Can death be treated?

Can we treat someone out of death? Granted we don't know when the moment comes. But when an individual is old, lived a full dignified, happy life, laboring in the last moment of life, should the individual be "treated" with ventilator, dialysis, blood transfusion, CT Scans, heavy dose of medications, etc.? The cardiologists, the neurologists, the nephrologists and other specialists give their expert opinion on the condition of the individual body part heart, brain, kidney etc., Life inside is fighting back to make an exit..Unfortunately this situation is not unique to our honorable leader Mr. Jyothi Basu who is in his death bed right now.

A Doctor comments the following on the condition of Mr. Jyothi Basu in The Times of India forum.
"He is 96 years old. The life expectancy of someone born in India in 1914 would have been less than half of that, and almost 100 years later, most Indians (and most humans) don't live that long. While the media is reporting all the "heroic" efforts the doctors are making, and all the technology they are throwing at a frail elderly man, nobody seems to care to ask if he would have approved of his body being put through all this invasion and indignity. He has multiorgan failure over age related decline in organ function. An elderly person in this condition is unlikely to recover his previous cognitive and functional status. Isn't it time to allow natural death?"

With the help of modern medicine, we take extraordinary measures to prolong life at all costs. Our hospital Intensive Care Units (ICUs) have made death invisible even to the closest family members. The patient almost always has no say on how they want to pass. As a culture, we are growing ignorant of letting go our near and dear gracefully and with dignity.

Tamil poet கவிப்பேரரசு வைரமுத்து (Vairamuthu) in his collection of poems "இந்த பூக்கள் விற்பனைக்கு அல்ல" writes as follows in the poem "வேண்டுவன"

"...
கடைசிவரை
சுயமாய் நீர் கழிக்கும் சுகம்
உறக்கத்தில் உயிர் பிரியும் வரம்"

(The wants - Being able to urinate without aid; to die in sleep)

Even if one is not lucky to pass while asleep, wouldn't it be wonderful if one remains conscious, meets with all loved ones to say that they love them and they forgive them, labor through the dying process, just as it happens during birth and finally depart?! Wouldn't it bring a sense of closure on a life, not only to those who die, but also to those who live to remember them? Is there is a better way to end a great journey of life? Should a life go in the dark, alone, unconscious and surrounded by strangers? I have seen one too many to go the same route. Now we see the drama being played out in the media for Mr. Jyothi Basu. May him rest in peace when the time comes. India will miss a great leader of the people.

An amazing sight

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Decibels and Octaves

Happy New Year everyone. It has been a while since I blogged last. Sometime back I started learning Piano. That was my first introduction to world of music - theory and composition. As you may know already, a Piano has several white keys with black keys spread between them. The arrangement has a repetitive symmetry to it, even a casual observer would notice. Little did I know that there were fundamentally just 12 keys - 7 white and 5 black - collectively called as an 'octave' and this set is 'kinda' repeated over and over throughout the piano. Not quite repeated, but a key in one octave will emit a sound of frequency exactly twice as that of the corresponding key in the previous octave. And as for the relationship between keys within the same octave - it is quite simple - since you do not want an abrupt transition when you go from one octave to another, the 2nd key in an octave has a frequency (f2), that is the frequency of the 1st key (f1) multiplied by 12th root of 2. i.e. f2 = f1*(2^-12). This is so that automatically when we reach the first key of the next octave, which can be referred to as (f13), we have f13 = f1*(2^-12)^12 = f1*2 - Thus 1st key of next octave has frequency twice as much as that of the 1st key of this octave - therefore no abrupt transitions in frequency and at the same time an octave is doubled in frequency as it is repeated over.

Since the intention of this blog is not to give you a lesson in music, let me get to the point. When I first heard the term 'octave' while learning Piano, I didn't think about it too much - but it did ring bells in my subconscious mind. One day I was working at my office dealing with a measurement which used log2. When I was comparing one value with another one, I was writing down in my record book, "2nd measurement is one octave higher than the 1st one" - oops, 'octave'!! Now I remembered - in engineering like we use 'decibels' as units when we refer to a log10 value, we use 'octaves' when we use log2. The etymology of 'decibel' is known - it is from Graham Bell, an unit often used to measure sound as Graham Bell invented the sound device of telephone. But in college I always wondered where 'octave' came from - because what has log'2' in common with number 8 ('oct'ave)? Well it is all clear new - every '8'th white key in a piano will belong to the next 'oct'ave, that will have a frequency 'twice' as much as the 1st white key. In other words, if we take two white keys of frequencies fx and fy and compared them logarithmically, and if log2(fy/fx) = 4 then one white key is 4 'oct'aves away from the other. Well, people were measuring sound long before they even heard of electricity - I guess they used the same units they used for sound, which they were familiar with, when they started measuring electricity first.

After all that being said, I still have no clue why an octave contains 12 keys (why not, say, 14?). It might hit me someday!