More!

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Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow;
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.

He followed her to school one day,
Which was against the rule;
It made the children laugh and play
To see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned him out,
But still he lingered near,
And waited patiently about
Till Mary did appear.

"What makes the lamb love Mary so?"
The eager children cried.
"Oh, Mary loves the lamb, you know,"
The teacher then replied.

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One post-lunch afternoon, around 2 PM, I was walking towards Gate # 5 that leads to the Main Building of IIT KGP. And found Dalia racing towards the Gate on her pushbike...Dalia, though slim and short, was a superb athlete and brought gold medals for KGP at every Inter-IIT Meet without fail.

And I found a dog chasing her close behind. And I called Dalia to halt, fearing that the well-fed dog would snap at her ankle and cause an accident. Dalia stopped, turned around and said:

"Phew! The poor thing has followed me all the way from my home near the Tech Market!"

And she got down, cuddled him, reversed, and sped towards her home, the dog racing after her. Then I recalled the Nursery Rhyme quoted above which is one of Ishani's favorites:


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_K9hFxSvDM


Later one evening Dalia dropped at my Qrs to get some doubts in EM cleared and after the business was over, my wife fed her dosas and we got chatting. And I asked her if the dog that followed her the other day was her pet. And she said, yes, and there are more.

"How many?"

"Guess!"

"Two?"

"More"

"Four?"

"More...More"

"I give up"

"I have pet cats too"

"A dozen?"

"More....More"

From that day whenever I hear the word "More" I recall Dalia's smiling face. She and her pets are in this para in an earlier post of this blog:

Dalia (whose Electrodynamics Class Notes I stole and used as my breadboard) had about a couple of dozen cats and their kittens as well as half a dozen dogs as her pets.

I asked her if they didn't attack each other.

She said, since she looked after all of them with equal affection, they treat one another as siblings (quite unlike India & Pakistan).

Perhaps this is about the only time cats and dogs were on an equal footing; other than: "It is raining cats & dogs".

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Just now I was lazily Googling for the word: "more". And was astonished to see that "more" scores far "more" than "most", "less", "least", and even "love" and, ahem, its cousin, "sex":

more:  About 25,270,000,000 results (0.24 seconds)

most:  About 8,150,000,000 results (0.22 seconds)

less:   About 4,140,000,000 results (0.21 seconds)

least:  About 1,910,000,000 results (0.20 seconds)

love:   About 8,480,000,000 results (0.22 seconds) 

sex:    About 3,310,000,000 results (0.20 seconds)

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There were a chain of supermarkets here a few years ago that went by the name: "Trinetra". One day I found their name suddenly changed to:

"More."

I don't know what the 'stop' dot after "More" signifies. Its website is not very helpful in resolving this mystery. 

 http://www.morestore.com/


I guess "More." means "No more search"...a la "Shoppers Stop"

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And then I Googled for: "More is less" and this is what wiki says:

The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less is a 2004 book by American psychologist Barry Schwartz. In the book, Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers.

Autonomy and Freedom of choice are critical to our well being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don't seem to be benefiting from it psychologically.

—quoted from Ch.5, The Paradox of Choice, 2004

And then I recalled the trouble Feynman had with "choice":

Richard Feynman, “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” Problem of choice

When you’re young, you have all these things to worry about—should you go there, what about your mother. And you worry, and try to decide, but then something else comes up. It’s much easier to just plain decide. Never mind—nothing is going to change your mind. I did that once when I was a student at MIT. I got sick and tired of having to decide what kind of dessert I was going to have at the restaurant, so I decided it would always be chocolate ice cream, and never worried about it again—I had the solution to that problem.

http://junipher.info/eng/richard-feynman/

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And then I Googled for: "Less is more" and got this modern art called Minimalism:

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915, Oil on Canvas, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism

The blessed painting has nothing but a black square.

Between you and me, I have always had this guilty feeling that Modern Art is an elaborate  hoax perpetrated on laymen by so-called connoisseurs who pay millions of dollars to buy them in auctions just to show-off their ill-gotten wealth.

As for "real coloring", Ishani can do better than Kazimir Malevich and his buddies.

Don't believe me?

Here is double-barrel proof:

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And finally there is this nice lady who often says: "More Stories Please."

Dear Sir:

I think my husband did not really write to you how much we liked your new book.

It is a rare occasion to find him laughing. Your new book did it. So much so, after sometime he thought (most probably) it is not good for a mathematician to laugh so much and he closed your book and started doing an integration.

I always enjoy reading your stories. The stories on your meeting with doctors are superb.

More stories please.

Best Regards
 

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