Candle in the dark

Moving the blog

2007-06-10T02:09:00.000-07:00

After spending much time in the blagosphere, I've realised that wordpress is a much better platform than blogger.com. It's easier to use, I like it's interface, lot's of nice themes and it's got built in LaTeX support. So, i've moved all the posts and comments there.

You can find the "new" blog at

http://parseval.wordpress.com

Fishy Medicine

2007-06-09T08:10:00.000-07:00

It's time again for the annual "miracle fish cure". You've all probably heard of the amazing fish "medicine" that the Bathini Goud family offers to people who suffer from Asthma. This year's event has recently started in Hyderabad¹.

Asthmatics gather in Hyderabad for "miracle cure"

Thousands of asthmatics have lined up in Hyderabad to take the ''fish medicine'' that the Bathini Goud family has been administering since 1845.

It's a purported miracle cure, where patients swallow a live fish whole, to be cured of asthma.
...

One memember of the family which gives the "medicine", claims (emphasis mine)

Cheating means to cheat someone. Here the crowds have come themselves, ask them if they are being charged without getting cured. That would be cheating. These people do not even know what cheating is,''

That's the pity. But, I think he should know. Raising hopes with a false claim, whose efficacy has never been verified in any test, and potentially endangering the lives of asthmatics who move away from conventional (yet exteremly effective) inhalers and corticosteroids, is very much cheating.

It saddens me somewhat, that such rubbish is still being practised freely. How hard would it be to conduct a double blind experiment to see if the drug really works? And if it works, to analyze the ingredients and try understanding the chemical basis for it's efficacy, and improving it? Why doesn't any one in our government intervene to put an end to this nonsense²?

I long for the day when the majority of our society wakes up from a demon haunted world. IMO, public awarness of science can play a large role and serve as a candle in our dark, superstitous society.

Notes

[1] - Asthmatics gather in Hyderabad for "miracle cure"

[2] - Purely rhetorical. The answer, obviously, is votes.

Creation Museum

2007-06-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

Imagine that you're visiting a museum for the first time on a bright sunny afternoon, perhaps with your family or kids. You say to yourself "Hey, this is going to be a great experience. It'll be wonderful to look at fossils, learn about the history of the earth, the time scale involved and about evolution".

But then, when you enter the museum, you notice something peculiar. A T-rex grazing in a meadow with human children playing around it? Museum guides calmly explaining that the Earth is 6000 years old? A Triceratops wearing a saddle? What's going on?

Well, It sure ain't Kansas anymore. Belive it or not, these are scenes from the recently opened, 27 million dollar, Creation Museum in Kentucky.

The Creation Museum proudly claims to present a "walk through history", and bring the pages of the Bible to life. In fact, the co-founder of the museum claims that "It's a great place for children who are in public school and haven't really decided what to believe yet". Really? Take a look at a photographic tour of the exhibits for yourself.

What's more astonishing is that museum opened to a full crowd, with more than 4000 visitors in the first day. A related survey conducted by the Princeton Survey Research Associates International, showed that 48% of Americans polled believed that "God created humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so" ¹.

The first time I read this, all I could think was

HUH?? IS THIS FOR REAL?

Passing of lies to young children as science is beyond shameful, it's criminal.

Although I'm sorely tempted to rant further about this atrocity, I'll simply end with the Wizard's First Rule

People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so all are easier to fool.

Notes

[1] -NEWSWEEK Poll,March 31, 2007: Conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International.

Astronomy

2007-05-27T01:42:00.000-07:00

I had a really fun astronomy session yesterday, thanks to a monstorous 10 inch Newtonian reflector made by Celestron.

I had joined the assembly of curious astronomy enthusiasts sometime after sunset, when there was still some significant light pollution in the sky. Then, while trying to figure out the ecliptic by looking at Venus, Saturn and the Moon, I was able to see something unusual. It was a small, high speed light source which was visible as it passed the moon. After some initial confusion, we soon realised that it was an artifical communication satellite, and we had seen an Iridium flare.

Then, there was a lecture on the constellations, and some famous "landmarks" in the sky. Even now, I don't understand how people claim Leo looks like a lion, by any strech of imagination. However much I try and imagine, it ends up looking suspiciously like a mouse. Anyway, after the lecturer pointed out some more constellations which I couldn't visualize, it was finally time to play with the telescope.

The first object we looked at was Venus, which was in half phase. The planet was shimmering in greyish white and the surface was absolutely featureless, although I could make out the crescent shape. It was also scintilatting a lot, which must have been to the haze in the atmosphere.

After that, was the real treat of the night, when we pointed the telescope at Saturn. Wow! It was absolutely magnificent! It's like a precious stone painted in a canvas of black. The rings are entirely visible and wonderful in color. You can even see the bands on the "surface" of the gas giant. And right next to Saturn is the dot that's Cassini. Viewing Saturn through the telescope was the highlight of the night.

Next on the list was a very bright Jupiter. We had to wait a bit for the planet to rise from the horizon, but boy was it worth it! The view through the telescope was fantastic. Jupiter is visible as a giant squashed circular disc, and surrounding are 4 satellites (Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede). Although the red spot was on the other side of the planet, the reddish cloud belts were clear to see.

