Of Al Gore and the IPCC

I quite enjoyed watching "An Inconvenient Truth!" I will say that it was well made, with some Hollywood lines thrown in for good measure... like the opening line, for example... "I am Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States!"

The following comment from a news article is thought provoking though...

Piers Forster from the School of Earth and Environment at England's University of Leeds said in a statement: "It's every scientist's dream to win a Nobel Prize, so this is great for myself and the hundreds that worked on their reports over the years. It's perhaps a little deflating though — that one man and his PowerPoint show has as much influence as the decades of dedicated work by so many scientists."

The Beach House...

This past weekend...

A wooden house on the edge of a cliff, the sound of crashing waves, thick fog, wood in the fireplace, crackling flames, the gang and a baby, birthday cake, poker through the night, silly conversation.

Idyllic. Isolated. Desolated.

The closest gas station was thirty miles away. The closest grocery store... sixteen.

The only thing missing was a killer on the loose :P

Awesome fun!

Beginner's Luck

"It's called the principle of favorability. When you play cards the first time, you are almost sure to win. Beginner's luck. Why is that? Because there is a force that wants you to realize your destiny; it whets your appetite with a taste of success."

- Paulo Coelho

Ok, I'm not one of those people who believe blindly in the power of "The Alchemist." I do think, however, that the above mentioned is a lovely quote, and possibly very close to reality.

Travel Companions...

Its amazing how our cine heroes always get to chat up these pretty young things, traveling.

I think back to all those times I've had to endure those super long journeys.

That wise looking Asian gentleman, who made me teach him Sudoku. And was amazed by the fact that I could actually finish one in under fifty minutes... (yeah, fifty! Any friend of mine who reads this must note that I was drugged, jet lagged, sleepy, *and* afraid that there were terrorists on board.)

And then there was this Indian uncle... an extremely jolly man, I thought. Till he jumped into his AMWAY spiel.

That middle aged Caucasian businesswoman, who couldn't believe that I chose Stanford for MIT. Trade sunny CA for chilly Boston, I ask? Obviously, she seemed to think.

That uncle and aunty from Hyderabad... who were quite worried about my state of nourishment. You should meet up with my son Ramakrishna Reddy in San Jose, they said. Our daughter in law makes yummy Lamb curry. Aunty seemed disappointed when she found out that I was vegetarian. She cheered up somewhat when she found out that I was a big fan of muddapappu and avakaya.

I remember filling up immigration forms for the elderly Panjabi couple who were headed over to meet their grandchildren. We don't speak a common language. But we communicate.

And all those kids. God! Entertaining for the first half hour or so... extremely extremely annoying after that. Playing peek-a-boo 14 hours straight can get tiring... however cute the sister :P

Hmmm...

There was this one pretty chick from Bombay, on one my of my trips back home...

Young, smart, cute, ambitious... she seemed to have it all. Amazing amazing conversation!!! The Pacific seemed smaller still...

As we were about to touch down, she introduced into the conversation, the subject of a husband...

Anyways... that was that.

The Economics of Everyday things

I had the most interesting dinner conversation with a friend today. The discussion centered around issues that have always fascinated me... These are topics that I've always wanted to spend considerable amounts of time on. And hopefully will... after I hand in my dissertation, six weeks from now. :)

Pet projects for the next part of my life (in no particular order)

*) Socio-politico-economic philosophies: Capitalism, communism and socialism.
*) Styles of government: Democracies, dictatorships, communism.
*) The role of government (vs. the market)
*) The everyday economics associated with these social structures. Possible mathematical analyses for when it make sense to have one over another.
*) The sustainability of a utopian society. (Open source software?)
*) The economic sense (or the lack, thereof) of the Bhagavad Gita's core philosophy.

These are questions economists keep asking time and again. Some questions don't really have clear answers. And as the old joke goes... you can put twenty economists in the same room, and no two of them will share the same opinion on anything!

The study is fun, nonetheless.

If you think you can point me in the direction of some useful resources, do write me a note. If you're also interested in similar areas, and are looking for starting points, try:

*) Economics, Samuelson and Nordhaus
*) The Argumentative Indian, Amartya Sen
*) India Unbound, Gurcharan Das
*) The Constitution of India
*) The Constitution of the United States of America.

And I missed the Gita discussion session today!

So much for being regular, but there was much else to do and only one of me.

Here's what the Hitchhiker's guide has to say about the existence of God though...

(quote)
Now it is such a bizarrely impossible coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. The arguement goes something like this:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," say Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't though of that" and promply vanishes in a puff of logic.
(end quote)

While we are on the subject of faith, here's Stephen Colbert on truthiness, his word of the year last year. Hilarious :)

You don't know Jack!!!

I spent the whole of last year with three wonderful flat-mates. Among other things, they were huge fans of the hit TV series 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland as the indestructible and indefatigable Jack Bauer.

Dev once forwarded a humorous article on Jack Bauer. The following work wonderfully well if you substitute any B-grade action hero for Jack Bauer! :P
(Jet Li, Vijaykanth and Mithunda are some names that come readily to mind. Oftentimes, my friends scandalize me by including the venerable Rajni Sir in this list... but I refuse to acquiesce!)

