“If Statements” in Life Worth Learning

Today, I came across this interesting list of “If statements” in life which I thought was really interesting – check it out: http://www.marcandangel.com/2007/10/17/30-if-statements-in-life-worth-learning/

What does a 20/20 vision mean?

I was told that I have a 20/10 vision on one eye and 20/15 on the other. I was wondering what that means? So, here it goes: the first number is your ability to see at a distance and the second number is the ability of a normal person to have the same vision. Thus, 20/10 means that what a normal person can see at a distance of 10 feet, you can see at 20 feet.

Here is a curious fact that I learnt on CBS news today – the vision of a typical dog is 20/75. Dogs are also red-green colorblind – they see red, green, yellow and orange as shades of yellow and blue and violets as shades of blue. Researchers know about this by examining the eye cells of the dogs – dogs have 2 photo-receptors (or cones) instead of 3 that we humans have. 

Ride on a Lotus car

Today, I got a chance to ride on a lotus car and let me tell you that it was one of the sweetest rides of my life.  The car has power and control to match its looks.  On top of that my friend, the owner of the car, was an accomplished driver and knew exactly how to create that adrenaline bursting drive experience.  I felt like I was in the middle of the “Fast and Furious” movie rides – wow.  I was totally blown away by the experience. 

I-school or high-school?

“I-school” is the “school of Information Science”. Today, one of my colleagues introduced me to a guest as her being from the “I-school” and I heard it to be from “high-school”. She looked young and I was a little confused about what I could say to her. Now, imagine my surprise when she started discussing some really difficult research problems in my area and how she has been approaching them. Her work dealt with the way technology can be used to improve long-tail interactions in the society. We had a fruitful discussion where I got some interesting insights. Though I have to admit I was a little awkward as I did not know how abstract I should get in my discussions with her or how much I should read into her statements. I came out completely impressed thinking that this is “the” next generation youth and also a little depressed imagining how futile all my training has been and how quickly my abilities are going to become obsolete.

While I was mulling over the state of affairs and working twice as hard, my colleague stopped by and we got discussing the work of our guest. My colleague mentioned that our guest was the girlfriend of one of the job-interview candidates that I had met earlier in the month. And, now take a minute to imagine my state of confusion and shock as our job interview candidates have finished their PhD or are about to finish their PhD (i.e. ~ 30 to 32 years in age) and as far as I could remember this guy was really good but definitely he wasn’t a Doogie Howser. I blurted out “but he is finishing his PhD” and my colleague said “So is she” – it was then that I realized my error ….. oops!!!

I am a total klutz but I guess my abilities would still be valuable for a few years I also learned a valuable lesson in life about not having pre-conceived notions based on people’s background – judge your audience solely by their capabilities to carry on an intellectually stimulating discussion.

Unexplained scientific mysteries

Well, I guess there can be better ways to spend your Sunday night than watching a show from the History Channel. But to my surprise, I was actually quite entertained. I saw this piece called “Unexplained” – it tried to describe in lay man’s terms the critical scientific problems that physicists are trying to tackle today and its impact on our daily lives. More specifically, here are the problems discussed in this piece:

— First mystery was based on the observation that fossil records indicate a periodicity in the occurrence of mass extinctions on earth. This period has been noted to be 26 million years. One of these phenomenon, 65 million years ago, spelled doom on the dinosaurs. Though there hasn’t been any real proof yet, some scientists have a theory that our sun exists as a part of a binary star system. Its twin, aptly named Nemesis, comes closest to our sun every 26 million years. When Nemesis gets close to our sun, it manages to dislodge some of the asteroids lying at the periphery of our solar system which results in a cloud of comets being sucked into our solar system by the gravitational pull of the sun. Earth along with other planets in the solar system end up colliding with some these comets – bam! there goes the life as we know it.

— Next mystery, as expected has to deal with our fascination with time travel. According to this University of Connecticut Physics professor called Ronald Mallet, it is possible to time travel. Being inspired by Einstein’s work on relativity, he has been diligently working towards demonstrating, in his lab, how light can create wormholes that can be used to send particles through time and back. The basic premise of his work is that if a large mass can cause the spacetime continuum to bend with gravitational pull and since mass can be expressed as energy (E=mc^2) so we can use light (energy) to do the same and create wormholes. Hmmm, lemme try and describe wormholes a little bit – imagine that space and time form a bed sheet, now place a heavy ball on top of this sheet. The ball will cause the sheet to sag in a funnel shape form. Now imagine that the bed sheet consists of bunch of balls placed on them and bunch of these funnel shaped forms combine on meeting each other – these are basically wormholes that will essentially provide you a shortcut to travel from one part of the bed sheet to another. Inevitably, the notion of time travel brings up some fascinating paradoxes – the one mentioned in the show was the grandfather paradox that basically tries to describe a scenario where each possibility seems to deny its own existence. The paradox is the following: You travel back in time and kill your own grandfather before he meets your grandmother. So, now if your grandfather died then you could not exist and if you could not exist then your grandfather could not die and if he did not die then you would exist and could kill him. You see the logical paradox here. Anyway, it was interesting to note that scientists today don’t count it as a paradox since they can explain this with the notion of parallel universes. Ok, I won’t get into the details of this but its a cool theory and you should check it out.

— Next mystery dealt with our evil twins who can cause a complete annihilation of our being if we ever run into them. Under the assumption that we started with a zero-sum, there had to be an equal amount of matter and its evil twin anti-matter when the universe began. So, scientists are trying to describe why is it that we only see matter in the universe. Well, the current explanation is that in our neighborhood matter was a bit more than anti-matter so after the combination of matter and anti-matter resulting in nothing but energy, matter prevailed. It was interesting to note that the concept of matter and anti-matter is not as science fiction as the general population believes. It is employed in PET scans where “P” essentially stands for positrons that are anti-matter to electrons. So when they are inserted in our brains they quickly combine with electrons and release gamma rays that are studied for brain activities.