Having completed this mini tour of the planets, we tried to see whatever deep sky objects that were visible over the city light. With the help of the more experienced enthusiasts in our group, we were able to focus on the M13 globular cluster. I found this a slight dissapointment, becuase I couldn't make out much except an extremely fuzzy ball that was barely visible.

We also had a peek at the Beehive cluster (M44) and the optical binaries Mizar and Alcor in the Big Dipper (Ursa Major)

Finally, (on my insistence :p), we were able to point the telescope at the moon. I was dazzled by the brightness of the moon. We could see various craters near the terminator, and could even make out individual craters.

All in all, that was one of the most enjoyable evenings I've had.

Hubble's successor

2007-05-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

Nasa unveils Hubble's successor

The US space agency Nasa has unveiled a model of a space telescope that scientists say will be able to see to the farthest reaches of the Universe.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is intended to replace the ageing Hubble telescope.

Officials said the JWST - named after a former Nasa administrator - was on course for launch in June 2013.

The full-scale model is being displayed outside the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in the US capital, Washington DC.
...

Yaay! I can't wait for Nasa to launch this. It's our window into the past, into the birth of our universe.

One of my friends pointed out that it costs as much as the age of the earth in years. Nice coincidence for something cosmic

The Wikipedia debate

2007-05-03T02:15:00.000-07:00

By now, everyone would have used the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, Wikipedia. It's is a portmanteau of wiki and encyclopedia. As you might have already known, "Wiki" comes from a Hawaiian word for quick, and an encyclopedia is where you get "reliable" information. By using Wikipedia, it is claimed that one can find information on practically anything. Also notice that a google search on any topic tends to throw up a Wikipedia page in it's first three links.

What does this Google-Wikipedia synergy actually lead to? It means that, whenever you need to find information about something, and you Google for it¹, there's a high probably that you end up on a Wikipedia page. So, the next logical question is, how does it matter? If Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, then it should be a good place to find information, shouldn't it?

This is where some people think there's a problem. By letting anyone edit, there's a fundamental flaw in Wikipedia, and it's the problem of credibility. This flaw is especially true in science related articles. The fact that anyone can edit Wikipedia, means that someone who's not an expert can easily edit and publish the article, without any peer review or scrutiny from experts. The proponents of Wikipedia argue, based on faith, that the good and accurate articles will end up surviving, and the erroneous information will be removed.

So, although Wikipedia has an impressive collection of fairly accurate articles, such Pink Floyd or Topsy, is it something you should use when you want to learn something for the first time? A number of critics, including myself, believe that Wikipedia is not the place to go if you need scientific information, because it cannot guarantee reliable, accurate or valid informaton.

From John Baez's² website on physics ³

At any given time, the Wikipedia unquestionably boasts some very impressive articles on scientific topics. Nonetheless, its utility as an encyclopedia is fatally compromised by the existence of a surprising number of articles which appear at first glance to be sober, factual, and supported by impressive citations, but which are nonetheless a farrago of misinformation. The problem here is that only an expert may be able to spot subtle misinformation in articles on highly technical scientific topics. The point is that an "encyclopedia" which can be safely consulted only by those who are already experts on the topic at hand is not a true encyclopedia at all!

A steadily growing number of Wikipedia articles uncritically promote fringe science "theories" or scientifically suspect investment schemes, including a surprising number of devices which, if they functioned as advertised, would constitute perpetual motion machines. It is an article of wikifaith that Wikipedia articles will improve monotonically as more people contribute edits, eventually approaching a stable state of near-perfection. In particular, adherents of the faith allege that "army of watchful volunteers" will quickly spot and correct any misinformation. However, I have been tracking problem articles for almost two years, and I know that this faith is misplaced. Many of the worst physics articles have very obviously never once been edited by a genuine physicist. Even worse, I have carefully examined the edit history of hundreds of bad science-related articles in the Wikipedia, and in dozens of cases, I believe that the evidence suggests that articles which were allegedly written by a disinterested volunteer, were in fact written by someone having a direct financial stake in the claims described in the article. (This kind of deception is known as "wikishilling"; it is simply the latest variation on a technique which has long been employed by scam artists.) These observations appear to be consistent with a general trend toward increasingly sophisticated and insidious attempts by pseudonymous editors to manipulate information presented in the Wikipedia in order to pursue some hidden personal agenda.

The trouble is that Wikipedia has erected almost no barricades to guard against such abuses. Indeed, many feel that, while traditional printed encyclopedias are biased toward mainstream knowledge — and justifiably so, since mainstream knowledge is the most stable and reliable — the Wikipedia is if anything biased against mainstream scholarship.

So, how does one best use Wikipedia? The best way to use it, would be with extreme caution. You could use it as a starting point of your quest for information, and verify whatever information you get with other independent websites. However, In the case of learning science, you're probably better of sticking to your book. A textbook is a structured, credible, peer-reviewed and best source of information if you want to learn something new.

If you're interested in the debate, there are some excellent articles written by various authors you can find in the External Links section.

Notes & External Links

[1] - And let's face it, you're hardly going to search in a different way.
[2] - Yes, the irony was intentional...
[3] - Misinformation Concerning Cosmology and Relativity

Some external links
Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism - Larry Sanger, co-founder, Wikipedia
The Faith-Based Encyclopedia
On "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism" - Jaron Lanier.
Avoid Wikipedia, warns Wikipedia chief

The voice of reason

2007-04-21T22:57:00.000-07:00

Imagine that our planet is under the threat of complete annihilation, for whatever reason, by a more advanced intelligent race. If there's one person, one individual we can send to plead the case for earth's survival, that representative for earth would have to be the astronomer, Carl Sagan. I'll never forget the day when I first came across his work, The Demon-Haunted World ¹. Sagan's passion and enthusiasm for science and humanity is truly inspiring and infectious.

