Goodbye Dilip

Prof. Veeraraghavan passed away yesterday. He is the single most broad-minded, sympathetic person that I have ever come across in my life. He inspired hundreds of students to be better human beings and taught us what sincerity, honesty and caring means. I don't know how to write about a person who every single time I met him made me ponder for hours on the kindness of his words. May he rest in peace.

(There's a wiki of memories of Dilip. It's a very nice idea because everyone has so much to say about him, and I really hope it grows.)

Eulerian Ornithology

Nikhil, totally excited: "Macha, you should have been there at Tressider this afty. Babes, babes and more babes everywhere da! The babe density was so high that if you saw a babe at a location, you didn't need to move your eyes to follow her. You could be certain that an equally hot babe would be at the same spot in the next instant!"

:-)

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When you're analyzing motion of a fluid, you have two approaches. The first, called the Eulerian, is to look at one small region in space and see what happens in time at that region. You'd do this if, say, you were measuring the rate of flow of a river at some place.

The second option is to tag a little drop of fluid and follow the drop as it moves. You could do this by putting a small drop of ink that doesn't mix with the flow, for example. You'd do this if you were interested in designing a wing so that the flow over it is smooth.

One of the first things that made me totally fall in love with Feynman many years ago was this example of his that brought out the difference: Consider a liquid going around with uniform velocity in a circular tube with a circular cross section. At any one point in the tube, the velocity of the fluid would not change in time. But if you followed a single particle of water, it's velocity would change direction constantly!

If I ever teach a class on Fluids, I'll give the babe example before I discuss this topic :-)

a = a + b; b = a - b; a = a - b;

“Macha the dal in the microwave is done. The palak in the bowl on the table seems thawed enough, most of the ice has melted. Take a third bowl, put the dal in it, put the palak in the microwave bowl, and set it for 3 min.”

“Cha, if we could XOR swap the dal and palak we wouldn't need a third bowl da.”

As Charles ‘Peanuts’ Schulz said, "Happiness is a warm Nai." (and a hungry Nikhil and TS).
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The title is the poor man’s swap program. It interchanges the values of ‘a’ and ‘b’ without using a third variable. The XOR swap does exactly the same thing, but the incisively analytical reader would of course prefer the XOR swap because it sounds cooler :-)

:-)

From Paduvarahalli to Palo Alto

...and that, gentle reader, completes my masterful monologue on how we can get out of this most debilitating economic crisis. For those of you who came in late, the contents of my erudite and well-researched posts from June to today critically outline the precise steps that governments all over the world must do to be happy and well. I'd hesitate to use the word 'genius', but I wouldn't object if it was forcefully imposed. Thank you all, and autographs shall be given after dinner for an GM short a piece. Come now, could you ask for a better bargain?
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Silly excuses for laziness and anti-govt-interference propaganda aside, Hello! It's been a while, so long that the very ground beneath our feet seems to have moved on. I once again take refuge in a disorganized cud of ruminations, and hope you'll think I'm too cool for a well thought-out structure.

***

If was asked to define one word that ruled life here, I'd choose trust. You're trusted to be honest on an assignment. You're trusted to hold yourself from taking a peek from your neighbor's paper. You're trusted to be up-to-date with what's happening in class. And as a friend of mine very succinctly remarked, Trust is a sharper whip than Regulation. While all that makes life calm, nice, fair and all that, it also makes it hair-raisingly boring. No longer do profs devise devious schemes to ensure people attend class, and stay in class and not go escape out the back door. No longer do dispassionate students take a screenshot of the desktop in the class computer, set that as the wallpaper, and hide all icons and the start menu with the selfless aim of having the prof relish the joy of a rock-steady desktop. No Good Samaritans to help the prof improve his mental skills by inverting the desktop. No longer do students need to activate cross-departmental spy networks to steal the BT101 PPTs. No more keyloggers or late-night heists of MMM's slides.

