Unworded - Fiery and yet mellow, Stirring and yet calm

Sunset over the backwaters of the Pichavaram mangroves (near Chidambaram)

Mind game

Was looking at a Forbes article on IBM's cat brain simulation supercomputer (which is a neuroscience modeling platform, simulating a brain with 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses which is almost the equivalent of a cat's cortex). There is cynicism in the way IBM touted it, when we are really still far far away from understanding how that gooey mass called brain really functions before even trying to model it. Got sidetracked into a diversion on perception and intuition which led me into the famous probability problem dubbed the "Monty Hall Problem". The solution for this was so controversial at that time (early 90s) that a cognitive psychologist stated that no other statistical puzzle comes so close to fooling all the people all the time and even Nobel prize winners systematically gave the wrong answer and argued against the right one.

The problem goes as follows.

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which he knows has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

and the same in a dis-ambiguated version to fix assumptions is as follows.

Suppose you’re on a game show and you’re given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. The car and the goats were placed randomly behind the doors before the show. The rules of the game show are as follows: After you have chosen a door, the door remains closed for the time being. The game show host, Monty Hall, who knows what is behind the doors, now has to open one of the two remaining doors, and the door he opens must have a goat behind it. If both remaining doors have goats behind them, he chooses one randomly. After Monty Hall opens a door with a goat, he will ask you to decide whether you want to stay with your first choice or to switch to the last remaining door. Imagine that you chose Door 1 and the host opens Door 3, which has a goat. He then asks you “Do you want to switch to Door Number 2?” Is it to your advantage to change your choice?

If you have not come across this puzzle, try it. What would have been your answer? (No, it doesn't really matter, because there is an equal chance (or) Yes, I'll switch, what the heck (or) Leave me alone, my brain hurts) The solution has been discussed umpteen times, the problem statement reworded, variant behaviors discussed at length, proof in multiple forms, but this problem at times still confuses me because it is counter-intuitive to what we feel, think and assume about the problem. Probability and its conditionalities. Hmmm... (Somehow this problem reminds me of how Surya makes a scapegoat of Laila in glib talk + gambling in the Tamil movie Pithamagan :-))

Another interesting aspect of math theory is paradoxes. One of the famous ones is the liar paradox.

Epimenides was a Cretan who made one immortal statement: "All Cretans are liars."

How do you perceive the above statement? For me, it is like a hung process in Unix. :-)

And as regards perceptions and illusions, what else, but M. C. Escher's pictures for the visual paradoxes? Reality turned on its head with clever proportions. What an artist!!!

Waterfall

Copyright M. C. Escher

Official M. C. Escher website - http://www.mcescher.com

All copyrights acknowledged

All this reminds me of school/college days when we used to prove 0=1, 1=2 etc for fun using seemingly correct Algebraic formulations or differentiation rules.

Wish if only all Math were simple and as interesting without the tons of seemingly dry and drab theory that accompany the derivations...

Have a wonderful weekend.

Source acknowledgement: Wikipedia, Forbes. All copyrights acknowledged.

December dawn

This is a lyrical jot of my early morning walks over the past few weeks at Bengaluru.

I saunter out of home in a time of twilight
When it is a wee cold outside.
All I see is the yellow glow
Of street lights over fog, with patches of dark.

A distant sound of trucks, I hear
The only other sound, is from my walking gear
There is a crackle and buzz from an overhead power line
A mild breeze hits as I speed up for time

The sky is dark with visible stars
The dogs lazy under the lights, care not.
A few vehicles pass by
As I enter the village close by.

Few front yards already splashed and scrubbed
And water being filled into plastic pots and tubs.
I see a cat scamper across the road
As a few people go about their chores.

The village temple is open first
Sharing a whiff of incense blessed.
I hear the Suprabhaatam from some home
And no other sound other than the cricket chirp drone.

I leave the village behind
Odd, that a grocer is open at this time.
I reach a vast empty road
Where a few dogs stand bored.

The eastern sky brightens
With the stars dimming to disappearance.
The western sky still dark
A few minutes to day-break as the night stops.

The clouds above lit golden
By the rays of the rising sun.
I hear a few caws and a cockatoo coo
And a dog's bark, with a distant hoot

I reach the climb
On which I walk a quarter mile.
The thrush stir and chirp in the brush growth
As I pant for breath on the inclined slope.

As I stride to the top, I see
A fogged city, still asleep.
I wind down the road below,
Passing a cow to be milked, with its calf in tow.

The lone bus to the village goes by
As I enter the village from the other side.
More houses now, with their front yards washed
As people stir out from their lazy night.

