Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep

This may be an urban legend, but apparently this poem was first found among the belongings of a soldier who died in action in Northern Ireland. Nobody knows who wrote it.

Subsequently, claims of authorship of this poem were made, notably by Mary Frye.

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

 

Hitchhiking Through This Dimension

Douglas Adams was priceless. In the third book of the Hitchhiker's trilogy, Life, the Universe, and Everything, a robot called Marvin the Paranoid Android with the "planet-sized brain" demonstrates his immeasurable mental superiority over Zem the Mattress, who is a talking mattress (why not) from the marshy planet of Squornshellous Zeta.

"I gave a speech once," he said suddenly and apparently unconnectedly. "You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."
"Er, five," said the mattress.
"Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?"

---

Douglas Adams died four years ago. Fans all over the world, saddened by the loss of this comic-philosopher with the biting wit, are left wondering. Is he at peace? Is he in a better place? Is he still with us in spirit?

The answer, of course, is forty-two.

The Meaning of Life

"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"
"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."

 In Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, a race of super-intelligent beings constructs a super-intelligent computer called Deep Thought. They then proceed to ask this hypersmart computer the Ultimate Question: What is the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything?

The computer replies that this will take a bit of time and quietly goes into compute mode for the next seven and a half million years. Generations perish and suns collapse before the computer announces that it has finally discovered the answer. The answer, it informs the breathless throng of waiting people, is forty-two.

In algorithm theory, there is a class of problems which are known as NP-hard problems. Problems that belong to this class are mathematically intractable; they have no known solution in polynomial time.

Consider the simple task of searching for a given number within a list of unsorted numbers. We might take a brute force approach and sequentially examine each number until we find the desired one. The upper bound in this case is simply the size of the list. Or we could sort the list and successively divide into equal intervals till we find the interval that contains the number. This is called a binary search, and the worst case performance of such a search is log n, base 2. The run times are polynomial functions.

NP-hard problems, on the other hand, have no known solutions in polynomial time. For example, the classic Traveling Salesman problem goes: A salesman has to visit a certain number of cities as part of a sales tour. He starts at his home city, visits each city on the tour and returns to his home city. There is a cost to travelling between each pair of cities. It is cheaper to travel between cities that are closer together than to cities far away. In what order must the salesman visit the cities so that he visits each city exactly once and the total cost of the tour is the least possible? Alternatively stated, the question is that of finding a least cost spanning path through a graph in which the cities are the nodes and the travel costs are the edges.

The TSP is hellishly difficult to solve for even moderately large values of n, the number of cities. The question seems simple, but the solution is hard.

The most fundamental questions that we ask often seem very simple, yet defy satisfactory answers. I remember reading somewhere that biologists are still in disagreement about what exactly constitutes life. Imagine that. 

Why is there something instead of nothing? 

What is time? 

Why can't we reverse entropy? In Isaac Asimov's words, "You can't turn smoke and ash back into a tree."

We are each looking for personal answers to our own fundamental questions. But as Douglas Adams' computer says, maybe we need to find the right question first.

Or maybe not. Who the heck knows. I need an ice-cream.

A Birthday

The Ides of March happens to be the birthday of my most favorite New Yorker and one of my closest friends.

I got to know Kevin about five years ago, when we were doing a sales call together in Denver--trying to push a softswitch solution to a large telecom company. We arrived in Denver one whole evening early and decided to head to the nearest watering hole. A few hours and a lot of drinks later, we eventually did make it back to our hotel rooms. I think.

If memory serves, we lost that contract in Denver. But we became friends.

We have a lot in common. We are both are involved with technology. We are more than a little interested in ancient and medieval history. We are, in matters of faith, agnostics (on good days) and atheists (on bad days). We both like to go shoot off rifles and handguns on the range on weekends. We both think we know what the "E" in Alfred E. Neumann stands for.

Kevin now lives with his wonderful wife Debbie in Plano, Texas, where we used to live before we moved to this icy wasteland. He occasionally drops me these "eat-your-heart-out-you-twit-whyja-move-to-wisconsin" kinda notes from Plano informing me that the temperature there is a constant 85 degrees. Maybe I'll drag his behind to Milwaukee one of these days and introduce him to the joys of shovelling snow from the driveway.

The historically inclined might find it mildly ironic that he's Irish Catholic, and she's English-Canadian Protestant.