— Then, it came down to the study of Mars. Did you know that Mars was once a tropical planet with oceans and seas? One of the key scientific mystery is why did all the water suddenly vanish and where did all the water go? Key theories currently are asteroid strikes, and gone underground.

— Finally, how can any scientific mystery be complete without a discussion on the “big bang”. According to current estmates, the big bang occured around 13.7 million years ago. Scientists are trying to answer if anything come before big bang and what set the big bang into motion? It was interesting to note that we are closer to getting an answer to these than we realize. Scientists are already placing laser beams up in space to capture any vibrations (both big bang and pre big bang ones). These vibrations will give us a better picture of the events that transpired into our existence today. Optimistically, we should have these answers by next decade.

Laws of Physics as applied to relationships

I came across this simple yet uncannily accurate comic showing an application of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (actually more like the Schrödinger’s cat paradox) to romantic relationships. This is definitely worth checking out: http://www.basicinstructions.net/images/004BI.gif

Irony of life – hmmm . Anyway, you know what I have to say on this matter so no point of overstating the obvious. Just enjoy the comic and let me know your thoughts on it.

Buddhist chant about the steps towards greater self

Buddham saranam gacchami (I go to the Buddha for refuge)
Dhammam saranam gacchami (I go to the truth for refuge)
Sangham saranam gacchami (I go to the community for refuge)

My personal interpretation of this chant is that there are three steps towards enlightenment. First, let go of your ego and dedicate yourself to another person. Second, let go of your biases and dedicate yourself to the truth. Third, let go of your material attachments and dedicate yourself to the rest of humankind.

I wonder, if progress is fundamentally at odds with enlightenment, under the assumption that progress is brought about by discontent and enlightenment teaches us to be content within ourselves? Is it possible that there are positive research directions and negative ones – positive ones encourage us to share and be connected  to rest of the universe (communication and networking) while negative ones encourage us to own and be more attached to our minuscule slice of the pie (privacy and security) ….. What is your choice of direction in life?

The choices we make and the debts we take

I had an interesting epiphany last Friday that relationships are built not on being guarded but on openess to be hurt. The cornerstone of friendship is not the opportunity and capability to help another but the strength to leave oneself vulnerable by asking for help ….. As the Mayan priest in “The Fountain” says “Death is the road to awe” or another way of putting it would be “Destruction as a form of creation”. Do we really obtain power by relinquishing it – isn’t this a paradox?

Humility tests us much harder than any adversity. When we let go is when we demonstrate by our actions that we are willing to trust another individual with consult and our well-being. This is especially difficult when you grow up idolizing individuals created by Ayn Rand who are fanatically dedicated to their independence. Where do we draw the line between being a wimp and being enlightened?

Should we focus on good or on bad?

At the funeral of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony remarked “Evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones”. I just find it amazing how one off-hand remark can completely ruin all your good intent. When does humor stop being funny and start becoming hurtful? Do we get credit for the thought and effort we put into an event or only reproach for our mistakes? Why does black have to be the color that dominates every other shade and white be the shade that gets dominated by every other hue? Are we taking the displays of love and care for granted?

True love

Love is one of the most discussed feeling among the poets and story-tellers of any generation. So what is this feeling and what makes it so precious?

In my opinion, love is the capacity of individuals to cross the bounds of their self-interest and put the comforts of another individuals before their own. It is so precious because we all have the capacity to experience it but in reality only a few of us really manage to achieve it. It is much harder than you think. You have to overcome the boundaries of ego, physical comfort and at times rationality itself as you will have to do things that defy any common sense. It is when you are willing to take 10 steps to reduce the discomfort of another entity by 1 step is when you know you are in love with that entity.

I have often pondered about the notion of pure love and am finally beginning to understand what it might be. Pure love is basically when your feelings for the other person is completely independent of their behavior towards you. Most of us tend to experience love as a “give and take” experience where it basically becomes an obligation. For instance, X is willing to make sacrifices for Y because Y has made sacrifices for X in the past or X expects Y to make the same sacrifices and hence feels obliged to do so. Such relationships are highly volatile and go through a series of ups and downs because it is dependent on the interpretation of actions of your loved one. You have to constantly analyze and reanalyze their behavior. Imagine the amount of stress one has to be under when they have to constantly judge and be judged. I have often heard the people say that “we were in love but we don’t feel it anymore” which I think is a direct consequence of the stress of maintenance of such relationships that causes people to crack eventually and give up.

Pure love is when you love and appreciate someone for just the way they are. It has nothing to do with whether those feelings are reciprocated or not. It has nothing to do with their current economic or physical appearances. You love them because of their fundamental qualities such as “being a fighter”, “happy go lucky”, “sense of humor”, “intellectual curiosity”, “caring nature” etc. In this form of pure love, the actions of people are only a manifestation of their current circumstances and it should do nothing to change your feelings towards them. You can be angry or mad at them but you can never stop loving them. I believe that “true love” is when two individuals with “pure love” for one another get together with each other.

“True Love” can only exist between two independent people who can happily live alone but choose to live or spend a majority of their time with one another. It is a choice not a necessity. People have to learn to be content within themselves before they can experience such relationships. Remember that there is a difference between missing someone and feeling incomplete without someone. When I was young I heard the phrase that “When two become one, all it results is in two halves” – I think I am finally learning to appreciate and understand this phrase now.