Holding Out for a Hero

When I used to use the word “meme” to communicate my thoughts about thoughts, the listener(s) used to take me lightly, because the word “meme”, was not part of the “scientific mainstream”. And then I tell them “Did you know that the word ‘meme’ was first suggested by Richard Dawkins?”. “Really?” asks the listener, and suddenly, it adds a lot of credibility to the word, and the ideas that were rendered using that word.

It is interesting how we need a hero or hero-endorsement for everything, which I believe points to the underlying human survival strategy of sticking with the group/leader to reduce the effort for ensuring survival and happiness.

But the pursuit of truth, in this universe, requires the individual to venture out and to risk everything, including his own survival and reputation. It is this property of the universe that amazes me: A life and intelligence that evolved to exist with such shallow, lazy, cowardly, stick-with-the-group world-view, but lets a few subordinate their genetic/selfish interests for the greater good of the group.

When a few do such things with selflessness, something within makes to speculate whether there is a simulator which simulates reality with a goal of its own.

The new engineering substrate

Finally a Chemist of the same wavelength

As it is generally the case with Asians as a whole from what I know now, my fellow students never liked me for interrupting really large lectures with questions like “Why should I believe you?” or criticisms about the “weaker assumptions of lesser mortals” taught in class (as John Nash used to say in the movie Beautiful Mind). The lecturer, who was perfectly aware that I had paid the fees to get my questions answered, but too careful not to hurt the feelings of other students who wanted their syllabus covered, often took diplomatic stance by asking me to talk to him after the lecture or to ask the teaching assistants during the tutorial session.

Yesterday changed it all. I met this genius who is a lab assistant for a level 3000 module, and who also happens to be organic chemistry tutor for my group. I asked him how do chemists know about the ring flipping in cyclohexane, and about the various other isomers and freaky phenomena like resonance structures.

He boldly tried to explain it, trying his best not to “dumb down” any of it. From what I understood, most of the evidence for everything I asked comes from using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance to analyze the structures of chemicals. Pharmaceutical companies regularly do it. These NMR machines seems to be capable of knowing everything about molecules in a God like manner. By looking at the “Relaxation” timings – which from what I understood, is the time taken for particles to return to the original spin after a magnetic pulse from the huge magnet, skilled chemists can know the amount of one particular isomer of any compound.

Interesting! So chemistry ain’t religious enough to put a God in the gaps!

Law girl uses Linux

While I was out to play in the Go club meeting today, I met this Law student who was using Ubuntu. She thought it was better than Vista. She even showed me the ease of enabling Beryl with just a few clicks.

She was in the Contract Bridge Club and was teaching bridge with a presentation in Open Office. She was interested to hear about my views on intellectual property, and Open Source licensing. I narrated how, I had lost hope in IT because it never directly reduced human suffering, and how Computational Biology could be an answer to it all.

While I was about to leave after a game of Go, and after I rejected her invitation to the Bridge club (because it had been too late already, and I needed food), I learned from her that it was her boyfriend who helped her install Linux, and this boyfriend of her was a Mac user like me! I was happy to find a Mac user who supported Linux like me…!

NUS seems to be full of geeks. And not just geeks, that hug onto their personal computers from cradle to grave.. These geeks seems to good at everything physical, mental and scientific. More on this in the next post.

Go at NUS

I joined the Go club, last tuesday and a a lot of interesting developments took place. Although Go is all about getting more territory with less number of your units, there are two ways one can achieve it: capture or/and engulfing territory. There is always the question of capaturing or not capturing. To engulf or not to engulf. Make your units too connected, and you will not be able to engulf territory. Make your units too spread out and the opponent wil capture you. Start playing on far edges greedily hoping to get more terrritory, you will end up getting less territory. Play too much in the centre, and you will never engulf anything. It has such high number of conflicting demands, and requires the word the chinese like a lot in their philosopies: balance. Balance in a number of different levels.

Called Her on her mobile

P.S. Her, She = The girl I have a crush onLast sunday, I called her on the mobile number she gave me. She started narrating recent developments without waiting for me to ask, perhaps because, she does not want me to get embarrassed because I got speechless with her, which has happened a lot.