Some street lights still aglow
Even as the day break is mellow.
The road still silent and the sun still bearing,
Welcome to a good morning.

Aside, the only Tamil movie song I remember, that is all about dawn, is "Kaalai thendral, paadi varum", from the mid eighties Kamalhassan-Ambika starrer "Uyarndha Ullam". With meaningful lyrics, lilting voice of P Susheela and a captivating melody from Ilaiyaraaja, it is a lovely, misty song to hear anytime.

Have a good day ahead!

Note; Hail Picasa for the composite image

Monday Morning C&H

All copyrights for the comic strip acknowledged.

The Band's Visit

Was watching today, UTV World Movies, a TV channel on the cable network, showcasing award winning movies from around the world. Very similar to our good old DD of yore when it used to show all language movies on a Sunday afternoon.

The movie that was playing was "The Band's Visit", a 2007 Israeli-Arab movie about an orchestra band of eight people from Alexandria, Egypt who land into Israel to play at an Arab cultural academy, goes to a wrong, but similar sounding town in the middle of the desert due to a mis-understanding of one of the band members at the airport. When they realize that they have landed at the wrong place, the only bus that comes to that town has already left for the day. They are forced to stay overnight in the town. The movie shows the undercurrent of emotions that run amongst different people in the night that they spend in the town split amongst three different families as there is no hotel in town.

The movie is slow paced, with almost half the dialogues in English with a sprinkling of Jewish and Arabic in-between. (All the movies screened are anyway sub-titled) It is not dialogue heavy as well. Short bursts of talk, long silences and pauses, wonderful music, a longing loneliness and a slight humor define the movie, with some lovely acting by the key folks.

When you get a chance to watch it, do so. You'll not feel bad over it at all. This movie won a bunch of awards and I felt that the movie was worth it.

Tourist Discrimination

On my break, in late last December, I went to a museum and the palace of the Mahratta kings in the rice-bowl of Tamil Nadu. I saw a notice board at the entrance that touted two different rates for entrance, one for a local tourist (Indian) and another for a foreign tourist. I am appalled and shamed at this dichotomy. I don't think why one would want to do this and this is nothing but stealing. I have seen this at other places as well. The foreigners don't get anything more than what I get for the additional money they pay.

I did see a fair crowd of French tourists who had their own tour guide explaining the architecture and sculptures around. I did feel happy on seeing an Indian lady guide/interpreter who was explaining things patiently in French to another group.

The other racket I generally see is for usage of a still camera/video-camera at tourist sites. Ridiculous charges for something that should be allowed as a part of the entrance fee itself!!! How do I get charged for my camera phone, which is technically a phone, but with a decent still camera and can function as a video camera as well? Also there is the temple apartheid, which would make for a high-rant post.

अतिथि दॆवॊ भवः (Athithi Devô Bhavaha). So much so for our guests, God and equality! We can definitely do better than this. Mmm...

Note: I have changed the title from "Tourist Apartheid" to "Tourist Discrimination" since the term apartheid seems to rile folks.

Hope horizon

What is in it, the new year, as the clock strikes the hour?

That everybody hopes, the year will bear, and to hold maybe forever

For a theist, it is to face God, transcendent
For an atheist, it is to prefix an 'a' to the theist dement

For a student, a few more months to deliverance
For a teen, to rid their parents' talk - nonsense
For a parent, to have their kid(s) see some sense

For the folks in love, an year to progress
For the folks not so, to fall in or fail in one
For the betrothed, a few days remain to call
For the wedded, a better vacation and no walls
For the expectant, a few weeks to tears and joy sublime

For a historian, the start of a new epoch
For a scientist, an year for a discovery true
For a politician, more words to spin and money to mint
For a soldier, an year to peace than a year to war
For a doctor, to rid some of suffering and some their vain
For a firm, profits to achieve and show a gain
For a farmer, better weather and crops this time
For a worker, more money in their hands and less to whine

For the entrepreneur, a few ideas to start
For the salesperson, to exceed their targets
For the IT engineer, more long weekends to pass
For the job-hunter, it is a job to land into
For the job-hopper, it is a job to stick to
For the healthy and the not so, more miles to go
For the indolent, an year to end the laze
For the resolute, positions to hold or break
For the irresolute, to be steadfast some day
For the hopeful, a year to hope forward to
For the hopeless, a year to hope forward too
For the adult, to have their dreams come true
For the child, they worry not, of all these goo

And ye, who may fit any of these
And yo, who may not fit any of these
In days that you have, try to be happy and content
For this year too will pass by, with no big hurry or intent.