-BOX console and playing with us.

It is a plausible explanation considering the kind of driving that one gets to see here.Where else,apart from hollywood and F1 would you see such fantastic stunt driving. It puts vanishing point and speed to shame.The various characters in this game are as follows:

Autowallahs: the pride of hyderabad. These meter tampering,rational evading autowallahs have in the past driven kerosene guzzling petrol driven autos. they indicate a left signal with their left hand and a right signal with their right leg and then buzz stright off!

Cops: Pot-bellied creatures(come in khaki,white and white-khaki flavours) seen lurking next to traffic junctions.Dont make any effort to stop a violator who would provide them with a fine lower than a large 3 digit number. break rules which arent broken by others.

Two-wheelers: ride vehicles supposed to carry two people only.May carry 1,2,3,4...6 or an entire batallion. exhibit brownian motion. Motion can be modelled only by non-linear methods.

Two wheeler riders who graduated to cars: there are some, who have become more prosperous. they now 'ride' 4 wheelers. they are still mentally in their two wheelers.Hence, they drive around- executing overtaking manouveres that would put the best rider to shame.

Cycle wallahs: needless to say, we have our own version of the tour de france.

MCH: Only special editions carry it. our very own municipal corp specilaises in leaving manholes open. Down the hole ye go, ye bilge rats.

If you manage to survive all this, you are none other than a hyderabadi driver.You can proudly carry the title of reckless roadster.for you my freind drive just as skillfully.You overtake from the left, you fly past red lights and execute U-turns on fly overs.You my freind are a true hyderabadi roadster.

Variables,Averages and other thorny things

2005-12-19T10:19:00.000-08:00

Science, as i have seen, is like the hindu religion. Both require appeasing a million dieties with a gazillion chants.In science, the gods are averages,variables and other thorny things(bosses).

Take for example, a simple thing- extracting a small fragment of DNA and inserting it into another bit of longer DNA.This is done so that we can all put your taxes to good use.Anyway,this tax consuming activity is called cloning.(not the same as the process leading upto the Dolly parton namesake).

The process involves multiplying the DNA fragment through a process called PCR (blame it for the large rise in paternity suits) and we then tried cutting it (unromantically called digestion) and pasting it (ligation) into a larger fragment. then, you feed it to bacterium which are ever so lovingly are reffered to as "Competent"(!) cells.( you would agree that scientists know how to laugh in the face of adversity).

Law of average would dicatate that it shouldnt work at first attempt,so it dint.
By the time all the variables are appeased, a month passes. The thorn becomes thornier.

Then, one fine day, when the bumble bee buzzed boss, i find that i had a clone! yipee for a few seconds,before you start to realise that you have cloned only half of the DNA fragment.Back to the drawing board,very bored.

10 months pass-viola-you have 2 clones after.YOu start to assume that after screening 300 odd colonies in rituals often involving ancient pagan rites, you have satisfied the pagan gods, the thorny bushes and other such things.But then, the law of averages is not satisfied about your record with the number of times you have been careless.Just this one time,when your year's work is about to bear fruit, you realise that you have left the bacteria too long on the stove and that they may have taken a hike-leaving you behind on teh spike.

I will now wait for the thorny bush to poke me real hard when i give this new excuse. As you may well know, law of averages covers excuses.

I told you, Hinduism in like science, I might be getting jacked because i dint appease god#6587290 (there are supposed to be 6 crore dieties, ancient india sure knew about the laws of probabilty.Mr.Cardano,you were 2000 years too late).

research 1: life and the elusive question

2005-12-18T07:35:00.000-08:00

The right tight question, is an elusive thing.The search for it began a few moons ago.The world was younger.We were not so cynical a.k.a non-adult.Fairy tales were not wrong.You could still get whatever you wanted.It was all awe.The shock was yet to come.The search for the right question involved low pay,masochistic rituals,irregular work hours,exceptionally moronic bosses and even worse environs.

At first,the search for the question was not all that obvious. In the first few day, i was being moulded into the local social heirarchy.As a new comer,non-PhD student who is equal to all, you are a Dexter(atleast thats what the boss makes you feel).However, in reality, you had the privilege of doing all the dirty work which no one else would do even under the breath of a drunk skunk's arse.Most of the jobs involved the posession of a zombie like composure and the mind of an amoeba.

Anyway, its a mysterious thing,that you eventually realise that what you actually need is a question.The realisation is due to the same processes powering the chomsky's universal grammer generator(ChUGG).Thus begins the search for the question,i.e research.

WHAT MAD PURSUIT:

In the early days when you still sweep clean, all energy-emotional,physical etc is thrown into the search.You go deep into the thoughts of men and the disembowelled carcasses of mice.'Of mice and men' holds a thoroughly different connotation to you.You start to notice that everyone in your lab resembles a mouse to varying levels.

Bacteria,Stem cells,Mice and incompetent men all confuse you.The earth rotates,the cells multiply, the experiments fail,the wise men talk and you are struck onto a rope,hanging over a large bowl of canteen soup, being chewed by a rat resembling chewbaca.Then, the questions fly:fast and thick.However, the questions asked are all the wrong ones.The first question is, "what is happening?.the second question or answer is "Oh! shit?"

As with all other systems, this also reaches equilibrium.The equilibrium is usually at the cost of relationships and all the other luggage which you never considered important anyway.Huh! then comes the realisation- that before the question is found, what needs to be found first is the importance of your own life.Stage one of the initiation is complete.you see a big arrow-YOU ARE HERE!

In reality,you dont know where 'HERE' is.The world is still going in circles.I am still awaiting the question.