Thursday, February 28, 2013

Silencing Arguments

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Here are three examples of arguments that end in silence rather than acrimony:

1. ...This committee had men like Compton and Tolman and Smyth and Urey and Rabi and Oppenheimer on it. I would sit in because I understood the theory of how our process of separating isotopes worked, and so they'd ask me questions and talk about it. Then Compton, for example, would explain a different point of view. He would say it should be this way, and he was perfectly right. Another guy would say, well, maybe, but there's this other possibility we have to consider against it. 

So everybody is disagreeing, all around the table. I am surprised and disturbed that Compton doesn't repeat and emphasize his point. Finally, at the end, Tolman, who's the chairman, would say, "Well, having heard all these arguments, I guess it's true that Compton's argument is the best of all, and now we have to go ahead."

It was such a shock to me to see that a committee of men could present a whole lot of ideas, each one thinking of a new facet, while remembering what the other fella said, so that, at the end, the decision is made as to which idea was the best---summing it all up---without having to say it three times. These were vary great men indeed.


...Feynman Joking

2. 'Yes, Jeeves?' I said. 'Something on your mind, Jeeves?'

'I fear that you inadvertently left Cannes in the possession of a coat belonging to some other gentleman, sir.'

I switched on the steely a bit more.

'No, Jeeves,' I said, in a level tone, 'the object under advertisement is mine. I bought it out there.'

'You wore it, sir?'

'Every night.'

'But surely you are not proposing to wear it in England, sir?'

I saw that we had arrived at the nub.

'Yes, Jeeves.'

'But sir - '

'You were saying, Jeeves?'

'It is quite unsuitable, sir.'

'I do not agree with you, Jeeves. I anticipate a great popular success for this jacket. It is my intention to spring it on the public tomorrow at Pongo Twistleton's birthday party, where I confidently expect it to be one long scream from start to finish. No argument, Jeeves. No discussion. Whatever fantastic objection you may have taken to it, I wear this jacket.'

'Very good, sir.'


...PGW in Right Ho, Jeeves

3. In 1944, at a time when the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the struggle against Nazi Germany, it was important to convince Stalin that the Western democracies accepted him as an equal. 

“‘In the world of the future, for which our soldiers have shed their blood on countless fronts”, the British Prime Minister said in his bombastic style, “our three great democracies will demonstrate to all mankind that they, both in wartime and in peacetime, will remain true to the high principles of freedom, dignity, and happiness of the people. That is why I attach such paramount importance to good neighbourly relations between a restored Poland and the Soviet Union. It was for the freedom and independence of Poland that Britain went into this war. The British feel a sense of moral responsibility to the Polish people, to their spiritual values. It is also important that Poland is a Catholic country. We cannot allow internal developments there to complicate our relations with the Vatican…” 
 
“How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?” Stalin asked, suddenly interrupting Churchill’s line of reasoning. 

Churchill stopped short. He had not expected such a question.


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Of the three wise men above who silenced arguments (Tolman, Jeeves and Stalin), I like Jeeves best. He states his case firmly and quietly and when met with stubbornness, shuts up politely; knowing that in the end he will always win over his boss, Bertie.

I almost never indulged in long and tedious arguments. I found early on that I can't convince folks with my arguments. Likewise, I was never bowled over by other people's arguments. Like Jeeves, I used to state my opinion and shut up. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.

Of course I met people who never give up. Once Dr HLY entered our office at IIT KGP and started talking QED with DB. I was reading quietly and preparing for my next day's lecture. Within minutes I found that both of them were raising their voices and I got interested. And tried to follow their quarrel. HYL suddenly got up and picked up a piece of chalk and started attacking the blackboard. DB too joined him with his piece of chalk. It went on and on for half an hour at the end of which I could see that their disagreement boiled down to semantics. 

And I had to shout both of them down and drag them to the canteen where they continued their warfare. I left them there and went home. The next day I asked DB who won the argument. He was sheepish and felt silly about the whole affair. 

Maybe we are built differently than all those Tolmans, Comptons and Oppenheimers, but I have yet to see an argument ending in silence. Argumentative Indians.

There was a film in the 1960s titled Kanoon. It was a rare songless Hindi film. I didn't watch the movie but was told by my friends that it was full of unending courtroom arguments with hysterics superadded. Lung power, fitful rhetoric, and histrionics.

