Graceful Saree, Tasty Idly

 

Graceful Saree, Tasty Idly

A colleague from Kerala told me that when she did wear a sari to the office (in Delhi), her North Indian co-workers told her that she wears her sari more gracefully than they can theirs. That is the bit of conversation, remembered over three decades, that drove me to pen this post.

I wish to bust the myths about the two adjectives in the title. Saree, by itself, is not graceful. Likewise, the typical breakfast fare in South India, idly, is not, by itself, tasty.

I will make the two cases and you may decide.

Have you seen women picking out one from hundreds of sarees laid out in front of them? They choose, reject, choose and on it goes. They would loosely drape it over their front, shoulder and forearm and judge in the store to see how it would look on them. They would do this a dozen times or more and pick one, only to be dissatisfied with their purchase upon reaching home.

 So, why the sudden disappointment? It could be because the saree may be draped in more than one way, mainly in the stretch at the open end. But, at the store, one would have tested it only in the most elegant (my judgement) and not necessarily in one of the currently “in” ways of wrapping. Let me call this stretch a “Pallu”. The pallu from the waist level to the shoulder could be draped with merely loose and irregular crinkles. In social settings this is preferred, I believe, with the designers’ and weavers’ artistic handiwork exhibited in their glory.

Of course, if the woman is employed, the nature of the job would determine how the saree is worn. Desk work, the above is OK. But, if a lot of walking around is involved, the pallu could be pinned at the shoulder.

How the saree goes over the shoulder is of importance. The “in” fashion is for the saree to be folded with sharp folds. Then, when it falls down over the back, the folds are maintained. This is lacking in grace, in my not so humble opinion. Free flowing is better than regimented. Sometimes, as during kitchen work or praying, women carry the pallu over the back and tuck the end at the waist in the front. This is terrific. Or, taken over the other shoulder sometimes and held on to by hand. This is equally fine.

Next, you may observe, and if you are an engineer you may imagine, how the front pleats down to the toes will wave when the woman walks in a normal gait, nothing exaggerated. I have imagined and have also seen, the waving beauty of the frontal pleats. It is truly a beauty to behold which enhances the saree’s grace.

So, how it is worn and how it suits the circumstances is what gives the saree its grace. I understand that my descriptions are rather long winded, but do not blame me. Oh, on second thoughts, feel free to blame me. I looked at Tamil news channels where the female newsreaders wear sarees, as per the individual’s taste I would imagine and took a number of screen shots. I also searched on the Net for images of mannequins in sarees. They were almost uniformly in bad taste, exposing more than covering, lacking grace. I went to the site of the designer Satya Paul, the fellow who brought in saree fashion in India through prints in sarees. I did not find the variety of draping and wrapping. And, I was afraid that I may be taken to court by individuals for whatever convoluted reason. Hence, the longish, rough, and inadequate descriptions.

The single line conclusion: Saree gets its gracefulness mostly from how it is worn.

 Of course, no one is stopped from appreciating the artistic aspects intrinsic to the saree, but that is secondary.

Now, I come to the idly. Have you ever tasted idly without side orders like sambar (a liquidy stew of vegetables and lentils), or some type of chutney (some kind of a spread to go with idly or dosa)?   

I will answer for you, with supreme confidence – NO. How can I give the answer with such confidence? Simple. Idly, on its own, is devoid of taste! It is a very healthful food, no doubt. It is steamed and not fried, that is why. It carries enough carbohydrates and protein (a mix of rice flour and ground lentil (wet grinder)) to be healthful. It goes down smoothly, of course with sambar or chutney; otherwise, no. It is easy to make, if the batter had been prepared and kept to leaven overnight.

In many railway stations in Tamil Nadu, the ready food available on the go is idly, with litres of sambar and mounds of semi-solid chutney. It is for the sides that one eats idly, it looks like. This was not how the fare was conceived originally – sides were sides, then. Indeed, it was a fad, as I don’t think it persists today, to offer a number of mini-idlies (just about an inch in diameter) floating in a sea of sambar.