Indian Cricket and American Healthcare

What is the similarity between Indian cricket and American healthcare? They are both rackets. That is the similarity. The difference is that they are different kinds of rackets.

There are two kinds of rackets. I like to call these (a) Orthogonal rackets and (b) Non-orthogonal rackets. Yes, I'm clever like that.

A racket is orthogonal when it doesn't intersect (and therefore affect) our lives directly. An example would be Indian cricket. Indian cricket is a racket by all reckoning. Those on the inside make a lot of money in spite of sustained mediocrity, there is little or no penalty for non-performance and incentive structures exist regardless of results. A classic racket.

One defining characteristic of a racket is that the reward to those who happen to be on the inside is disproportionate to the level of service rendered to those on the outside, and Indian cricket fits this definition quite nicely.

But cricket in India doesn't affect our lives directly. You can always choose to not spend your discretionary income on cricket.

American healthcare, on the other hand, is a racket that intrudes. We have high insurance premiums, high drug costs, and humongous and arcane hospital bills. And healthcare, unlike sports, is not something you can choose to not spend your money on.

To give you an idea of the costs of healthcare in America, here's a personal example. I recently fractured my ankle and needed some fixing. I went to an orthopaedic doctor and he patched me up good. The level of service I received from him would be very similar to what I would receive in India for this particular procedure. But what about the cost? In spite of being one hundred percent covered by my company's health plan, I spent $300 out of pocket for a total of one primary visit (when he put on my cast) and three follow-up visits to the doctor. Converted to INR, $300 would be INR 13,000, give or take. When is the last time you heard somebody in India pay Rs. 13,000 for a non-surgical procedure not involving hospitalization? And this was only my out-of-pocket costs, and not the total cost of the treatment. I haven't calculated the cost of the treatment, but I can imagine how it'll make my eyes bulge if I did.

Studying one of the many bills we got from the doctor during the entire treatment period was enlightening. Here's one item: $1600 for "surgical procedures". The surgical procedure, as far as I could tell, consisted of looking at the X-ray, determining that there was a fracture and putting on the cast. This surgical procedure did not include the cost of the X-ray, or the lab fees, or the cost of the cast. All of these were separate line items. $1600 was the cost of strapping on the darned cast.

I shouldn't be complaining because my company has a health plan that provides 100% medical coverage. But wait, 100% coverage is not to be confused with "covers everything." 100% coverage simply means that whatever the insurance company chooses to cover is covered one hundred percent. For example, when I broke my ankle, I needed crutches to get around. The doctor stressed that I not bear any weight at all on the injured leg because that may cause dislocation of the bones and require surgery. The insurance company refused to cover the cost of the crutches because they deemed it non-essential to the treatment. What were they expecting me to do? Crawl around on my stomach, commando-style, for two months?? The cost of the crutches thus came out of my own pocket. I am sure that a better health plan would have covered the crutches. You get what you pay for, I suppose. But a better plan costs more. I figure that if I choose my own medical plan and forego my company's, I would pay about $500 a month for health insurance out of my own pocket.

I guess I better not get sick much, huh?

Impermanence of Empire

Sic transit gloria mundi, translated as, "The glory of the world passes thus."

History has it that after a Roman general came home after a big victory, he was given the honor of a triumph, a commemorative march through the city.

As the general was towed about in a chariot with the plebs and patricians cheering, behind him stood a slave, whispering into his ear: "Sic transit gloria. This glory will pass. You too, my master, are mortal."

The poem below is Ozymandias, by Percy Shelley. I read it many moons ago. Came across it recently in someone's blog and the memory came back.

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Chaat in Chicago

This Sunday evening after my wife got back from her customary shopping (Ouch!), we decided that we should go have some chaat in Chicago, which is about an hour's drive from where we live. For non-Indians: "Chaat" is an umbrella word for a whole bunch of hot Indian snack food that'll knock your socks off with the heat if you aren't careful. We also wanted to hook up with Parijat, a dear friend who was a junior in my college, and who is now completing his internship at GE.

Parijat comes from an pretty impressive line of soccer players. He is the nephew of P.K. Banerjee, former player and coach of the Indian national soccer team. His other uncle is Prasun Banerjee, a midfielder from the glory days of Bengali soccer. His father used to play for Eastern Railways. Parijat himself is a good player, but did not take up soccer professionally.

