Nonlinearity

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The guy is cool with words...he ought to have been a Teacher (@ IIT KGP).

'Teaching Moment': I wish I had coined that cute phrase.

And then the 'Sputnik Moment'.

Though he wasn't even born when Sputnik went up there...ask me...I heard the beep beep beep live on our creaking croaking humming sputtering Murphy radio set.

Those who hadn't heard it and seen its groggy American reaction can only be taught by similes.

Saying America was caught with her panties down would be facile.

The floors of our Apartment Complex here are paved with vitrified tiles. First time I saw or heard of them. You can just say that they are glass tiles...as smooth as someone's cheeks which was later denied by her admirer.

So, the other day I went over to the Car Wash Office in our ground floor (we have two cars and a bike to be washed everyday) to settle their hyperbolic bill. The dame seated at her table was kind to this senior citizen and asked me to take the chair opposite her while she fiddled with her mouse.

I pulled the swivel chair back, stepped up front and sat...only to discover that the chair had caster wheels and went into a silent retreat to the other wall.

And found myself plumb on the floor...with a totally unanticipated thud.

That about describes the American reaction to the Sputnik...just floored...

We urchins who used to take sides: "Do you support America or Russia?" had a field day watching the knock-out punch.

NASA was nowhere and the few American Space attempts till then met with televised disaster.

And Sputnik 1 was followed by Sputnik 2 carrying an unfortunate live passenger successfully.

Down and Out!

The aftermath in America was that Feynman and Purcell were asked to teach Physics to their undergraduates...a Teaching Moment...

But look what happened...

3 decades later, Berlin Wall was torn down and the collapse of the mighty Soviet Empire started in right earnest.

Seers predicted the event and attributed it to the Communication Satellites that regularly broadcast TV images of how the other half lives, deep into the recesses behind the Iron Curtain...iron just melted away.

Russia built the first ICBM-capable rocket R-7. Perfectly sensible militarily.

But the rulers wanted propaganda...and since they can't very well demonstrate their nuclear-capable ICBM with a live test over the American Mainland (as the Yankees did to Japan in the hot-war as opposed to the colder variety), they urged their rocket scientists to launch the Sputnik thing in one month flat.

And the next one a month later to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Overkill!

And sort of a benign Frankenstein Monster.

Something similar happened to America half a century later.

The digital descendants of the Facit mechanical calculating machine (that I used in my UG lab at Vizagh) were put to grotesque use by the Americans.

They should have been used for research beneficial to mankind...like in the production of the first atom bomb {;-}

But they used these super-duper computers to produce fake finance computations and landed up in the sub-prime crisis that sent the US Economy into a tailspin...even now.

Another Teaching Moment for Theoretical Physicists...they were the first employees to be booted out of the Investment Banks:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/02/ladies-firstwhen-tiger-knocks.html

Any effort that has unintended effects can be said to be nonlinear.

I am told by my nonlinear friends that a butterfly deciding to flap its wings in the garden of my C1-97 Qrs at KGP can trigger a hurricane in Florida.

Some butterfly that!!!

News & Views

N: Home Minister's home burgled

V: Highly nonlinear...

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