A breathtaking moment!

What an amazing sight!

Priest and hygiene

Recently in one of our local temple visits, my son wanted to use the restroom right after entering the temple. As a child who goes to school here, he is very particular about washing his hands with soap and water everytime he uses the restroom. Anywhere we go, the cleanup supplies are always around in the restroom and it reinforced the practice in him. Most of the public facing organizations such as restaurants display a notice that their employees must wash hand before exiting the restroom. The health inspectors in US are particular about such regulations to govern public health.

In this visit, when we entered the restroom, a priest in the temple walked in as well. We exchanged courtesy smile and he walked right into a stall. When we were done and washing our hands, the priest walked out without any care to even step near the washbasin. My son and I exchanged puzzled look and wondered why he didn't wash hands before leaving the restroom. We continued on to the temple. The same priest was conducting poojas, distributing theertam and thulasi to devotees. My son was grossed out and didn't want to receive anything from him. I was pretty saddened to see such disregard to basic public health. So many things are wrong with this picture. We simply stayed away from that priest and returned home.

What would you do in such a situation?

Richard Bach hurt in plane crash

"Jonathan Livingston Seagull" - turned out to be one of the best books I ever read. I could instantly connect with Jonathan in his quest for life. The author, Richard Bach is a life-long pilot and his narrative on flying is very detail oriented. As a first generation immigrant, I could understand Jonathan's frustrations and his refusal to be socially acceptable self in the old world. Jonathan's self exploratory nature and his journey of life through the different stages is a lesson for every one. The book is a master piece. Recently I came to know about the movie of the book that surprisingly did justice to the content with extraordinary effort on cinematography. But personally, I prefer the book that enabled me to visualize the seagull's life in my own imagination.

Richard Bach, 76 got into an accident yesterday - a plane crash. My heart goes out to the author who has touched so many lives through his work.Wish him a speedy recovery.

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2012/08/small-plane-crashes-on-san-juan-island-pilot-76-seriously-hurt/

No Silver line!

In all these years, I have never taken train to the Boston airport. I have only taken the car or the Peter Pan bus to airport for every trip from home. I have seen Silverline in the subway map connecting the airport and Boston South Station. I was curious for a long time to check out how convenient it is to take that train to airport or how I can get to South Station from the airport by the silver line. It will be good to know how train access worked. I wanted to find that out before I will have to use that option for any reason. It will be a hassle to explore it on a trip with the family. Anyway, I had that chance to find out about the Silverline today as I happen to be at South Station this evening and could afford to kill some time.

It was a busy Friday afternoon. I walk down the South station, buy a ticket, walk through the subway gate, couple of stairs down following the sign to airport and then I'm in front of the road standing on a bus stop! First of all I did not know that Silverline is a bus, not a train. That was a bummer. :)

It is kinda misleading to call it a Silverline (along with red line, green line, etc) and show it part of the subway map. Seemed to me like an elaborate plan by the city to mess with everyone. I'm guessing I am not the first person to be surprised at this experience. For a moment I wished to walk back and cancel my trip to airport and immediately realized it will just be a waste of the ticket. Imagine how the dialog would go with the guy in the ticket counter if I asked for a refund for disappointing me! That probably would be fun. So I ended up taking the bus to airport. It was uneventful. Took about an hour round trip.

No one seemed to check the ticket of passengers getting in at the terminals. I'm thinking may be the trip from airport to city is free...? I quickly snapped out and thought perhaps when we return back at South station you will need a ticket to get out. I had bought a round trip ticket so I wanted to make sure the return ticket is used up in my exploratory trip. However to my surprise I could walk out of the "subway" without paying again. Either Boston truly welcomes people from airport to town free of charge or I have missed something by not getting out at any terminal.

I have to find out about the trip from airport into the city. Now I'm planning to fly out somewhere alone, return to Boston airport and check out how the trip to South station works on the silver line :-)

Life and Alife

What is life? This question has haunted mankind for ever. Several axioms are listed to define life. None of them are entirely sufficient to describe life. The idea of soul or athma hasn't gained scientific acceptance mainly because there is no proof of its existence in any part of the body. The logic of indestructibility of soul, karma, rebirth are all beautiful religious concepts built to govern life. But let's say science hasn't caught up to those properties of life yet! So let's stick to understanding the definition of life scientifically.