But my lawyer friends told me that nothing as dramatic as that ever happens in a courtroom. The best of lawyers hardly make speeches...they just bring to the notice of the judge the relevant point of law and precedents. The best of criminal lawyers apparently don't want to listen to the confessions of their clients and get biased. They would only say:

"Let the prosecution prove their case"

Erle Stanley Gardner was a leading criminal lawyer and his Perry Mason courtroom scenes make fantastic reading...they were nothing like Kanoon though. Just quiet cross examinations.

In physics one demo is better than a hundred arguments. Feynman proved it with his O-ring demo:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qAi_9quzUY



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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Secular & Temporal

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Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.
 



In God we trust (rest in cash)

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India is a colorful country...also smelly.

I love India as she is, and am scared that I would one day wake up and find myself in an advanced country.

My case is like that of the dung beetle (gobarer poka), cited by Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, which when placed in a fruit basket would instantly choke and die (chat phat morey jaabey). Or that of the fisherwoman (matsyagandhi) of my Father's story who couldn't go to sleep in that florist's shop till she fetched her fish basket and placed it under her head (odomaach).

Mine is a country where anything and everything can happen and happens. 

Here the opposite of 'secular' is 'communal' but the opposite of 'communal' is 'pseudosecular'. The opposite of 'science' is not 'superstition' but 'pseudoscience'. And the opposite of 'communism' is not 'capitalism' but 'trinamoolism' (I have no clear idea of its manifesto and have to ask Sant Kabir). 

This is a country where the head of her NASA visits the temple hill before every launch to seek the blessings of the Lord even if it is the next in the series of 22 consecutive textbook launches. And revisits the Lord after every launch for thanksgiving. I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised if the date of the launch is set not only by the weather but also by planetary movements and auspicious muhurats. I have to check if any of the previous launches took place on the forbidden Tuesdays and Saturdays. 

But now the launches do not find more than a few lines in the newspapers, and that too since the PM or the President oversees them. Time was when every successful launch made front page screaming headlines. 

The impending cricket test win over the Aussies is relegated to the sports page. If such a thing like the wicket-keeper hitting a double ton against the so-called 'kangaroos' (a jargon no longer in vogue) happened in my time, the whole front page would be covered by his photos. 

The inevitable front page political cartoon is now often not found there...the front page is reserved for rape, loot and gore. And ads for lakefront villas.

But the more this country changes, the more it remains the same as the wag would put it.

The first time I met with 'secular' was in the 'secular perturbations' of planets like Mercury whose orbit doesn't close but loops in a rosette. 

The second time was in the 'secular determinant' of a matrix whose diagonal elements have an additional (- lambda) in them.

It was only during the Indira Gandhi rule during her Emergency that the word 'secular' was added to the preamble of our Constitution. That was after the 'communal' elements were properly jailed.

'Secular' in India does not mean that the State has no religion but that it has all conceivable religions. In practice it means that even the so-called 'communal' elements, when elections are approaching, have to don the robes of all religions that matter. For instance, there was a news item that their current president has promised to mold and instal a statue of Lord Buddha of a size exceeding his deconstructed Bamiyan cousin (if his party is voted to power).

When I was a kid I thought America was a country of science and technology that didn't care for religion. But later I learned of the Bible Belt and that 'In God We Trust' slogan.

I love Lincoln absolutely and appreciate his quote above. I wonder if Churchill would have said anything like it through his havana mouth during his worst crises of WWII. I guess England is different. Although, as far as imperialism went, the two were like the Walrus and the Carpenter.

I wonder whose statue would Didi instal if Bengal returns all her candidates to its 40-odd Lok Sabha seats in the upcoming elections...


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DC Page 12 Tuesday 26 February 2013


New York Feb 25: A potential Higgs Boson particle discovered last year could spell doom for our universe...researchers claim.

The mass of the so-called 'God particle', uncovered at the Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, is a key ingredient in a calculation that signals the future of space and time. 

"This calculation tells you that many tens of billions of years from now there will be a catastrophe,"....

gps: Very very scary!!! 


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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Apologia

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 DC, Page 6 Monday 25 February 2013:

The controversy over Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde's 'regret' on Hindu terror issue is refused to die down. While the Congress has already rejected the RSS's demand that Mr Shinde to tender 'apology' saying what he said is based on facts, parliamentary affairs minster Kamal Nath in a TV interview said 'regret' cannot be changed once it is used. 