She laughs like Amma, and sounds just like what she used to sound like seven years ago. However she thinks I sound a lot different. She narrated how she rented a flat with 6 of her friends, and how she is still learning to cook. She was smart enough to get the laundry done, in company guest house washing machine, while she was staying there during the orientation week.

She really talks a lot, digressing from one topic to another in matter of seconds. It is really hard to keep track of what she is saying. Probably because of the stress of talking to her again after so long. It is actually easier to keep track of multiple conflict zones in Go.

I told her my life here in NUS, trying to emphasize the fact that even the exchange students from IIT Roorkee I met, think NUS is tough.

Anyways, it seems I ended the call a bit too abruptly after wishing her for Onam.

Christian 419 Scam

I received this email addressed exactly to my email address bypassing all the well trained spam filters, and with a slightly different Reply-To address than the From address:From: Agatha Adams agathaadams02@yahoo.fr Signed-By: yahoo.frReply-To: agatha.adams002@yahoo.frTo: [My email address goes here]Date: Aug 20, 2007 3:25 AMSubject: Most holy greetingsGate Ethumanitaire 21 B P715 kumassi, Abidjan 00268Abidjan-Cote d’ IvoireDearest in Christ Jesus,Most holy greetings in most holy name of the only true God and Lord our saviour Jesus Christ, May the holy spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. I’m Mrs. Agatha Hope Adams from Bolivia ; I married to Mr. Francis Adams, who worked with Bolivia Embassy in Cote d’ Ivoire for sixteen years before he died in the year 2005.We were married for twenty years without a child. He died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days. Before his death we were both born again Christian. Since his death I decided not to re-marry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which the Holy Bible is against. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $$$2.5.Million under suspense account in one of the famous banks here in Abidjan – Cote d’Ivoire for safe keeping. Presently, my Doctor confirmed to me that I have serious sickness which is cancer problem. The one that disturbs me most is my stroke sickness. Heaven known my condition, I decided to donate this fund to a Christ believer that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein according to Proverbs 22:9,Matthew 6:3. I want a believer that will use this fund for, orphanages, helping Deaf homes , propagating the word of God and to endeavour that the house of God is maintained. For Bible made us to understand that blessed is the hand that gives”. I took this decision because I don’t have any child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are not Christians and I don’t want my husband’s efforts to be used by unbelievers. I don’t want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly way. This is why I am taking this decision. I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going. I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord. Exodus 14 VS 14 says that the Lord will fight my case and I shall hold my peace”. I don’t need any telephone communication in this regard because of the presence of my husband’s relatives around me always for I don’t want them to know about this development. With God all things are possible. As soon as I receive your reply I will give you the contact of the bank here in Abidjan . I want you and the church to always pray for me because the lord is my shepherd. My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy Christian. Whoever that wants to serve the Lord must serve him in spirit and Truth. Please always be prayerful all through your life. Any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another church or born again individual for this same purpose.Please assure me that you will do accordingly as I Stated herein. Hoping to receive your reply soon.Remain blessed in the Lord.Yours in Christ,Mrs. Agatha Hope AdamsStockage illimité de vos mails avec Yahoo! Mail. Changez aujourd’hui de mail !As you can see, this a scam bait for a 419 scam.It could be possible that the scammer has been stalking me using all the abundant online presence I have. Or may be he/she hates me for my atheistic attitudes. Hmm.. I do not think I should attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.. but I choose to be paranoid.

Magic Squares as Vectors to a field of Reals

Pattern 1: Multiplication of a scalar into the quantity and the result is of the same type as the original quantity.

 

is a magic square.

  

is also a magic square.Pattern 2: Add 2 of the quantity and the result is of the same type as the original quantities.

 

In the above statement, the sum is also a magic square.Any quantities that obey Pattern one and 2 are vectors, and hence unit vectors can be defined. The norm a.k.a the magnitude can be defined as the constant sum of magic square.

 

 

  

Since there are seven unit vectors we are dealing with a 7th dimensional space.

 

Testing MathML

$displaystyle{ lim_{xtoinfty} f(x) = k choose r + frac ab sum_{n=1}^infty a_n + left{ frac{1}{13} sum_{n=1}^infty b_n right} }$

Hmm.. looks like it works! But I had to sacrifice the cool look for blockquotes.

Lancet Flukes in our minds