From a material perspective, after the DNA structure was discovered mid 20th century it made sense how life expressed itself from primitive organisms to giant and intelligent life forms on earth. But then, DNA to life is like baking soda to cake. Apparently sufficient as constituents for most life forms, but not necessary! The fundamental atoms that form the proteins that constitute the DNA molecules can be replaced with non-carbon atoms. Through recent discoveries scientists have found that silicon, sulpher based life forms exist in acidic and hot environments under ground! Those life forms have not evolved to fit in the earth's atmosphere that is filled with oxygen and water at atmospheric temperature. So the ingredients of life need not be carbon based organic form. That left us sorta open ended. We don't know what other forms of life are possible beyond the well known four base (ACGT) based DNA that forms organic life.

Another definition of life went with the process of reproduction. Life is the process that is identified with the reproduction of species. Mathematician Von Newmann posed the following experiment and ended that definition. Imagine a robot in a warehouse with all parts required to make another robot and a storage tape that has instructions to build a robot. If the robot reads and executes the instructions from the tape, it can build a robot. In the end, if there is an instruction on the tape which says 'now replicate all the instructions in the storage tape to another tape, this time treating the instructions as simple text instead of executable instruction set', the robot can replicate the contents of the tape and stick it to the new robot. Now the new robot can be made to make another robot and so on. This thought experiment lead to the invention of self replicating software programs or Darwinbots. Software viruses are one such incarnations. Is that life? University of Michigan Professors call it ALife aka artificial life.

Well. Truth is, we are not even able to scientifically define life yet...let alone understanding its properties, transitions or indestructibility. So the pursuit continues!

Nature expressed in numbers

Historically people are fascinated by natural constants such as PI, the Pythagoras triples, e - the natural growth rate and such. In that series comes the sequence of numbers identified by a man who is known by his father's name as son of Bonacci, i.e. Fibonacci. He set out to solve the following problem and ended up with a surprisingly powerful sequence of numbers that has many expressions in nature.

"A certain man put a pair of rabbits in a place surrounded by a wall. How many pairs of rabbits can be produced by that pair in a year, if in every month, each pair begets a new pair, which from second month onward becomes productive? Suppose that our rabbits never die and that the female always produces one new pair (one male, one female) every month from the second month on."

Fibonacci solved it as follows and arrived at his famous sequence.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,....and so on. Simply put, each number is the sum of two previous numbers.

There are many significance to this sequence of numbers. First of all the sequence expresses the natural phenomenon of physical growth with numbers. Plant and Animal cell divisions follow the Fibonacci sequence! Looks at the images below, the expressions of Fibonacci sequence.

There are more fascinating facts about the sequence.

Sum of 10 consecutive Fibonacci numbers is equal to 11 times the 7th number!
1+1+2+3+$+8+13+21+34+55 = 143
so is 11*13 = 143
5+8+13+21+34+55+89+144+233+377 = 979
so is 11*89 = 979

Here is another interesting property of the sequence.
Take any four consecutive Fibonacci numbers (a,b,c,d)
Pythagoras triples are ad, (2*bc) and (b2+c2)

Take 1,1,2 and 3 for a,b,c and d respectively,
ad=3, 2*bc =4 and b2+c2 = 5
i.e. 3,4,5 a well known Pythagorean sequence

Take 1,2,3 and 5
ad=5, 2*bc=12 and b2+c2 = 13
i.e. 5,12,13 another well known Pythagorean sequence!

and so on.

That is not all. Here is another interesting property. The ratio of nth number of the sequence to the (n-1)th number converges to the famous "Golden Ratio"

Interesting corollary is that Golden Ratio (Phi) is the number which when added with 1 gives the square of the number! i.e. (Phi)2 = Phi + 1

Fascinating facts indeed!

The book "Taming the Infinite" by Ian Stewart is a good read. Its about the history of Math. The book triggered renewed interest in Fibonacci sequence and a good journey into the fascinating facts around that set of numbers.

NallaMani-thar

There are few people who leave a mark on you on just a few brief encounters. Mr. Nallamani was one of them.  I must be two generations away from him. He probably has grandchildren who are older than me. Nevertheless, I feel like I had a special connection with him and feel for his loss.

A man's life should be judged not by his personal success, but by his contributions to the society. Mr. Nallamani was not only a successful Entrepreneur in many fields, but also a philanthropist who built a school and college, in addition to employing many in his transport, hotel and other businesses. That is certainly a tall order for which he should be commended. But there are few other subtle things that makes him incredible as a good human being.

