Verbivores

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PoLtS has responded beautifully:

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PoLtS: "Polts is between a rock and a hard place eating his own words. He is going to be very quiet for a long long time. He also shamelessly requests a free copy of the book so that he can have a 'priceless' experience".

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gps: Now, now, PoLtS! If I remember you well, neither you nor I are known for our long silences. Indeed Aniket had a cute dig at me for shamelessly reneging on my vow of silence:

Aniket: "I can see that your self-proclaimed break from blogging, as expected, did not last very long".

Actually, I must thank PoLtS for giving me just that opportunity for some cheap boasting. If there were no PoLtS, I might have been forced to invent one: just as Oliver Wendell Holmes who was gabbing away day after day as 'the autocrat of his Boston, 1850's boarding-house breakfast table' had to invent a very smart young character called John who was the only one who could pull him down a few pegs by pulling his legs as and when the autocrat tended to be a bore.

As it is, I must assert that PoLtS is not a fictitious character invented by gps. He is very much flesh and warm blood.

I shall miss him badly if he declines to speak.

As for a free copy of the BOOK, I think it can be arranged if he gives an India postal address. Some of my friends at KGP should be able to access one and mail it. He can pick it up when he next visits home.

Again, one of the greatest inventions is the 'negative feedback': it stabilizes systems unlike uncontrolled positive feedback which tends to make them runaway.

Hail Harold Black!:

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"On August 2, 1927, Harold Black, a young Bell Labs engineer just six years out of college, invented the negative-feedback amplifier. Negative feedback soon allowed the Bell system to reduce overcrowding of lines and extend its long-distance network by means of carrier telephony. It enabled the design of accurate fire-control systems in World War II, and it formed the basis of early operational amplifiers, as well as precise, variable-frequency audio oscillators. The invention, its development, the role it played in the founding of the Hewlett-Packard company, and the themes it illustrates in the history of technology are discussed"

...............Kline, R. Dept. of Sci. & Technol. Studies, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY

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'Eating words' reminds me of a light verse I did invent along with a word for word-eaters (verbivores) like PoLtS and gps. Here it is:

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Verbivores:


"Those who eat before they earn
Are found to ever cut and run;
Those who speak before their turn
Are bound to eat their words anon"

....................Monday, March 30, 2009

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html

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Supratim writes:

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supratim: "..Enjoyed the Ogden Nash verse via Aniket. I was wondering why you stopped writing limericks. They were awesome. GPS's book of limericks would be a great hit".

gps: There WAS a gps booklet of "Limericks & Light Verses", a compilation of a hundred odd ditties. In fact it was the first one to be printed, April 2009. It was a hit and a miss too. Those of my friends in AP (Telugu-proficient people) jokingly said; "You ought to have attached a dictionary too". The problem was that it started with this rogue-word limerick, which repelled outernet classical folks:

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Do's and Don'ts for Old and Young

"Older folks ought not ogle
Lest their eyes goggle and boggle
But old and young
Queen and King
All of us ought to Google!"

........................Thursday, February 19, 2009

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html

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supratim: "On a lighter note, your story of BKM's interview in IIT KGP was hilarious. I would want to believe it even if it weren't true".

gps: As I declared: "It is as true as Death". Bidhan Krushna Mahanty, one of my closest colleagues just a year my senior had no reason to gul. And whenever we met, we always bragged about our latest Wodehouse acquisition. Wonderful chap; only one of two who submitted his Doctoral Thesis in Theoretical Physics on his own after his erstwhile guide left KGP for good; the other being C L Roy.

Now, it is my turn to turn nostalgic about my Faculty Hostel Years....crazy folks the residents were! All of us were in our mid-20s and ever feeling our oats. We used to play cowboys: hide behind the first-floor-staircases at the two ends of the long corridor, and pretend to shoot from the hip shouting titchoo, titchoo, titchoo at whosoever steps up unawares.

The 'hit' one was supposed to fall dead to the ground prompto..

Once the victim happened to be an unsuspecting bhadralok visitor in his 50s . He was taken aback at being 'hit' till his cowboy shooter apologized handsomely . And it turned out that the hit visitor was looking for precisely the same shooter, carrying a bag bulging with the latest photos, degree certificates and horoscopes of his daughter whom he wanted to propose to the 'shooter', a young, handsome and otherwise highly eligible bachelor.

Unfortunately, their "horoscopes didn't tally".

This again as true as 'Birth'. Promise!


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