No more do resourceful young men have the grave responsibility of regretfully ending the rapture of a Mantech class by ringing a cycle bell. No longer do students with a bent for experiment write 'Amitabh Bachchan' on attendance sheets passed in class as a necessary and sufficient test to determine if the prof/TA merely counts names or reads them (and consequently, no more opportunities for profs to flamboyantly scratch their invisible beards and claim they are Gabbar Singh). If such a plague of preparedness (for exams) had struck back home, gentle reader, even the ever-dependable Ganga gumbal wouldn't have been able to finger out Savitha Bhabhi the night before Rocket Ramamurthi's exam from the depths of being just another corny sex comic, and single-handfist-edly raise it to the status of Art that defin(l)ed our Age. Can you imagine the horror of how much humanity would have missed? Can you?

***

There is a new social phenomenon here at Wal-mart, something I've never heard of from any of my friends in the Midwest (praised be its petite babes and even more petite rents). There you are, keeping your peace and shopping like any normal person, and just like any normal person, deeply contemplating on which brand of electronic mirror washing machine lubrication oil thinner will bring you Happiness. And suddenly!! The hairs on the back of your neck start to prick! Alert! Danger! But everything seems all right, just another aisle of dog tail flea neutering booster allergy relieving cream solvents [1]. And then it pricks again!! Harder this time! OMG! OMGWTFLOLBBQ!!!!11!!oneone!-exp(i*pi)!! even! You suddenly notice that that a dreaded Desi Networker (Dementors are to Desi networkers as Karan Johar movies are to Ekkkta KѬç極خkapoor serials: Both suck all happiness out of your life. One will ravage you and pass on, but the other is an eternal curse upon humankind) following you through all the aisles! Alert! Help! Man the lifeboats! Women and children first! ...---... ! ...---...!@#$%^&*() even! But you can't do anything! You're trapped like a mouse! A mouse in a formerly-pondy-playing-but-now-not-responding MPlayer fullscreen window in CAD lab when Raja Rao is coming your way!

He smoothly walks over to the aisle you are in, and starts looking at the same product as you. You've been smiling and making eye contact with firangs for the past few weeks now (in n00b hopes that you will one day puts with a firang chick, with Eyes As Blue As The Fairy Flax And Her Cheeks Like The Dawn Of Day. And Her Bosom...um, let's not get naughty here.) , and your powers of making people seem invisible, so masterfully honed back home, are weak. So you make eye contact. Poof! Abracadabra! Hocus Pocus! Off starts a delicate socio-economic analysis of 'how these people are giving so less price for so high quality product no?' [in the background, some operator's kept her finger on the PA system switch, and you hear an angry customer say that his microwave turntable didn't even live to swing a full rotation before it smoked], but he goes on and doesn't stop till he's collected your phone number, email, home address, salary, social security number, marriage plans and horoscopes, bank account numbers, spare Will signatures, 401(k) withdrawal permissions, etc. It is, of course, implicit that he will collect-call you at least 40 times every week to offer you unbeatable job offers, best stock picks, finest restaurant discounts, marriage brokerage services and give-when-you-live organ donation collection drives. You, surely, welcome all this with a light heart and a lighter purse for you are but two homesick brothers in a harsh cold faraway land. Which kind of treasonous deshdrohi spurns an opportunity to exchange sensitive personal information with newly-forged kin? The very thought!

***

There was a heinous aspersion cast upon the spotless singledom of my roommate and I by some notorious anti-social elements. The enormity ran thus:

Have I told you that the NRI undergrad chicks are superhot? Well they are. And it is not just here, all around. Was speaking to KVM the other day and even he agrees ( apparently Nikhil and KVM and all are trying for some hot NRI chick in [place blanked out to prevent unnecessary extra competition] ).

Tell me, gentle reader, what is a steadfastly solo man to do when his dedication to being the One is thus basely attacked? Why, compose a harangue in a language that won't jeopardise further efforts to hit on the girl, of course! So I beg to humbly submit for your kind perusal this BTP thesis which is 29 weeks past its deadline DANG wrong window this reply I wrote to a friend of mine in a chat. It's in pure Kannada, and I truly regret that I cannot give you a wee babelfish if you do not understand that noble tongue. Please don't go away, but instead hop over to the next paragraph.