But all of that is not Parijat's claim to fame. His claim to fame is that he is an intelligent, mature, witty, and engaging young man who is a terrific friend of mine. Even though he was four years my junior in college when we met, the bond we formed was immediate. A bond of friendship that has endured to this day. Maybe I am getting old, but it somehow touches my heart in a way that I cannot explain when he introduces me to his friends with the words, "Hey so-and-so, this is my brother from Milwaukee." He does not say "friend"; he says "brother."

I have never corrected him.

Anyhow, we met up at one of those hole-in-the-wall chaat places on Devon Ave and sat there and jawed off till almost closing time. We got to talking about Sudip, another dear friend who is back in Bangalore and who, since he was absent and thus unable to defend himself, was mostly in the wrong. Parijat told us about some howlers that Sudip has pulled in the recent past and all of us nearly busted our guts laughing. We laughed till we were almost sitting on the floor and people in the shop were giving us strange looks.

The chaat, unfortunately, sucked. C'est la vie, as the French would say. And the French, I have observed, are usually right about these things.

Educating Rita (and in our spare time, Pakistan)

We Indians collectively spend a lot of time thinking about the shenanigans of our neighbour to the West That would be Pakistan, in case you are geographically-challenged. When the conversation chances on the subject of Pakistan over Saturday evening cocktails, phrases like "nuclear blackmail", "cross-border terrorism" and "airplane hijackings" keep cropping up. Some of us even spend a great deal of time lying awake at night and secretly worrying about who has the bigger...uh, cricket team.

Everybody, including our ever brain-dead government, has a formula for what will succeed in normalizing relations between our two countries. These formulae include, but are not limited to: (1) a bus tour to God Knows Where For God Knows Why, (2) Track II Diplomacy, (3) People to People Contact, (4) lighting candles along the Wagah border (don't laugh, this will help; we just need more candles) and (5) mobilizing a million men along the Pakistan border once in a while. 

The last option in that list does not seem to scare Pakistan, but for some reason seems to scare the Americans. Who in turn, scare the Pakistanis. We live in a strange world.

Well, if everybody can have a formula, why can't I? I therefore declare, without further ado, that I have not one, but two prescriptions for normalizing relations between Pakistan and India. Both are unlikely to work, but are at least as practical as any that I have heard from anybody so far. The first, unfortunately, is rather costly in rupee terms because it involves nuclear weapons (those cost a ton of money), but the second, happily, is rather cheap to implement and involves every non-sterile Pakistani male above the age of eighteen and a blunt pair of garden scissors.

...mu ha ha...mu ha ha ha...mu ha ha ha ha...

Ahem...sorry.

I had a recent conversation with a guy at a party. This guy is a dumb fuck. And yes, he really said this.

He: I believe that Pakistan must develop; this will actually benefit India. It will solve all the problems between us. 

The Wise One, aka Me: What do you mean "develop"? Like develop economically? Will this guarantee that they will suddenly hug trees and beat swords into plowshares? What if they turn out like Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia has a per capita GDP four times higher than that of India. But they are still crazy.

He: No, by development, I mean educate them. That is what I call true development. Education will prevent them from being hostile to us and committing acts of violence against us.

I don't know what exactly education does or does not prevent you from doing, but here's something that education apparently does not prevent you from doing: It does not prevent you from making uneducated, ill-thought-out, and bone-stupid motherhood statements.

I wonder about people like this dumb fuck. It is quite possible that they are confusing literacy with education. Or maybe they entertain the hope that education will automatically lead to some sort of enlightenment. I have news for them. People more often tend to wrap their ideologies around their education rather than the other way around. Education is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for the spiritual enlightenment of a bunch of bigoted people in ideological stasis. I present myself as an example--well educated AND with more prejudices than you can shake a middle finger at. But honest enough to know it.

Let us examine the link between literacy and ideology. Here is a short and very incomplete list of countries with literacy rates higher than India's: Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, China, Libya. One immediately sees with searing clarity how literacy has deeply affected the above countries and softened their respective ideologies to the point of oatmeal mushiness.

I have a bunch of questions about of the link between education and ideology.

Was the Soviet Union uneducated? Did being educated prevent them from clinging on to an unsustainable ideology? Were the Nazis uneducated? Was World War II-era Japan uneducated? The British, who colonized and brutalized half the world...were they uneducated? The Americans who believed in Manifest Destiny, stole land and decimated native civilizations...were they uneducated? Did Francisco Pizzaro not know his letters? Was Hernando Cortez uneducated? Were all the Islamic invaders of India uneducated? Did Aleksandros The Macedonian, who carved a path of destruction across much of the Ancient World for no apparent reason other than dick-waving rights, lack a tutor?