The BJP has already welcomed the 'regret' expressed by Mr Shinde and thus cannot back the RSS.

Mr Nath said while Mr Shinde had used the word BJP, he has clarified that he did not mean any political organisation. "If it has inadvertently or advertently been construed to mean that, he said I express regret,"? Mr Nath said. He also said Mr Shinde did not 'deny' the remarks he had made and had only clarified that he did not mean it.

(sic)

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We are passing through a season of regrets and apologies, left-handed, contrived, negotiated, conditional, and plain and simple insincere. Everyone here seems to be offended by everything that is said, implied, filmed, tweeted, blogged or facebooked.

The latest round was inaugurated by the British PM who arrived at the Amritsar Bagh in great style, unshoed, bent and bowed and wrote a few appropriate words in the visitors book. Everyone knows why he took the trouble. But apparently he didn't 'apologize'. And that antagonized some. And he refused to apologize for what someone did a century back (behind his back). That is understandable. But it begs the question why then he 'regretted' it. 

And someone asked him to return the Kohinoor crown jewel to its original owner whoever he is. He simply pooh-poohed the idea saying he didn't believe in 'returnism'. That too is understandable. If Britain starts returning and compensating for the loot from its erstwhile empire, nothing would be left of it except the Dover Cliffs and the Thames.

The word 'regret', in the academic world, doesn't exactly mean regret (profusely or otherwise). It is a euphemism for 'get lost'. For instance, in the 1960s, one of my friends in the ME faculty at IIT KGP was fed up with dirty India and applied for a suitable position in an Australian University. 

Pat came the reply:

"We regret we do not have a position commensurate with your qualifications"

He then wrote back seeking any position (commensurate or incommensurate).

And he got this:

"We regret we have no position for you"

In my long teaching career at IIT KGP spanning 40 years, there was only one occasion when I asked a student to give me a written apology. And that was out of curiosity to see how 2nd year B Tech students wrote English prose extempore. 


I was then the Professor-in-Charge of the 2nd year Phy Lab. I was watching a student playing with a convex lens tossing it from his right hand to his left and talking with his partner intensely. And it slipped and fell down on the floor and broke into two pieces. The chap was taken aback. I called him to my table and asked him how it got broken. He said he was trying to focus it on the wall to measure its focal length when it fell down (almost on its own). That was ok. I asked him to pay the fine of Rs 100. That was not ok with him and he pleaded, 'sir, sir, sir..'. I then asked him to write a letter apologizing for his lapse and assuring he would be more careful.

He was glad and after consulting his partner came up with his 'apology letter'. It was all fine reading with grandiose prose. Except for the sentence I still remember:

"The lens fell down from my hands on the floor and eventually broke".

And of course that delighted me and I asked him to specify the time lapse between the event of its landing on the floor and the event of its breaking. That single word, 'eventually', spoke a lot of the chap's training in buzz words that they learn at IIT; like the words I counted in yesterday's Edit Page pre-Budget article by a technocrat in DC (ibid) which was bristling with 'ecosystems, force multipliers, strategic steps, plain vanilla banking services, leverages, growth engines...'

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Here is a quote from the OP-ED Page (ibid) of DC:

"...So far, the stormy petrel of Bengal politics has written essays and poems in her mother tongue, Bengali. It is no secret that she has a command over the language. She not only writes but also speaks well. It is her passionate Bengali oratory that has made her the biggest crowd puller in the state.

But now it seems that she is planning to write verses in English. At a recent public meeting in South 24 Parganas, Didi tried her hand at rhyming in English. In an obvious message to her bete noire, the CPI (M), she said: "Mxxxxa Bxxxxxee, Mxxxxa Bxxxxxee / She may be your allergy / But she is people's energy"

More doggerel than verse, perhaps, but the message is clear enough."

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(I tired to keyboard the above as best as I could, true to the original. Perhaps, a few typos can be overlooked)

Now I had, in my time, dallied in doggerels:

 http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2009/04/pet-rage.html

But it is only today that I looked up the meaning and etymology of the word, 'doggerel', to see if it has anything to with dogs. Here is the wiki entry:


Doggerel is a derogatory term for verse considered of little literary value. The word probably derived from dog, suggesting either ugliness, puppyish clumsiness, or unpalatability (as in food fit only for dogs)

I think a strong case exists for Didi to demand a full-blown apology from the unnamed DC correspondent.


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