The one idly that is truly tasteful is Kanchipuram Idly, the specialty of Kanchipuram Varadaraja Perumal Temple. It is, indeed should be eaten without any sides. It has, within itself cashew nuts, full black pepper, and other spicy condiments. The batter is steamed in a wicker cylinder about 10 cm. in diameter and about 25-30 cm. long. In Kanchipuram, we rented the house from one the temple’s chief interlocutors with God (called Bhattar) and we did get these once in a while. It was just goddamn tasty. So, if you wish to TASTE idly, this is the only one. All the others are faux idlies.

I rest my case.

Raghuram Ekambaram

ChatGPT and Darwinian Evolution

 

Can ChatGPT experience Darwinian Evolution by Natural Section?

Geoffrey Hinton, one of the two named recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics, and been tagged as the father of Artificial Intelligence, is excessively confident though perhaps not arrogant says many things about  AI that border on paranoia. But, I am no one to judge as I am neither a cognitive psychologist nor a computer scientist as Hinton is both.

A snippet of a dialogue in a Hollywood movie gives me a smidgeon of confidence as per the following dialogue (Am I putting myself against Hinton based on a Hollywood script writer? Perhaps yes. So help me God!)

“We can’t do it digitally; we have to put eyes on it”

For the above to make much sense, here is the short clip of the story. A heist of a heist (inside job within the heist team) had gone terribly wrong and in its aftermath, and the son of one of the original heist team’s members was gunned down. The above dialogue happens subsequently in a conversation within the second order heist team.

If I were to ask whether a team, or even teams of teams, or orders of teams can conceptualize such a scenario and act on it, I would say No!

Just a gut feeling, on a matter of mind! I am doomed. But, let us wait where this beginning takes me.

I am going to ask whether ChatGPT will agree with the snippet’s judgement.

ChatGPT cannot agree with the necessity of “eyes” and also with the inability of the exclusively digital ChatGPT to get the job done. This could be a fine instance to ask a few questions about ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is a product of a human mind (in the plural). I am going to bring in the concept of consciousness and of conscience of AI. AI has to have one of its own, again the exclusivity proviso, no borrowing from a human mind.

At some point in its evolution, AI has to depend on evolved hard wiring, does it not? The hard wiring has to co-evolve with AI. But, hard wiring is a job for the human hand. Who will do the physical stuff? The robots, you say. Who will make the robots... and this line of questioning regresses to forever in the future, I contend.

So, the question is reduced to something beyond consciousness and conscience, and impinges on the physical capabilities of the human hand, and machines designed by human brains.

In simple terms, will ChatGPT have anything like the qualia that is unique to every individual. To make this clear, if two of us agree that the sky is blue, do we necessarily have the same neurons (granting that they are identical in both of us) fir but the processing (the sequence of firing) could be different. Can this be? This question has not yet been answered, but the answer becomes sine quo non for further discussions on ChatGPT.

Of course, I am talking about ChatGPT ver. AZUPD, say, which is on the horizon even as I am typing this gibberish. That much-evolved version of ChatGPT through Darwinian Evolution by Natural Selection will not allow me to pour out this nonsense, going beyond directing people away from my posts. This is what, in my opinion, Hinton is scared of. But, I am not that afraid to that extent (I am hedging here, you see).

We are never going to be able to say, “So long, ChatGPT! You gave us a good ride. Thank you!,” no matter how much you and I desist from using it.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Movie Violence Bondian vs. Indian

 

Movie Violence Bondian vs. Indian – A Comparative Study

I am a huge fan of James Bond movies. I also seriously enjoy scenes of violence in Indian movies.

Now that I have revealed my biases, I will try to lay the differences between them (I am clubbing all the movies in any Indian language, including Bhojpuri and Bengali as Indian).

But before I get to that, let me direct my readers a trip to an earlier post of mine, on ‘Q’s importance to the plot. Following that line of thought, I must say the sire of violence in Bond movies is ‘Q’.  In the pan-Indian cinema, there cannot be a single script writer who can be named so universally.