Sagan has written some truly brilliant ² popular science books. If you've not read them yet, I strongly suggest that you do. Among his more popular science books, which I've absolutely enjoyed, are Cosmos, Broca's Brain, The Dragons of Eden and Billions and Billions.

This is a video where Carl Sagan talks about the famous Pale Blue Dot photograph ³, that the Voyager 1 spacecraft took. I can't find adequate words to describe the feeling of awe, beauty and humility that Sagan conveys, so I'll let you experience it for yourself.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood
spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate... Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate... Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and, I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

From one of the greatest humans who has ever lived.

Notes

[1] - The more perceptive of you would have noticed that the name of this blog comes from the same book (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark). No coincidence. In fact, Sagan himself was referring to the British physician Thomas Ady, who bravely wrote a treatise against the Salem witch trials.
[2] - That's a poor adjective. I'd probably run out of superlatives if I try to express just how good they are. So, if you've not read any of his works yet, what are you waiting for?
[3] - From his essay, Reflections on a Mote of Dust.

Vedic "Science"

2007-04-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

I found this wonderful article by Meera Nanda, in which she highlights how modern science is being mixed up by the Vedas. The essay, titled Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and `Vedic science', was published in the Frontline magazine ¹.

This excerpt from the article², illustrates her argument.

One of the most ludicrous mantras of Hindutva propaganda is that there is "no conflict" between modern science and Hinduism. In reality, everything we know about the workings of nature through the methods of modern science radically disconfirms the presence of any morally significant gunas, or shakti, or any other form of consciousness in nature, as taught by the Vedic cosmology which treats nature as a manifestation of divine consciousness. Far from there being "no conflict" between science and Hinduism, a scientific understanding of nature completely and radically negates the "eternal laws" of Hindu dharma which teach an identity between spirit and matter. That is precisely why the Hindutva apologists are so keen to tame modern science by reducing it to "simply another name for the One Truth" - the "one truth" of Absolute Consciousness contained in Hinduism's own classical texts.

She further says that ²,

ALL these numerous celebrations of "Vedas as science" follow a similar intellectual strategy of finding analogies and equivalences. All invoke extremely speculative theories from modern cosmology, quantum mechanics, vitalistic theories of biology and parapsychology, and other fringe sciences. They read back these sciences into Sanskrit texts chosen at will, and their meaning decided by the whim of the interpreter, and claim that the entities and processes mentioned in Sanskrit texts are "like", "the same thing as", or "another word for" the ideas expressed in modern cosmology, quantum physics or biology. Thus there is a bit of a Brahman here and a bit of quantum mechanics there, the two treated as interchangeable; there are references to "energy", a scientific term with a definite mathematical formulation in physics, which gets to mean "consciousness"; references to Newton's laws of action and reaction are made to stand for the laws of karma and reincarnation; completely discredited "evidence" from parapsychology and "secret life of plants" are upheld as proofs of the presence of different degrees of soul in all matter; "evolution" is taught as the self-manifestation of Brahman and so on. The terms are scientific, but the content is religious. There is no regard for consistency either of scientific concepts, or of religious ideas. Both wholes are broken apart, random connections and correspondences are established and with great smugness, the two modes of knowing are declared to be equivalent, and even inter-changeable. The only driving force, the only idea that gives this whole mish-mash any coherence, is the great anxiety to preserve and protect Hinduism from a rational critique and demystification. Vedic science is motivated by cultural chauvinism, pure and simple.

I tend to agree with what she says. Her article is definitely one of the most informed essays I've read.

Notes

[1] - Volume 20 - Issue 26, December 20, 2003 - January 02, 2004

[2] - Reproduced under fair use.

Free convection for dummies

2007-04-15T00:06:00.000-07:00

The Nonoscience blog has a nice series of articles that serve as an introduction to the principles of free convection. You can find the posts here:

(i) Introduction to Free Convection
(ii) Mechanism of Free Convection
(iii) Free Convection and the Rayleigh Number

As for me, I'm still grappling to make sense of my heat transfer course. It's hard enough trying to get a physical grasp of all those dimensionless quantities¹, and on top of that, my head's still reeling trying to figure out when to use all the empirical correlations².

Notes

[1] - Nusselt, Rayleigh, Prandtl, Grashof, Richardson, apart from good old Reynolds and Archimidies. I could probably write a poem!

[2] - Churchill and Chu, you're exempt. But Dittus & Boelter, Sieder & Tate, Petukhov, Notter & Sleicher, I'm piping confused. And then there's Whitaker, Polhausen , ... I could go on & on

On convergence

2007-04-14T06:01:00.000-07:00

I recently came across something interesting while reading Mary L Boas text on Mathematical Methods.

Has it ever bothered you, why the power series of a pretty function like converges only for , even though there's nothing strange which happens at ? For example, if you take , it's easy to see that there's a singularity at . But what's the catch here? What's wrong with the power series of at ? This apparent conundrum is actually trivial when one looks at it from the complex perspective. Consider the complex function,

Since is infinite when , isn't analytic in any region containing . Now, there's a theorem that says that, since is analytic at points other than , it converges inside the circle centered at the origin and extending to the singularity at . From this, one can clearly see that when , and the corresponding power series also converges only when .