From all I know he is a self made man. I believe he started as a paddy salesman and built his successful businesses one after another. He certainly commanded good respect and authority because of his success in life. But that is not where it stopped. He had a acute sense of identifying a need and finding ways to fulfill it. He identified that girl children from his village had to travel to Madurai or Natham, a nearby town for high school. He built a school for them.

In his village, because of him all the families follow simple customs on every occasion such as a temple festival or a family function. He explicitly forbade extravagance. For example, there is a custom to invite people with money for weddings. Typically invitation to relations who are 'uncles' are accompanied by a few betel leaves, areca nuts and a one rupee coin. Don't know how that custom started. But that custom morphed into inviting people with more and more money. So one rupee became 5 or 10 rupees sometimes. In his family they made sure any invitation that came along was accompanied by just one rupee coin. Anything more, they returned promptly with a courteous message to maintain frugality. Not only that, Mr. Nallamani showed up on weddings! I remember there was one occasion when a high ranking officer did not show up for his own daughter's betrothal function. I was an young boy then and could not comprehend what could be more important for a father than his own daughter's once-in-a-life time function. But I digress. That was not Mr. Nallamani. He showed up for any family function for which he is invited. He presided over many weddings in his life. The lesson is to respect everyone big or small equally.

For all his successes, rarely I saw him in the news. There was no public controversy on his life. He passed away respectfully as he lived. Hope his ideals of simplicity, respect, equality and hard work stay alive in his village and beyond.

Secrets of self made millionaires...

No. It is not,

1. Work really hard
2. Go to school/college
3. Don't get in trouble with the law.

Instead, it is

1. Don't do it for money
2. Ignore the nay-Sayers
3. Be prepared for large sacrifice

Successful millionaires
1. work less hard, but smart...
2. most of them haven't finished college and
3. don't expect balance in life - it comes with high risk, high reward attitude

Well, that is the story of "self made" millionaires. There are others who are not self-made. That is out of scope here!

Love in the Afternoon

Happen to watch this movie today. A funny romantic comedy. One of my favorite actress Audrey Hepburn played the lead role as the daughter of a French 'private detective' living in Paris. She falls for a playboy American (her father investigates him) by making up stories of her fictitious partners. The story is set in 1950s and you can see a device Dictaphone (an old voice recorder) used in the movie.

There are some memorable quotes on this movie. Thanks to IMDB

Ariane Chavasse: They're very odd people, you know. When they're young, they have their teeth straightened, their tonsils taken out and gallons of vitamins pumped into them. Something happens to their insides! They become immunized, mechanized, air-conditioned and hydromatic. I'm not even sure whether he has a heart. 
Michel: What is he? A creature from outer space? 
Ariane Chavasse: No. He's an American.

Self directed satire and humor are the strength of the Hollywood classics!

Annaiyum pithavum...

One of the corner stones of Indian culture is the core belief that there is nothing, including the faith in God, superior to one's mother and in general motherhood. This core belief is cultivated by the society at a much younger age through stories from literature and we also see examples of that demonstrated in everyday life as in the recent fallout and patch up of the Ambani brothers through their mother. Scientific advancements are introducing a twist to that notion in the recent times. The definition of who is the mother was simple so long as a baby was born through the natural process.

A few years back doctors proved that 'test tube babies' are possible. That process by far was used to fertilize mom's egg outside of the body and then plant it in the uterus to facilitate natural birth. So far so good. Adoption has been there since ancient times. Social and legal systems of every country recognize and accommodate adoption. It continues to be there with an added option today. The surrogacy of motherhood for those who are fertile, but unable to physically bear a child. Wombs are rented for surrogacy. The fertilized egg of the mother is planted on the surrogate mother's womb to give birth to a child naturally for the biological parents. The birth mother is not actually the biological mother in this case! Still that remains as a ray of hope for small percentage of people who are otherwise left with no choice. However, in a recent case, a US court ruled more rights to the birth mother than the biological mother because the legal system does not consider egg/sperm donors as parents if the birth mother develops bonding with the baby before giving birth and chooses not to give it off to the biological parents. So the legal nuances need to be worked out in such situations.