Sad.

I will start with Javier Bardem in Skyfall. This character by itself, is and more than all of the scenes put together in that movie, violence. The way the villain reveals his disfigured face to ‘M’ is a classic scene. It is truly retching, at least to me it was, and I enjoyed it. If you were a parent you would close your ward’s eyes. I have not seen any such scene in Indian movies, perhaps my bad. So, Bond scores one.

Bond assistant, played admirably in Octopussy by Vijay Amritraj being decapitated (not shown, but you get the point) is another one. Is there any implied violence in Indian movies? I have not come across one. But, that is no surprise because, for scenes of violence, I prefer the comical Vijaykanth and it is explicit and impossible (physical laws play spoil sport) violence that brings masses, and me too, to the turnstiles, over those of other heroes.

Oh, yes, I just remember one scene from the Tamil movie Vaali that did have a terrifying scene, Ajith Kumar crumbling a piece of incriminating paper and supposedly swallowing it, and the terror the director brings out in the eyes of Simran. Those who think Simran is all S(l)imran, please take in some other movies of hers that do exhibit her acting prowess. That was an aside. Reverting to the main theme, Indian cinema matches what Bond offers. Score stays still.

The opening (in color) nonsensical scene of Casino Royale goes beyond, in my mind anything that Indian movies can even ever imagine. The stupidity is so unimaginably stupefying. Here, the hired-hand of the villain tries not to be killed by Bond, and what all does he do?

Starts off at the ground level, climbs up a multi-storey steel structure using bare hands, jumps from the top onto the top of the boom of a crane, runs straight on the narrow ledge at that height, jumps to another crane, and, get this, jumps back into the ground even as the chase continues. Why could the sequence not have been done at ground level all through? You see a similar thing in another movie, the chased and the chaser climb up to run on roofs. Stupidity is contagious.

Obviously the sequence is for instant gratification for Bond fans, but it missed me. I have not seen such a sequence of stunts in any Indian movie. Yes, the stunts are terrific. Yet, I cannot forget the nagging, “Why?” question. The answer is, to spread the audacity of the scene to other potential audience for the movie. Talking points, anyone? Bond scores double negative on this. The score now is negative one (1–2 = –1) on Bond.

 Bond movies are, I have mentioned in a post earlier, suckers for stereotypes–Caribbean islanders are Voodoo lovers; East Indians are highly superstitious; South Americans  are murderers and rapists (Donald Trump may have got this talking point from Bond films); East Europeans and Russians lack neocortex–the seat of higher order thinking like analysis, in their brains, with a few exceptions.

Indian movies are no slouches here. Here, it is more like stereotyping within the various regions of the nations–south Indians are honest/gullible (I was told that finding a place to live in Delhi, circa early 1990s, would not be very difficult for me as the landlords are well disposed towards South Indians); North Indians are pawn chewing dirty people–I would have believed this in 1976 when I went to Kanpur; in Delhi, Bengalis are unbearably parochial (as though other people are not); office secretaries and nurses are Keralites, and so on. The score remains at –1.

There is one thing though that ranks Bond movie one point higher. The stunts, to the extent they are shown, do not violate laws of physics. In Indian movies stunts without violation of physical laws do not exist. Antagonists fly around like moth  around fire when slapped/slammed/punched by the protagonist.

The score comes out even in my analysis. Just enjoy the violence in movies, Bond and Indian. That could satiate people’s hunger for violence.

Raghuram Ekambaram   

 

Lessons learned from and reinforced through Dead Poets Society

 

Dead Poets Society – How and How Much it Affected Me

Dead Poets Society was the last movie I saw in a cinema hall before leaving the US. The movie was an educational experience for me. It is not just the story line which made a mark on me, but also the performance of Robin Williams. (I had become a great fan of his right from the days of his sitcom Mork & Mindy and the movie Moscow on the Hudson.)

He played the role of John Keating, an English teacher in a high school saturated by snobbery; the parents wanted their wards in engineering, medicine, finance and such remunerative careers that cry out their status. No philosophy, fine arts, languages etc.