The lesson here is that looking at things from a complex perspective might give important insights in the real case.

Darfur Images

2007-04-11T05:40:00.000-07:00

Darfur is burning. But we all knew that already, didn't we? After all, 300,000 dead and 2.5 million homeless (just another number? think about it) isn't enough reason for the UN to actually do something.

Atleast Google isn't evil. It's possible for you to see the extent of the destruction in Darfur in high-resolution using the Google Earth software. It's impossible to miss if you pan over Africa.

For example, in the picture below, you can see the village of Niala. The circles you see are what's left of the mud huts with straw roofs, known as gottias. (Click on the images to get a larger image)

Similarly, this is the village of Selenyi, which has been completely destroyed.

In some cases, you can even see the ashes of some huts which have been recently burnt

Google Earth also allows integrates actual photographs from various destroyed villages, videos and testimonies of some survivors. Here's an account from a 61-year-old interviewed in Goz Amer

"It was early when I heard the noise and went out to see what is happening. When I opened the door there were Janjawid pointing a gun at me. They told me to stop and they aimed at me with their guns. The Janjawid were everywhere. I saw them collecting men from all the huts, it was mainly men from 16 to 35 years of age. They took them out of the village. They took as they liked, money and belongings. They took the men by car outside of the village. I could see the car returning to bring more every ten minutes back and forth. They took the men behind the mountain. The government army was there with their guns, but they did not burn the village and they did not loot. But they were there with the Janjawid. Behind the mountains they killed them and they arrested others. On that Friday they killed 116 men. I saw the dead bodies behind the mountains. They killed my son, Isa Ibrahim Shagar, he was 23 years of age. They took everything we had. We heard them shooting people. Those who were arrested were told to go and see [name of Janjawid leader] to pay to be released. This was all still on Friday.

"Those who were arrested were tied up: arms behind their body, they had to lie face down on the earth and were beaten. They were hitting them hard until their heads were bleeding. They told us that those between the age of 16-35 could not pay only those older than 55 could pay. They asked for 500.000 Sudanese Pound for one person. Only eight people could pay.The remaining men and women and children were kept under trees outside the village and the Janjawid did not allow anybody to move. We heard women who went to collect firewood who were raped. There was a 15 year old girl, I do not know her name, she was raped by the Janjawid when she went to collect fire wood. Those who were still arrested they were told to get into the cars, because they would to take them to the police in Garsila. But they were taken behind the hills and killed. Some of us could climb the hills and see what they did.On Saturday they killed the rest of the men. This time they did not use their guns, they twisted their necks. One Janjawid stood behind the man to hold him down and others twisted the neck until it broke."

Meanwhile, Sudan's president steadfastly refuses to accept that there's any crisis, completely ignoring the blinding evidence as a conspiracy of the "west" to undermine his country's sovereignty.

They say that more than 200,000 thousand have been killed in Darfur, we affirm that this number is not true and that... the number of deaths has not reached 9,000. Any talk of a humanitarian crisis is not true

So, what exactly can we, as individuals, do to end this atrocity?

Nothing really. We can only sit and observe the worst human atrocity in recent history run its course. The organization which has the military power to end this organized mass murder and genocide, the UN (or should I say, the USA?), is happy to remain a passive observer. Governments continue to "impose sanctions", "strongly condemn", "compile evidence" and do absolutely nothing while the genocide bleeds on, people murdered, just like that. Where’s the attention from the world?

My Vision

2007-04-08T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm afflicted with a rare, progressive eye disease, called Keratoconus ¹. While it doesn't cause blindness, it finally results in very bad vision.

Whenever my eye condition comes up during conversation², I have a hard time explaining exactly how my vision is affected. However, I recently came across a wonderful site³ which contains a compilation of images, some of which I've used here, designed to help communicate how and what individuals with Keratoconus see.

Currently, I'm experiencing the early stages of the disease only in the right eye, so my overall vision isn't too bad. Although, one major problem is that images appear very blurred at night⁴. For example, this is how the moon looks through my right eye.

Driving at night is especially a problem, because of the glare and streaking of light from the oncoming traffic.

Also, distant objects are never clear or sharp. This results in me ending up with a big headache if I don't wear my glasses or contacts for an extended period of time.

Footnotes

[1] - Believe me, you DO NOT want to wiki this.

[2] - ie, rarely. Usually, I have much more interesting things to talk about. And no, it's not the weather either. Honest!

[4] - They appear slightly blurred during the day too, if you're interested, which doubtless, you're not.

Banach Contraction Theorem

2007-03-28T05:52:00.000-07:00

Today, I came across a nice theorem which, If I understood correctly, proves the existence and uniqueness of points of a self map in a metric space, such that the map of that point is itself. The formal statement goes as follows.

Let be a non-empty closed subset of a complete metric space and be a map. Let be such that . Then for each , the iterative sequence converges to a fixed point x, which is unique.

To prove this, one needs to first show that
(i) for any . This shows that as
(ii) as . That is, is a Cauchy sequence in X. One can prove this with judicious use of the triangle inequality. Further, since is a complete metric space, also converges to the same in

Using the above, one can show that , and that this is unique.