I'm including five of my favorites (quoted from site):

1) The city of Los Angeles once named a street after Jack Bauer in gratitude for his saving the city several times. They had to rename it after people kept dying when they tried to cross the street. No one crosses Jack Bauer and lives.

2) Once, someone tried to tell Jack Bauer a "knock knock" joke. Jack Bauer found out who was there, who they worked for, and where the goddamned bomb was.

3) When Jack Bauer was a kid, he made his mom eat Spinach.

4) Jack Bauer played Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun and won.

5) Passed out, surrounded by terrorists and nerve gas, and handcuffed to a table leg, Jack Bauer laughed to himself and said, "I have them right where I want them."

Click this link for a hundred more: You don't know Jack!

Landing on a wing and a prayer...

A wikipedia article about UA flight 232, which landed at Sioux City, Iowa after losing almost all control authority, and the tail mounted engine. The captain and a DC-10 instructor who was travelling on the flight, managed to land it as safely as possible, given the conditions.

110 passengers died. A lot more lived.

UA 232 Crash Landing.

Summer Wine

So I've been overdoing U2 today. Among other things, I rediscovered this song... this version performed on stage by Bono and the Corrs.

A very pretty duet! Enjoy: Summer Wine.

Incredulity!

The feeling in my head as I watched a seventy something lady driving a 1980-something Honda Accord overtake me on a one lane road...

Grad School

So there was this Russian researcher, who once gave a presentation in the department. What exactly it was on, I don't remember. The following anecdote was funny though. I quote to the best of my memory,

"So I first came to the US when I was in my thirties, and this was during the prime of the Cold War. I got myself an invite to visit some of America's defense establishments.

On one of my lab visits, I chanced upon a group using methodologies and results from my graduate work. I was aghast.

How could the enemy even think of doing something so underhanded?

Five minutes into the tour though, I relaxed somewhat. I was even feeling happy.

At last, someone is using my thesis!"

Every grad student dreams of becoming the next Albert Einstein when (s)he enters grad school. Somewhere down the line, realism sets in.

Ruth-Aaron numbers

So I recently came across the Ruth-Aaron numbers... They're kinda famous, and for a very interesting reason.

Let me digress... Fibonacci in the Fibonacci sequence: famous mathematician. Ramanujan and Hardy in the Hardy-Ramanujan number (1729): famous mathematicians. You kinda get the picture right?

Ruth and Aaron, though, are baseball stars!!! (Yeah, THE Ruth and THE Aaron).

Ruth-Aaron numbers are any two consecutive integers n and (n+1), the sum of whose prime factors is the same. 8 and 9 for example.

8 = 2*2*2
9 = 3*3

2+2+2 == 3+3

So Baby Ruth had the record for the most home runs ever ==> 714. His record was broken by Hank Aaron in 1974, when he completed his 715-th home run. 714 and 715 were the first observed Ruth-aaron numbers :)

The five monkeys problem!

Ok, let me admit that the version of the puzzle I heard said pirates. I felt compelled to change things to fit my monkey theme... So here goes:

So we start out with a bunch of monkeys, right? Ok, five, to be precise. These guys are logical enough to be Ayn Rand's poster boys... meaning very very logical. They are greedy (Midas++), and very very bloodthirsty (like the villain of some B-grade Bollywood movie). Bloodthirsty, did you say? Well yeah, they really really like to kill people or as the case may be... monkeys. If they don't gain anything by keeping you alive, they prefer you dead! :-o

So anyways, these guys land up on a treasure island, right? And what do they find there but a chest with one thousand gold coins (1000). Obviously, each one wants the biggest share he can get for himself. But here is where community ordering and a sense of hierarchy come in! The monkeys always answer to their leader. Second, third, fourth and last in command are well established. Maybe we should make things easier for ourselves, and just give them hierarchy numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

So here's how they divide the booty. Monkey #1 proposes a division, and by division, I mean something of the nature of 1: 200, 2: 200, 3: 200, 4: 200 and 5:200. Everyone else votes on it. A strict majority passes the proposal and everyone retires happy. And if the proposal is not passed? Monkey #1 is killed and the responsibility of division falls on M#2 and so on... till consensus is reached. A STRICT majority is needed, by the way. This means that when there are four monkeys, a proposal is passed only when three vote for it.

Its fairly obvious to see that the proposal above is not going to work. Right? Clearly, by getting rid of grandpa, everyone else can get a bigger share? Or can they? Will grandpa's guiles prevail?

What does grandpa, aka Monkey Number 1 (no, not Govinda silly), do now? Gmail me at karthikp.

Die laughing :)

And so I ended up doing what I like best... browse the shelves of the bookstore at the end of my street, and here's what I found:



This book was written by Art Buchwald on his death bed. Talk about typing furiously on your laptop on your trip upstairs... Very characteristic, this book actually shows that there can be humor in death.

Salut!