Keating talks about different perspectives of anything in life and also about its uncertainties, Carpe Diem. Guess how he demonstrates this–climbs up on his desk and looks around the classroom and claims that the room and the students do look different from his perch. Through this and other moments in the movie I established a kinship with John Keating, and through him to Robin Williams.

When I was teaching the course Engineering Mechanics to a motley group of first year engineering (including computer science and biotechnology) students in a private university, in one class, I went to the door, looked out both ways into the aisle to see if anyone was coming, came back and–here is where the kinship was reinforced–I climbed up on the desk and jumped down, leaving the students agape, just as the students of John Keating felt at his stunt. It was not a stunt of course, it was serious stuff; so was my act.

No, I did not meaninglessly copy John Keating in this act. I may have even forgotten that scene in the movie–I did that to teach a fundamental concept behind motion of several connected bodies! My idea was to show that we may, subscribing to certain assumptions and making reasonable approximations, idealize our body as a set of connected rigid bodies: Foot, shin, thigh, pelvic structure, torso, arms, neck and head. When I landed on the floor, my body came to stop sequentially, each part coming to a stop just a moment after the part below it stopped. I have done similar demonstrations using routines in gymnastics, diving, short put, javelin throw and many other sports events. I also told the students why they leaned towards the inside of a curve when they ran circles around the room, when they were toddlers having just learned to run.

In one more scene, Keating asked his students to “[T]hink for yourselves.” Yes, he did. I started every semester asking students in each section to, you guessed it, “Think for yourself.” Yet, there is a difference–I start off telling them that I will not be thinking for them, and they have to do it for themselves. That shocked everyone.

I stressed a lot on “understanding” and used to elaborate through an example. In an engineering context, understanding comes about through questioning the assumptions, taking in the implied logic, asking why we approximated some parameter and not others and such. I go beyond what the usual books students refer to offer qualitatively; they are too sharply focused on quantitative answers, the expert engineers the students are going to be! But, there is more to engineering than mere numbers.

I emphasize that the students should try to understand the questions first, and only then jump to answering questions. They immediately ask me, “What could be there to understand in the questions?” They all travel in the rutted path … plug in the input numbers into the equations and get the answers.

I surprised them with a problem from their high school math, solving a set of simultaneous equations (two equations with three unknowns). Only a handful of students, and only after some effort, admit they cannot. I never needed to say anymore. I did ask myself why their school teachers had not mentioned this most elementary idea in algebra. Students, even more basically, do not even know the concept of "taking the limit as 'x' goes to zero"; 'x' can never reach zero value. This can be and preferably should be taught through a demonstration. Alas!

Keating says the abve, perhaps more strongly, given that he is teaching English poetry. “Understand.” Understanding poetry is a lot harder, nearly impossible for me, than understanding math, geometry, engineering etc. Understanding is not needed in biology because you cannot ask the easy question, Why?” Nature has done it …

Let me ask you, my readers, this: “Why is it nearly impossible to pry open the fingers of a newborn?” There is a half-way answer to this “why?” question, and we cannot go beyond.

The last item is the singular one: Keating treats each one of his students the same, I mean identically. He was fingered by one student as possibly the culprit, not legally but at least socially, for a student’s suicide. Keating was dismissed. That is the gut wrenching scene, most inappropriate in a movie that I went to with a date.

In this segment, Keating asks for the name of a student to respond to him personally, and cracks a joke on the response in the lightest manner possible; there is no maliciousness, and the target understands it perfectly. I admit that I have done that, as it is in my nature to make a classroom interaction as informal as possible (except for the students to address me any way, as my preference, by my name, does not match the institutional norms), but failed at least in one instance. I have had the misfortune of having identical twins in my class. I could never separate each and fuse it to his/her name (one is a set of boys, and the other, girls). If I had to call them out, it was not by their names, but by where they are sitting. A mild insult to the individuals, I reckon.