Happy Pi Day

2007-03-14T01:39:00.000-07:00

Apart from being Albert Einstein's birth anniversary, today also happens to be, for obvious reasons, Pi Day! So, happy Pi Day everyone!

Optical Illusions

2007-03-08T06:42:00.000-08:00

These are some really neat optical illusions. Many optical illusions are beautiful, astonishing and powerful. I think they show how easy it is to fool the visual system and the brain.

Same color illusion

In the above image, look carefully at the squares marked as A and B. One appears white and the other appears black, right?

Amazingly, both the squares have the same color! Don't believe it?

To verify that the color's are the same, try cutting the two squares and place them side by side in paint or photoshop. Or, you could use the colorpicker tool to check that the colors are the same.

There's an explanation of why this illusion works at the MIT site.

Scintillating Grid Illusion

This is a famous one. You'll see the sudden appearance of black dots at the crossings. Also, if you keep your eye fixed on a particular intersection, no dots appear there.

I wasn't able to find any explanation on how this illusion actually works.

Peripheral drift illusion

The 'rotating snake' illusion is one of my favorites. The 'rotation' of the wheels occurs relative to your eye movements. It's thought that asymmetric luminance at the periphery of the vision causes this illusion.

Click on the image to get a larger version of the illusion.

Afterimage illusion

Keep concentrating on the sign at the center of the circle.

Do you see the rotating green spot?

Fraser’s Spiral

Actually, there are no spirals!
The intersecting black arcs appear to form a spiral, but they are in fact concentric circles.

Zollner_illusion

Parallel or not?

External Resources

70 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena by Michael Bach
Optical Illusions, Wikipedia

What a sad waste

2007-03-02T21:05:00.000-08:00

Today, there was a small article which was unobtrusively placed in a tiny section of the daily paper which, not surprisingly, caught my attention.

When US engineer Paul Roediger visited the Jagannath Temple in Puri, he literally didn't know what he was getting into!

At Jagannath Temple, there's an age old 'tradition' which allows only Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists born in the Indian subcontinent to enter. So, when Paul Roediger was caught wandering inside, the local priests were predictably outraged. So much so, that they decided to bury the food which was to feed 7000 devotes, as it had been 'defiled' by the 'corrupting' presence of the foreigner.¹

Once sufficient hue and cry was raised, the local police took Roediger into custody. A three hour round of questioning later, they realized that there was no law to 'punish' Roediger, but still allowed him to leave only after he paid a fine of Rs 209 to finance the 'cleaning ritual'.²

Contrast this, with the fairly recent starvation deaths in Orrisa.³ At least they could have given away the food to the numerous hungry people below the poverty line who can't afford a decent meal, instead of burying it? ⁴

Notes

[2] - Sources close to the author of this post, indicate that the cleaning ritual is based on a simple, yet marvelous theory.
Now, it is currently well known that the brains of engineers and scientists are a source of those atheistic subatomic particles, corruptrons. In those of subcontinental origin, corruptrons are mysteriously blocked by the large amount of melanin in the skin. However, in 'foreigners', especially Americans and Europeans, the lack of melanin means that corruptrons are freely emitted. These free corruptrons have the unique property of interacting and negating the 'holy fields' which permeate temples.
This is when priests effectively employ the 'cleaning ritual'. Through the effective use of mumbo jumbo, priests have the ability to create powerful 'faith' particles, which are the anti-particles to the corruptrons. Whenever a faith particle meets with a corruptron, it annihilates the other in a flash of irrational logic, thus restoring the holy field.

[4] - Unfortunately, the corruptrons trigger an irreversible decay which leads to the emission of more corruptrons when they interact with food. This is why the food must be buried.

Richard Dawkins

2007-03-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

I got a copy of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins recently, and I must say that I've enjoyed reading it.

The way Dawkins cuts through the theological rhetoric and gets to the heart of a proposition is enjoyable to read. His claim , that all religions are irrational, is aggressively illustrated with logic and lovely wit as he dissects the various arguments for God's existence. It certainly one of the better books I've read.

LaTeX in blogs

2007-02-15T21:22:00.000-08:00

I've always wanted to be able to use LaTeX typesetting in my blogs to show mathematical equations whenever I came across something interesting, but none of the blog hosting services supports it.

So, when I recently came across a Public TeX server at the mimeTeX page, I was pleased to see that it fits the bill perfectly.

HIV trial in Libya

2006-12-19T07:32:00.000-08:00

A Libyan court has sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death for knowingly infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV ¹.

It began in 1990, when there was a sudden epidemic in which 426 children in a hospital in Benghazi were diagnosed with HIV. 19 Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were initially detained in 1999 in an investigation to determine the cause, and subsequently 13 of them were set free.

In the initial trial, the defendants pointed out that the outbreak of the HIV virus began before they arrived, and was probably due to the severely unhygienic conditions at the hospital. In fact, Dr Luc Montagnier, the French scientist who co-discovered the HIV virus, testified that the epidemic broke out a year before the arrival of the Bulgarians. ²

But in an absurd decision, without a single shred of evidence, a court in Tripoli ruled that the accused were guilty of "deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV-contaminated blood products as part of a conspiracy by foreign intelligence to undermine Libya", and sentenced the medics to death.