The biggest sociopolitical challenge is yet to come, in my view. We learned the possibility of cloning an exact biological replica of an individual few years back. Quickly the scientific community realized producing a full replica of an individual is of little use since you cannot transfer the software, a.k.a. the contents of the brain to the clone. Instead researchers focused on growing body parts from the DNA of an individual instead of the whole person. In a few years, I suspect human race will grow and replace hearts, kidneys, lungs, pancreas, etc without having to live on medication for the entire life or undergo 'repair' surgery that is only a patch work. Imagine getting rid of coronary bypass, diabetic treatment, dialysis, etc with surgeries to replace heart, pancreas, kidney, etc that perfectly matches one's body, has little complication and makes one act younger and healthier after the treatment! We do that today for cars and bicycles. I was surprised after I moved to US to find that when a cycle tire is punctured, the tube is replaced rather than "fixed" as in India. Because the cost of replacement was cheaper than the cost of fixing a broken cycle tube. That possibility is, in my guess, only 20 years away to be a common practice for human body parts. Ultimate result is the longevity of human life. In the past 100 years, human life time extended from 50/60 yrs to 80/90 yrs. In the next 2 or 3 decades, it can increase beyond 100 years in the developed countries.

So what if the longevity increase? Lets look closely. With increasing option to live better and longer, both men and women are putting career aspirations ahead of their life choices including child birth. Children are viewed as a responsibility that slows down one's ambitions in life physically, economically and emotionally. Today in US, majority of women choose to stay young and single for at least 20 years before they choose to have a child in their late 30s and 40s. If you live for 100 years or more and there is option to bear a child even if one is 60 years old, the child bearing age is only going to be pushed out. Will the female body support bearing child in the 60s or alternate means will become more common? If a women does not have to undergo the  physical challenge to gestate, gain weight and lose shape and still have a biological child if that is possible won't that become increasingly common? If the means to bear child completely eliminates involvement of the physical body of the mother, are they still the mother? Today in the developed nations, foster parents are considered more secure for children than the birth mothers in some cases. Will all parenting become foster parenting in the future? What social and cultural implication will that influence?

Well, I hope the dictum "annaiyum, pithavum munnari theivam" will hold true in India forever. Who knows what happens a century from now with the wave of scientific advancements...

Now... that's happiness!

Free will and destiny

When we go to the edge of science, things get blurry and unsure.

Some of us were discussing the subject line yesterday. If 'time' as a scientific quantity is not absolute and morphs with 'space' as we know it today, then past, present and future all must exist concurrently as a continuum and must have happened already in the phase-space with space and time coordinates. We are simply sliding through the current scene of "now" (a unique point in the phase-space) to the next scene (another point in the phase-space) in somewhat like in a DVD movie. As characters in the movie playing the scene, we don't know the next scene. Nor do we know if the movie has  a beginning or an end? Is there a story, meaning? is there a maker of the DVD we don't know anything about those questions.

But individually we "feel", we have 'free will' to choose and decide our path! If 'free will' is also rolled up into the scene, is that also an illusion? Reminds me of the Hindu Professor's quote in the E.M. Foster's book, 'A passage to India'. "You do whatever you want, whatever will happen will happen!" That quote was uttered in the book to safeguard the personal interest of a selfish man. That sort of thought failed in the medieval times because every criminal can then blame the destiny for his action and thus claim unaccountable for the crime! All the laws, morals or rules to live by would be unnecessary which only leads to chaos and quick destruction. Quantum theory states that if you look things change. If you are not looking they happen in some way, if you look it may happen differently. That indicates we have the power to determine the path in the phase-space. So the paradox only grows.

Guess it is better to govern life for betterment of humanity as we perceive it rather than give it all up to the destiny. Feynman believed that it is better to live with doubt and 'not knowing' rather than believe in something wrong.

I watched the sci-fi movie "langoliers" recently. It is an attempt to move through time and return to 'now'.  Langoliers are sort of 'garbage collector' of 'time' that is past. Pretty spooky concept.

Dr. H Gobind Khorana and the words of life...

From the alphabets (bases) of a DNA,
U for Uracil,
C for Cytosine,
A for Adenine and
G for Guanine

scientists identified "words". For some reason they are all three lettered words by nature. Sequence of these words form "phrases". Some of the words marked the "start and stop word" of a phrase. This discovery has lead to our understanding of genetic code passed through ancestry and decipher its meaning.


Three letter words on DNA

One of the key individuals who discovered and defined these genetic words is Dr. Har Gobind Khorana, a noble laureate of Indian origin. He passed away this week near our neck of the woods at Concord, Massachusetts.

During my high school days, I remember my Biology teacher used to quote his work on genes. His journey of life from a small village in India is filled with remarkable achievements and relentless search for the meaning of life. In his journey he has given us something akin to the 'periodic table' of the fundamental building blocks of "life".