On a serious note, a girl student’s name is, per the current fashion, yucky, (I use this adjective advisedly; though the name has Sanskrit in it), and I cracked a joke with no malice in that per my tone (it was also the name of my maternal grandmother). But, immediately I realized I have crossed the Rubicon in the wrong direction. I apologised to the student loudly in the class itself. Now, we are good friends. I wish she would read this part of this post of mine and dispute me if there is any mistake.

I would watch Dead Poets Society as many times as I can, any and all snippets available on YouTube. Perhaps you should too, at least once.

Raghuram Ekambaram  

  

More Than an Aestehtic Appreciaton of Lord Nataraja Statue and Calendar Art Images

 

A Non-aesthete’s Appreciation of Lord Nataraja – In Statue and in Calendar Art

This post, coming from an atheist and a non-aesthete about an image of a god might surprise you. So be it.

In the temples of Lord Shiva in Tamil Nadu, one would be worshipping a Linga and a metal (usually bronze, brass, or an alloy of five metals) of the Cosmic Dancer Lord Nataraja. The idols are shown below.

As beautiful and majestic these statues are (I have seen the statues up close in temples and art emporiums, and have stood mesmerized), I appreciate them for their aesthetic balance that conveys a sense of peace (the smile and the closed eyes) in the vigorously dynamic pose–the wild matted hair, the rhythmically beating drums on the right hand, the flaming fire on the left, the left arm crossing over to the other side across the torso, the snake writhing and hissing away, Lord Shiva standing on one leg crushing a demon with it, and the other leg crossing over it. The whole frame is filled with action but the central face is serene. Such contrast! I am no aesthete, yet I believe an professional aesthete would endorse my view: the whole is more serene even when all the components are dynamic, even chaotic.

But, taking a keen look to compare the first statue and the second, we see no difference in the overall schema between the two. Yet, there is a major difference.

The second statue must have been conceptualized by a Tamil Brahmin (TamBrahm), planning in accordance with the sacerdotal calendar. Per the single detail, the statue specifies the day – third day in the waxing phase of the moon. In the TamBrahm’s calendar, this day holds a special significance (myth based). The moon stays up in the sky for a very brief period in the sky after sunset on this day. The brilliance of the Sun still permeates the western sky. It is within the overall bright sky, one should look for the sliver of the moon. And, if you can see the crescent, mythically on the head of Lord Nataraja stitched into his matted hair, not only you have done a good karma, you also found out that your long distance vision is OK. So, once every month you could assess how good your eye sight is, without optometry! You could track its deterioration. And, if you have taken to wearing glasses, you can check whether the prescription was correct.

Not only the above, the next evening, the slightly thicker crescent of the moon cannot be missed. As per another myth, if you saw the fourth day crescent, you would suffer like a street dog! The zero-sum game is played to the full! What the Lord giveth on the third day, he taketh away on the fourth.

Now, I would take you through the calendar art pictures of Lord Shiva, most showing him sitting in a meditative state. In my search for appropriate images for this post, I came across pictures with Shiva and family, and some that had the Lord seated side-saddle on his mount and on and on. Yet, I wanted pictures of meditation and chose the following two images with contrasting depictions; one with the crescent and the other without it. After all, this difference is what defines the post.

 Obviously, the last but one picturewas drawn on the day of the third phase in the waxing duration, and the last, on any day of any of the two phases..

I just went through a session on critical thinking, receiving lessons from an unexpected quarter for this atheist-cum-non-aesthete.

Raghuram Ekambaram

P, S.

Disclaimer: The images are from the Net and I have no claim on any of them.

Jargonized Education Reform

 

Jargonized Education Reform

If you graduated with a degree before year 2,024 CE, your degree is worth nothing. Don’t worry, I am 70 years old and I am still surviving; holding three degrees, all worthless.

Whenever I read anything about education in our newspapers, magazines, or hear on TV, read with difficulty on mobile phones, the message is crystal clear.

Indian education system, from pre-school to Ph.D, needs to be reformed.

And, the only way such a reformation can come about is through a plan that is sprinkled with jargon. No jargon, no reform.