And now for this heartrending tale of woe that was the meat of my rebuttal: Namagelli guru aa bhaagya? MunDedu, ondu baareeno mukha-noo torisilla, dove gati benki haaka. Route-ella perfect-aagi ittu, 80s low budget Kannada philm tara. First naavu nam paadige mane munde osi hodita idvi. Aavaga yaavano 40-ish haida bandbittu intro kotta. 'Hello, my name is ***, my daughter is just coming to study here' and talked very nicely and all. Naavibbaru, bhale biddanalla buttige maava anta sikkapatte yarrabirri pseud haakbitvi. Nenaskondrene mai jhum annatte, ashtu sahasravarnada chitra roopisibitvi IIT bagge. Avaru aa kade side-ge hoda tatkshana we ran back home and got her complete bio [searching for her in the univ directories was an adventure by iself because of her name's spelling, but that is a tale for another day. I shouldn't disrupt the shoka rasa of this conversation with the curiosity (jignyasa?) rasa]. Anyway, we mugged everything about her, right from her pet cats' names, her favorite leaves, her opinion on trout poaching in Norway, and other vitally important foundations for a relationship. HeLabeku andare nodakku ashtenu adhvanavagiralilla... ondondu angle alli chennagidlu anta noo heLabahudeno. Irali, so ibbaru datasheet itkondu, aakashadinda dharegeLida rambhege kaayta iddare, chandanada gombe tara aavi aagbitlu, classes shuru aada tatkshana. Moor hottenu, aar hottu mane ella khidaki-gu curtains-u.. aa 'mere samnevali khidki mein' song baredavanu, be***si nanna maga, avanige ee tara aagabekittu, avaaga baritiddaneno love song-anna. Chaand ka tukda full moDadalli muchi muLigihoyitu. Naaveno adige-nalli nipuNaru, naLa-ne [of naLa-damayanti fame] tattarisi murche-hogoshtu chennagi adige ballavaru, yah-kashchit sundara-NRI-rupavati-yuvati coma-ge hogibidabeku antha enella potluck plans maadidvi. By chance enadaru nam vayyari ildiro adaa haakidre aakbutre? Fatak! antha 'En bulbul, maathaadsakkilva?' antha nam Ambreesannan dialogue-u practice madiddvi. aadre munDedu horage barolla annutte! Gollum tara navibbaru-nu 'my preciousss' andkondu Facebook stalking maadkond iddivi, ashte. Aavaga-aavaaga ketta kanasalli kaado kateri taraha Nikhil-ge kitakinalli kaanistaalante.. paapa, eshtu sarti samadhana madidino avanige. Enu madodu maga, hudukidaru obbaLu lakshanavaada, soubhaagyavati kaLe iro Hot White Chick sigolla. By chance kannige chalesha (cataract) bandu mohada mankuboodinalli muchihogi aa mODi-nalli aa tara yaaradaru kaaNisi avaLige intro kodakkehodare, avaLa hesaru "Quing Ching Da Ding" andubidtaLe.. haaLu kivi ge cataract barolve, enu madodu ?

***

And that, dear reader, is the story of our Second Coming. Everything's not all rosy all the time, though, and on your way back from the lab late on a cool night, beside an exquisitely crafted arch overlooking a mile-long line of delicately planted palm trees, with a huge half-risen yellow moon that makes you think just for a moment that Dreamworks' intro video is maybe not so unreal, then, all alone in every possible layer of meaning the word has, it hits you: There is life, and there is grad life. And Laplacian(life). And as men who have seen it all have sung: Long you live and high you fly, smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry, all you touch and all you see, is all your life will ever be.