After this appalling travesty of justice, the Libyan Government went on to suggest that they would look into this verdict, only if the government was paid a compensation of 10 million euros for each of the victims, effectively holding the medics as political hostages. There was a small reprieve when the supreme court of Libya overturned the sentence for lack of evidence, and ordered a retrial.

While this saga was unfolding, scientific evidence began to emerge which strongly supported the medics. A research team from the Zoology department of Oxford University concluded that "the subtype of HIV involved began infecting patients long before March 1998, the date the prosecution claims the crime began". ³

A few weeks ago, a group of international scientists published a report in the reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature ⁴. The major conclusion of the report was:

In 1998, outbreaks of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection were reported in children attending Al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi, Libya. Here we use molecular phylogenetic techniques to analyse new virus sequences from these outbreaks. We find that the HIV-1 and HCV strains were already circulating and prevalent in this hospital and its environs before the arrival in March 1998 of the foreign medical staff (five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor) who stand accused of transmitting the HIV strain to the children.

But yesterday, in the face of a media baying for blood, with a total disregard for independent scientific evidence, supreme stupidity and a blind zest for retribution, the court once again upheld the initial sentence of death by firing squad.

Another stab to the already bleeding ideals of fairness and justice. It seems the only hope for the medics lies in a final appeal to the supreme court. In the midst of this political drama, spare a thought for the infected children, whose lives are tragically cut short.

External Links

Q&A: Libya medics trial
Libya to execute HIV medics
Libya sentences medics to death
Timeline: Bulgarian medics trial

Ancient Greek Philosophy

2006-10-24T02:03:00.000-07:00

Dabbling in Philosophy

During my humanities course, I came across many different philosophers and various systems of philosophy which, in a sense, intrigued me. So I began wondering, what is the significance of it?

Philosophy can be defined as the "system of beliefs accepted as authoritative by some group or school, the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics"¹

In other words, with the advent of the scientific method, philosophy is usually opiniated, unverifiable, meaningless and vague mumbo-jumbo put forward by individuals who wish to appear smart (sartre!). That sounds very harsh, but I'll explain why I think so later. Neverthless, philosophy gives an interesting insight into how humans try to make sense of it all.

Before we begin discussing the various systems of philosophy, I'll point out that each form of philosophy usually tries to answer questions like,
-What is the goal of human life?
-What is knowledge?

I'll share what conclusions I've drawn from my dabblings later on. Anyway, In my quest to understand, I started at the beginning of western philosophy, which is the ancient Greek (Hellenistic) philosophy. There are many systems of beliefs, so I'll discuss only the major ones here.

(i) Sophism
Sophism comes from the greek work sophistes. In greek history, sophists were a a type of thinkers who used to sell "wisdom", often for a very high fee. This technique was referred to as sophism. The sophists used to teach whatever subject which was in demand, such as rhetoric, debate and grammar. While initially respected, the sophists were soon frowned upon for the practice of taking money to disseminate knowledge. The tendency of the sophists to argue for the sake of arguing, and to attempt to prove any position regardless of knowledge of the subject led to them gradually lost respect. Even in Greece, there was a certain antagonism towards sophists.²

Nowadays, sophism refers to a confusing and intentionally illogical argument to obfuscate a point, often using flowery language.

(ii) Platonism
Platonism refers to ideas, believed to be endorsed by the greek philosopher, Plato who lived during the 4th century BC. Platonism deals with the existence of abstract objects, which don't have physical or mental manifestation and don't exist in space or time.

Then, what are such objects? According to platonism, objects like numbers and proposition are abstract objects. For example, platonism contends that numbers exist irrespective of individual thoughts, and don't exist in space or time.

Over the years, there have been a number of arguments against Platonism (*predictably, because it's so abstract*) which challenges the ideas of platonism.

(iii) Stoicism
Stoicism was one of the most popular forms of philosophy among the educated classes in the Greek and Roman empires. Stoicism comes from the greek word stoa, which refers to the painted porch in Athens where it was taught by Zeno.

The an important idea in Stoicism was that knowledge can be obtained through the senses alone. The Stoics (those who practised Stoicism), claimed that, initially the mind is empty and blank and knowledge is inscribed into the mind through our physical senses. They contended that, all knowledge is merely an impression through our senses, and as a result, the truth (ie, whether our knowledge is true) does not depends on concepts, but only on an individuals sensations. (*Whew, that was abstract!*). As a consequence, they claimed that there is no universal criterion of truth.

This stoic logic led to many interesting consequences. It's really fascinating to read about the beliefs, values and ethics of the stoics, as it gives an insight into how the men of greece tried to make sense of the world. Finally, a major theme in stoicism is freeing the mind of anguish, suffering and passion, to follow reason and "live according to nature". So, in stoicism, virtue and morality are a consequence of rational actions.

In modern language, a stoic refers to person who isn't affected by emotions, such as joy or sadness.

(iv) Hedonism
Hedonism comes from the greek word hēdonē, which means pleasure. The basic idea behind hedonism is fairly straight forward (A pleasant change!). Hedonism claims that all our actions are motivated by either pleasure, or pain. In the words of the english philosopher Jeremy Bentham,

"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain, and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do"

There are various schools of thought in Hedonism itself which expands this idea to various social systems such as economy, rationalise the ethical and moral consequences of such actions, and tries to relate them to concepts such as utilitarianism (ie, how to make a large number of the population happy).