I have started out with a bang, but I don’t know whether I can carry it through till the end. Oh, you say, I can end wherever I come to a dead end. Yes, that is a good idea and I will follow it.

Recalibrate is a technical word in precision measurement. You do not ask your vegetable vendor to show you his calibration certificate. But, management people use it too often to mean nothing more than change. You need to calibrate anything, even your bathroom scales, towards a standard, but in managementese the end point need not be specified. If you show change, meaningful or not, you have calibrated. Hence, this word is a jargon, not begged, not borrowed but stolen from engineering.

Reimagine–one has to imagine first and only then anything can be reimagined. People in management start off with reimagining, without ever having imagined anything. Automatically they are faster than anyone who understands what there is and then reimagine. The company I was working for hired McKinsey & Company, one of the big four consultancy companies to improve the company’s operational work flow and thus increase profit. There were four members, all MBAs, from IIMs and they went to four or five offices in Mumbai, Jaipur, and  Nagpur, flying Business Class, and got all the data, I mean, data and data only. Then, perhaps over a week they figured out an MS Excel based workflow, and cost and revenue (billing) sheets. This is what I call Reimagining without any preceding imagining. Their solutions followed the time-untested one-size-fits-all philosophy. This is managementese at its worst.

Have you ever heard the term reform without getting the idea that whatever you had thought earlier was a “rude produce,” in Adam Smith’s words–needs wholesale change. I did not think so. This is a management trick. Without ever saying so, they have occupied the prefrontal cortex in your brain, the seat of higher order thinking, unique to human, they say. The first thing you must do is to carry out the forensic analysis of the dead system, and come up with a live alternative. Here, ironically, the alternative is also dead as it has been used an infinite number of times.

Oh, it so yesterday to call it a Library. It is, in managementese, Information Resource Centre. Yes, this name change will make students flock in droves to the library (oops, the Information Resource Centre) and involve themselves in Deep Learning, the buzz word. If you believe that, I own the bridge across River Cauvery in Thiruchirappally and it’s on auction–start bidding.

Outcome-based education. Go to the start of this post. Whoever you may be, you have no idea what the outcome of your four years effort spent in a UG course will be; if you were unlucky, you got the Master’s Degree and further went on to successfully compete Ph.D. “All for nothing...” of Dire Straits is the song you must be humming. So, at the age of 17 or 18, you are mature enough to know what you want in life. As I said, I am “Seventy, going on eighty,” and I am still unaware of where I want to be. And, parents are in a tunnel deep underground in the darkest of dark places. Their wards are smarter than they are, they would never admit except when boasting to friends and relatives.

Apprentice-Embedded Degrees. A new concept? No, the old rag wrapped in satin. I, in 1975 when I was 21, went through the apprentice-embedding process at the then (and even now) the most prestigious construction company in India. I hated it. I saw I was suited for desk work and that is what I prepared myself for and ended up, tolerating the occasional mud splotch. Yes, that I reckon is success.

[A]ppropriate use of AI. The implication is there can be an inappropriate use of AI. These management people never acknowledge that possibility and put AI on top of the ever-unfinished Tower of Babel.

The last such managementese word: ecosystem. I may have been guilty of using this decades old neologism (an oxymoron?) somewhere, sometime, but I have put an end to it. Ecosystem has a specific and sharp meaning in biology, particularly in evolutionary biology. So, as much as recalibrate, this word is a borrowed word and is jargon.

OK, I will stop here. Take what I have said apart and get back to me. I will be ready, as Arnold Schwarzenegger said in the movie “The Last Stand”.

Raghuram Ekambaram

What others said and how I understood them

 

What others said and how I understood them

There seems to be a tradition in writing newspaper columns or while discussing an issue in media “debates” to quote some so-called eminent people like litterateur, scientists, technocrats, economists, sociologists, psychologists and others. The worst thing about such “quotes” is they are given without the context in which they were said, written, discussed … No such “quote” can ever create the meaning intended by whoever wrote/spoke those words sans the circumstance.