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[0] - The title is lifted straight from Churumuri's What is Churumuri? page, but it's not plagiarism because it's true! My ancestral home is in Paduvarahalli, a suburb of Mysore :-)

[1] - I sorely miss the existence of a formal Bahuvrihi compounding scheme in English. In all 'synthetic' languages (ex. Sanskrit, Latin, German, Greek, Italian, etc.), it's routine to form loooong words after dropping pre- and post-positions, and the meaning of the word is usually something referred to by the constituent words. For example, trinetra means 'three eyes', actually means 'the guy with three eyes'. Decoding what a huge compound means can be an intensely joyous exercise, and a large part of the literary genius of Bana's Kadambari comes from amazing 5-line-long bahuvrihi words. And you have these cute little Sanskrit jokes, which I remember Raghu relating: A surreptitious Sanskrit taunt would be 'Dasharatha-nandana-sakha-vadana' == 'Dasharatha-son-friend-face', meaning Monkey-face. Of course, the wise reader would prefer the much milder 'Abey maa ki *@%^' when he's in some parts of the world.

:-)

A Portrait of the Politician as a Paraprosdokian Poet

From a story on Page 5 of today's The New Indian Express, Bangalore edition (My thoughts are all Green.)

"Senior Congress leader Siddharamaiah on Tuesday called for introspection among the party leaders, following the defeat the Assembly elections in the State." (Introspection? Not a denouncement that the polls were rigged? Nor an attack on the victor's character? Surely, there must be a suggestion of a scam or scandal or fraud on the victor's part, or in the very least, wife-beaterhood? No? Illve Illva? That's interesting, read read read)

"After being felicitated at a party meeting here, he said the party was confident of bagging the simple majority "The air across the State was also in favor of the Congress. Bit the party had to be content with only 80 seats" he said. "Though the party won fewer seats than the BJP, the voting per cent was in favor of the Congress" he added. (Eh? How could that be? Glory be, is he hinting at something like Parrondo's paradox, where you make a big win by making small losses, moving ahead by seemingly taking steps backward? [1] Maybe a particular form of the Condorcet election method? Shiver me timbers, verily, he is a Statesman! Pluto was a planet the last time a politician sent me scurrying to Wikipedia to understand his deep intent! What more has this sagacious seer to say? Go on, go on, go on.)

"Maintaining that the Congress will make no efforts to destabilize the government,

(Mummy! Somebody hold me, please! Could anyone have imagined something of such wisdom and forethought coming from a politician's tongue? Hark, unbelievers, Rama-raajya is nigh! Udayavaagali namma cheluva kannada naadu! Behold the golden age of polity, the transformation of the Opposition into the ever-vigilant watchdog of Democracy from the rabid mongrel that it has been so far, a reign of Justice, Truth and Liberty paralleled only, if at all, by the reigns of the icons of the Raghuvamsha, (exhale, exhale, wipe tears of joy) what more does this doyen of Dharma have to say?)

He said that the BJP-led government would fall on its own."

Oh.

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[0] - A paraprosdokian is a fine little thing that, well, is the reason why Groucho Marx so funny. It's a figure of speech in which the later part of a sentence is so completely unexpected that you need to read the whole sentence all over again. My favorite, told by SK, which I added to WP sometime ago: "Generally speaking, women are." And the ever dependable Winston Churchill, commenting on an adversary: "A modest man, who has much to be modest about." And in case you really have time, this one by Groucho Marx.

[1] - Did you see the moonwalking bear?
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:-)

A watched pot never boils. Let's smoke it.

Here's a very nice article on Wimpy's blog on how oversampling (essentially, taking inputs too frequently) is the root cause of all misery of mankind.

I get the feeling this applies to far more than just portfolio tracking, to even ridiculously complicated and indecipherable (to me, and quite a few others) things like relationships.

:-)

PhD

Some Prof to Nikhil (who has the superhuman ability of finding fascinating snippets like these, and begins conversations with profs on the phone with 'Yaentra Donga?') quoted by Makam (The Phenomenon. To be pronounced like 'Denny Crane'. Need I say more?) :

Whaaat is PhD? Apartment-Department-Adviser-Budweiser, thats all!

:D

In other news, this little gem of a story has helped me in simply t(w)oo many occasions in life! And how! It helped me ward off the dreaded "Tell me how you are different from the rest of the people in the group!" and the even-more dreaded "Tell me about yourself." minefields in an IIM-B interview!! The other occasion, well, gentle reader, I am reminded of this old joke:

There are two - just two - essential ingredients to success in anything. The first: don't tell everything you know.

:-)