(v) Epicureanism
Epicureanism refers to the teachings of the greek philosopher Epicurus, who lived in the 3rd century BC. Analagous to Hedonism, Epicureanism belive that the goal of human is happiness, and the absence of pain.

Interestingly, Epicurus formulated a complete system of the world. He believed in the idea proposed by his teacher's teacher Democritus, that all physical objects are made up of small discrete, solid and indivisible particles (not exactly atoms as we know it today, but similar) and empty spaces or voids. As a consequence, Epicurus was also able to put forward an elaborate (and incorrect) theory of why objects fall to the earth. Epicureanism also goes on to hypothesise on the nature of the "soul", and how society is shaped.

In religion, Epicureanism proposes that gods, while they exist, do not interfere with human affairs. In the absence of the punishment of the gods, Epicureanism justifies morality by claiming that unjust actions and crimes will lead to a lack of tranquility which will affect happiness

In modern usage, an epicure is a person with refined taste, devoted to sensuous pleasure and luxurious living.

External resources:
Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
MIT OpenCourseWare: Linguistics and Philosophy

Ergo Proxy

2006-10-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

Ergo Proxy

For all those of you who watch anime, I recently came across this fantastic series which I highly recommened. Ergo Proxy is a dark, futuristic, science fiction based anime. The visuals are stunningly rendered using digital cell animation and 3D computer modelling.

The story is based in a futuristic city known as Romdeau. The city itself is a typical Asimovian domed city, with it's human inhabitants existing along with their robot servants (called as autoraves). The plot centers around the sudden appearence of mysterious creatures, called Proxies, and the spread of the Cogito virus. The virus (probably named after the phrase by Descartes) infects the autoraves and enables them to "think", with the consequence being that the robot obtain "free will". (You can pretty much guess what this leads to!)

The plot is sophisticated and takes many twists, and although slightly confusing at times, has many subtle (sometimes obscure) philosophical and historical themes. There are references to various individuals from diverse fields such as Alan Turing, the French poet Joë Bousquet, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the post-strucuralist philosopher Julia Kristeva, and even John Millais and his painting Ophelia, on which an entire episode is based. The influence of Greek and Aztec mythology in some of the episodes is also evident.

If you have time to kill and want to watch something interesting, I think you should give Ergo Proxy a try. It's very enjoyable and refreshing to watch.

External links:
Review of Ergo Proxy - Some spoilers

Grameen Bank

2006-10-15T21:30:00.000-07:00

Grameen Bank

Continuing the Nobel theme, the Peace prize was recently awarded to the Grameen Bank and it's founder Muhammad Yunus ¹. I think this is one decision which the Nobel comittee have got spot on. The Grameen Bank movement entirely deserves this recognition and must be applauded for it's innovative and effective method to fight poverty and create economic and social development.

For those of you who haven't heard of the Grameen Bank (which planet are you from?), it's an organization which was founded in Bangladesh by Muhammad Yunus. Yunus got his Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt University in 1969, and after a brief stint in Tennessee State University moved back to Bangladesh. During the famine of 1974, he noticed that even small loans could play an important role to uplift impoverished farmers. At that time, traditional banks did not issue loans to poor people, because of the high risk of non repayment. In 1976, Yunus founded the Grameen bank to issue loans, even very small ones, to poor people such as beggars or fisher women.

To tackle the issue of repayment, the Grameen bank organized the poor into small groups. Each group elects an accountant who keeps track of the daily payments, the accounts of individual members, and issues loans. The group as a whole, then deposits the money at a local bank. Trust is formed within the members due to the nature of the small close-knit community, where each poor person can relate to other members. Every such group also has it's own set of rules which dictates how much each member can borrow, etc.

This system has an important advantage over other schemes, because, even small amounts of the daily earnings can be saved by a group member, rather than being spent on alcohol or other such consumables. Also, the loans issued by the Grameen bank are interest free, and the repayment time can be very long. These loans can also be used to manufacture and sell low-cost products, invest in equipment such as fishing nets, or even used for personal reasons like weddings. There's also an interesting trend which shows how money issued to women brings much more benefit to the family. As a consequence, over 97% of it's members are women!

The Grameen Bank is amazingly efficient in fighting poverty. The bank has loaned out more than 5 billion USD, with a repayment rate of over
98%!²

While the Indian Government is spending large amounts of money annually to fight poverty with no visible effects, the Grameen Bank sets an example on how to effectively and efficiently break the cycle of poverty.

Related external links

Grameen Bank at a glance
What is Microcredit? - Muhammed Yunus
Grameen Bank - wikipedia
Ten Indicators to Assess Poverty level - Muhammed Yunus

Physics Nobel

2006-10-03T05:22:00.000-07:00

It's that month of the year when we honour the men and women who represent the pinnacle of human achievement, marvel at their magnificence, applaud their brilliance and ... enough with the eloquence. To get to the point, it's Nobel Prize time!

The Nobel Prize in physics for 2006 was awarded to two Americans, John C. Mather and George F. Smoot "for their discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation."