If you want an example, I will give you one. In one particular institution, and in the interest of full disclosure, I was associated with it for nearly ten years, one day was celebrated as Carpe Diem. The meaning of this phrase was given as, “Seize the Day” and the student body was set “free”! No regulations as regards what they can wear, how they can move about the campus (almost) without restrictions and on and on … You can well imagine the severity of the regime on the other days.

What meaning did the phrase carry in the mind of the poet when he used this? This is the importance of the context. “[C]arpe diem quam minimum credula postero” à “Pluck the day, put very little trust in tomorrow.” When I read the lines (in English), I understood the mood as pessimistic.

This idea, not necessarily of a sad tone, was used by many poets. As the English teacher in a school, Robin William (I miss him terribly) in the character of John Keating, translates the complete line (in Latin as given above) as “Seize the day. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” from a poem written by an American poet.

This line has the following meaning for me: Do whatever you have to do, do it today; as you may not be alive tomorrow. Yes, it exhibits a sullen mood, and I believe it is true. But, for the institutions who must have approved the name, the later part did not exist. That is less than half-learning – from edupreneurs! Can these people complain about the student body?

I have a MS Word file carrying the name “quotes” (must be changed to the anodyne ‘Statements from the cognoscenti’) that runs to about 30 pages. I have posted many of these and have elaborated on many statements in that file. This is the current one in this series, perhaps a little more sober than my usual secular exegesis. Let me start.

‘We cannot always build a future for our youth, we can always build our youth for the future’ – Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 The above statement is worse than being wrong. We can at least try to build a future for our youth, as per what we foresee (rightly or wrongly), but by the very fact that the future remains for all time to come a mystery, we can never train our youth for the future. This message took me by surprise because it started out the statement “Editor’s Note” of a well-respected magazine. I could not bear the idiocy.

Given the long introduction to this post, I wonder how the teacher John Keating would have taken down the Editor!

‘Planning of projects is not a compiling of figures or tabulation of needs … it is very definitely a social act’ – Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay

The above is very surprising because it was uttered long before the virus MS Excel (Excelitis) spread its virulent tentacles around the society. I have written elsewhere about the evil–yes, it is no better than that–of this software as it carries the authoritative tone, “When I say it is correct, it IS correct.” Something like Ramses II saying “His [ Moses’] God IS God,” in The Ten Commandments. MS Excel has been elevated to the level of a deity, unmerited. An MIT professor used MS Excel to send nations scurrying hither and thither to reduce their Debt to GDP ratio! He is still a talking head in the media circus.

‘[T]ake talented people on their own terms and treat them fairly and with respect, no matter who they are or where they come from’ – Quincy Jones

We have absolutely no idea how many talents have gone unrecognized. To my mind, even the talented cannot identify talents, a talent that is a degree up a rung from talent by itself. When I used to go to recruiting for the company I was working for, in one institution, I interviewed a prospect, scoring in the mid-60s, and I found him to be fast on grasping, very fast. I did not ask him why he did not do so well in his academic performance. But, he joined the company, and within a few months he was up, up and away–literally, as he flew the coop. And, I am not talented in my field, but I did recognize a talent, no metrics for me, please. He was treated fairly as per the norms and slightly better. This is what Quincy Jones, a musical talent across the spectrum of music making, seems to be referring to.

‘Religion is an insult to human dignity’ – Steven Weinberg

The statement, I believe, is a rewording (not even a hint of plagiarism is implied) of the statement I have heard–it is insulting to think that mankind cannot be honest, benevolent and have all the other life-enhancing qualities had there been no religion. Steven Weinberg says this in his own, inimitable, sharp style. It may be true that his winning the Nobel Physics Prize gave him his platform, how many would use to have such a devastating effect on the other side? Antony Flew, a philosopher, wrote a small note patiently taking the believers on a primrose path and then showing them why they can never come to the end of the path. That essay is in my library and I go to it quite often. This is the effect Weinberg has on people.

With the above, I conclude this longish post, nearly a thousand words (mainly because of the introduction).

Raghuram Ekambaram