May his Soul rest in peace.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/us/h-gobind-khorana-1968-nobel-winner-for-rna-research-dies.html

Fair and Tan

"The grass is always greener on the other side". That is true when it comes to establishing industries across the globe. People want opposite things on either side of the planet.

The tanning saloons are a growing business in the US. So much so that California has to pass legislation to restrict girls younger than 18 yrs old from using the tanning saloons. White skinned girls and women want to look brown, aka 'tanned' in the sun. They subject themselves to UV radiation in an indoor bed to turn the color of their skin to brown. Some research indicates that excessive use of tanning beds can be carcinogenic for young girls. So came the California law.

On the other side of the world, there is a craze for the fairness creams. A 'lovely' product is now advertising the fairness cream for men in India. There is fascination in trying to look white or fair instead of dark skinned or brown. The desire is so embedded in the culture that almost in every matrimonial ad people are looking for a fair girl. No one seems to want a dark skinned girl, unfortunately. At least they don't seek out.

The irony is that some of the same companies who make the tanning products for the western world also make the fairness products for the other market! The tragedy of capitalism is in trying to sell the rope if someone wants to commit suicide. No questions asked! Goes back to the edict 'buyer beware'. Why can't we all just look the way we are naturally born!?

Radio Astronomy

Related to the previous post, I came across this in TED today. Apparently, the field of Radio Astronomy is all about listening to the sounds of Universe. We learnt of the 'Big Bang' through the sound from space. The fabric of Space is the drum on which the matter and time bang on! Listen in to the sounds of the Universe.

Music and Universe

I don't have to explain the power of music on life. Music is a universal language that reaches and touches every single human life on earth. We humans reach out to divinity through music singing, listening, composing, melting and absolving ourselves in the power of music. Historically music and world religions have grown hand in hand. Hindu depiction of Gods all have a musical instrument with them.

Yet the thought that there is no sound and hence no music outside of the earth is bizarre to me. Space is filled with darkness and light, as we know of it at this time. But no air and hence no sound and no music! This huge ball of earth is spinning at an incredible speed of 1070 miles/hour (approx) in total silence! When I speed up my car above 60 miles/hr I hear the penetrating sound of wind against the car. But rockets, satellites, planets and other objects in space are in perpetual motion in the friction-less silent space.

We store and retrieve sound as light signal in our digital music CD. Satellite radios transmit/receive signals through space as electromagnetic waves. Could it be that the light we receive from Sun and Stars have an encoded message for us as music to our ears...!? Musicians declare that all natural sounds have music, like the sound of ocean waves, chirping birds, barking dogs, etc. Could there be sound of music from outside of the earth!?

Our boy goes to KG!

A very exciting day today for Kailash. He started Kinder Garden today and took the school bus for the first time. I started this blog right around the time he was born in 2006. The teacher sent us this nice poem with him.

Thanks for lending me your child today

Your child started Kindergarten today,

A gigantic milestone along his way.

He's not a baby, oh no, not he,

As big as any in the class, you see.

This little hand that is so small,

Is starting school today.

This little hand that is so small,

With others will learn to work and play.

Till now you've been his shining sun,

Your positive influence is equal to none.

But now I'll share in his work and play,

Thanks for lending me your child today.

The first milestone in life...

Hilarious movie

a non-stop laughter...

Delicacies...?!

Last week I happen to travel to Albany, New York on business and went for dinner with the team at an Indonesian restaurant. This is apparently a famous restaurant in the area. The place was good and the service was great. The owner himself attended to us, thanks to our colleague who knew him well. They had some of the rare items on the menu. Although I didn't try any of them, thought I would share some of the items that absolutely caught me by surprise. Here is a sample.

Sauteed farm raised Alligator...

Yes! you read it right. It is alligator!
Here is more...

Veal sweetbreads
If you are wondering (like me) what it is...it is some internal organ of a calf. Use wiki.

Foie Gras
Another exotic item, I have no clue about.

The item that I was totally caught by surprise is....
Grilled Farm raised Kangaroo

Some of the brave souls in our team tried some of the items and said that Kangaroo tasted like Buffalo. Well, that is an animal I haven't seen on a dinner menu....yet!

If you are wondering if it is all for real, check out the menu for yourself.

Children of Heaven

A wonderful Persian (Iran) movie. A must watch with children. Go full screen and click on the cc button to turn on English caption. Enjoy!