What did they do to get the nobel? Their work helped in providing very strong experimental evidence which supports the hot big-bang model of the universe. Mather and Smoot were involved in analysing the data of the COBE satellite, which was placed on orbit on November 18, 1989

The picture to the left shows the cosmic microwave background spectrum, carefully measured by the FIRAS instrument on the COBE satellite. In fact, this is the most accurately measured spectrum in nature. The error bars are so small, they can't be drawn on the graph! Also, the data points can't be seen, because they fit the theoretical curve so perfectly!

Now, the Cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a consequence of the big bang theory. In the beginning, the universe was a hot plasma full of high energy protons, baryons and what not. It was so dense, that even photons couldn't travel through. As the universe expanded and coooled, the protons and electrons combined to form neutral atoms, and the photons (ie, light) was able to travel freely. So, the theory says that the radiation emitted at that point, was that of a perfect black body from a spherical surface. Look at the graph of intensity vs wavenumber again. It shows that the experimental data collected by COBE, matches absolutely perfectly with the black body graph.

The ansiotropic effects (property of being directionally dependent) of the CMB were predicted by the theory due to scattering at the surface. This was also succesfully measured by the COBE satellite.

Per Carlson, the chairman of the Nobel committee for physics, said

It is one of the greatest discoveries of the century. I would call it the greatest. It increases our knowledge of our place in the universe.

Detainee bill

2006-09-30T21:59:00.000-07:00

What's the fundamental right that we expect when arrested? Obviously, it's the right to challenge our detention and an opportunity to prove our innocence. Habeas corpus is the legal mechanism that gives people the right to ask courts to review their imprisonment and establish innocence or guilt. Yet, the US senate recently approved the detainee bill, which gives the authority to detain non-citizens indefinitely and without any charges being placed.

Now, Section 9 of the US constitution states that

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

Is the situation in the US so grave, that the senate strikes down constitutional privileges with such impertinence? This action, which is fueled by irrational paranoia, is so barbaric that it strikes at the very heart of the freedom, democracy and liberty which symbolizes America.

It isn't that hard to imagine innocent civilians (like Maher Arar), picked up from Iraq or Afganistan as a suspected enemy combatant, shipped to a secret CIA prison in Egypt, Syria, Eastern Europe or Jordan, tortured physically and psychologically, threatened with electrocution and then indefinitely locked away from their family and loved ones without a chance to prove their innocence! Not that many Americans would care. How many American citizens are going to be detained as enemy combatants?

The Democratic senator Chris Dodd has some strong words,

This longstanding tradition of our country about to be abandoned here is one of the great, great mistakes that I think history will record

Disturbingly, there was another instance in history when civil liberties of citizens were restricted. In 1933, the Reichstag Fire Decree issued in Nazi Germany read

Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom [ habeas corpus ], freedom of opinion, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications, and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscation as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Though the parallels are thankfully very limited, it's a disturbing trend to witness.

Ayurveda

2006-09-17T02:17:00.000-07:00

Ayurveda, a form of vedic "science", is allegedly an ancient system of natural medicine, which is the "most complete" of healing arts. It's proponents claim that, the human body includes

a) nadis (canals) which carries prana, or cosmic energy
b) chakras, (centers of consciousness) that somehow links the body and the soul
c) marmas, which are points on the body where "vital structures" intersect.

It then claims that the "dynamic forces" of the doshas (roughly a combination of elements of fire, water, earth, space and air) affects the health of the human body and imbalance of the doshas causes disease and illness.

Any sensible, rational person would have by now shirked away from these claims with a chuckle, knowing that it completely contradicts the modern scientific understanding of diseases, in terms of pathogens, infectious agents and genetic disorders. Why then, is ayurveda, and indeed the so called vedic "sciences", so prolific and widespread in India?

The answer has to with many ideas including ultra-nationalism, religious chauvinism and scientific illiteracy. From a sociological point of view, in Indian culture, individuals are not trained to question ideas but to merely accept what is taught to them as truth or facts. The understanding is that these facts have been passed down for generations, and hence surely reflect the wisdom of the ancients! The questioning of ideas and the subsequent verification by experimental evaluation are strongly discouraged and this has lead to a dearth of scientific thinking.

Politicians and other ultra-nationalists, abhor the secular western ideas of empirical thinking, claiming that such views are anti-national and erode India's time-tested values, ideas and beliefs and should be discouraged. The Hindu nationalists, on the other hand, claim that vedic Hinduism is all encompassing, and science cannot lead to the "truth" as it only deals with materialistic concepts. Those who question the efficacy and the safety of these holistic medicines are surely then enemies of Hinduism and the nation. Why should ayurvedic products, based on the vedas, undergo clinical trials and testing when they have been used for generations?

Recently, a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed significant levels of toxic heavy metals in one-fifth of the ayurvedic medicine which is exported. In fact, there are over 50 published accounts of heavy metal poisoning in infants, children and adults where use of ayurvedic products was the most likely cause. This has clearly exposed the poor regulatory standards in safety and testing when compared to standard medicine. In what's indicative of the scientific competence of the so-called "researchers" in Ayurveda, the joint secretary of AYUSH, (a government branch of the Department of Indian Systems of Medicines) was quoted as saying,

"People who are making an issue of the heavy metal presence don’t know ayurveda. Heavy metals are integral to some formulations and have been used for centuries. There is no point of doing trials as they have been used safely and have mention in our ancient texts."

Scary...

Notes and external links
(In lieu of the heavy metals incident, Meera Nanda has an excellent article on the state of Ayurveda from a scientific perspective. You should read it)