The problem seems to be that they don't really teach enlightenment in college, do they? Nope, education is what you pay for, and education is what you get.

Pakistan, IMHO, needs reform. Education will follow. Actually, to be blunt about it, Islam needs reform. Pakistan will follow.

Just to explore this a little further, let us make a concession. Let us say that India will indeed benefit if Pakistan got a lot of education. What exactly will be the mode of delivering this education? Will India provide this? Will the United States provide this? Because Pakistan itself is certainly not showing much of an interest now, is it?

Aside: Do you think it is a flight of fancy to think that India will someday actually spend money on Pakistan's education? Here's one thing that I have learned in my years of being an Indian: Never, EVER, say never. If you think that India's attempting to educate Pakistan, much along the lines of the US trying to rebuild Iraq, is something that is unlikely to happen, think again. Ten years ago, I would have laughed my head off if someone told me that Indians would elect a lisping half-literate Italian immigrant to the highest office in the country, but who's laughing now?

Here is some added irony. From what I've seen, the same Indians who most believe that India can educate Pakistan and help it with its development, mysteriously enough have a tough time believing that the US can rebuild Iraq. Why this inconsistency?

Why the heck do some of us worry about Pakistan's development? We should be worrying about our own development, which is a significant problem in itself. If anything, we should be worrying about increasing the gap between our development and Pakistan's, not decreasing it.

Why do we live in denial like this? Is it more comforting this way? To believe that all that is needed for the species to collectively evolve into a non-violent non-predatory form is a little education? Or even a lot of education?

And am I being uncharitable when I call human beings violent and predatory? Don't shoot the messenger. Humans have themselves documented just how violent and predatory they are. Yes, there is a document! You will find this document in many places. You will find it in public libraries. You will find it in school classrooms. They even broadcast it on cable sometimes. I have heard that they call it "History".

What is your EQ?

I watched the Academy Awards last Sunday. It was the usual grand affair, of course. Plenty of sound and fury.

At some point during the leading up to the actual Oscars, there was a brief interview with Leonardo DiCaprio. In the interests of disclosure, I am beginning to like this guy. I used to think that this guy was always going to be something of a milkdud, going by his early movies like The Basketball Diaries, The Quick and the Dead (if you haven't watched this particular gem, add +1 to your blessings), and Titanic. But watch his recent stuff like Catch Me If You Can and The Aviator and you see a great actor in the making.

Anyhow, it appears that Mr. DiCaprio is an ardent environmentalist. While the other grand poobahs rolled up in fancy stretch limos the size of a city block, Leonardo puttered in driving a gas-electric hybrid car. This marks him as a decent human being in my book, whatever his other faults may be. There are worse things that you can do than care about the environment. One of the perennially sunny anchors asked Leonardo why he cared about the environment. Leonardo's reply was, "Well we must, because this is the one thing that can't defend itself."

Now, now. I think that there is an incredible amount of anthropocentric hubris in the above statement. It paints the environment as this delicate darling that will wither away to nothing if we don't care for it. The unstated assumption is that the environment is at a happy equilibrium at this moment in time and that it desires to continue to be at this equilibrium. If we bump it out of true, it will be hurt somehow.

Let's call a spade a spade. The earth is fine. It is our own welfare that concerns us. The earth will be perfectly happy at other equilibrium points. It won't be upset in the least. But the situation may not be all that hot for us--to use an expression--if the environment shifts to those other equilibrium points.

Consider for example what if the average temperature of the earth rose a hundred degrees. This would promptly turn most of the terrestrial surface, which does not go underwater, into a scorching hot desert. Would the earth care? Would it be happy? Sure it would. Nature, ever bountiful, will simply spawn a whole bunch of species suited to the extreme climate. If species can live in deep ocean biomes like geothermal vents, then this should be a snap. How about us humans though? Would we care if the temperature climbed a hundred degrees? You bet we would.

I repeat. We don't really care about the earth. There is no need to. We care about us.

Or consider this. What if nature "defended itself" by raising the mean sea level by twenty feet? Would nature be at equilibrium? Yes Virginia, it would. It would proliferate marine life out the wazoo. What about us, though?

Many of us say that we care about the environment and I am not saying that this is a bad thing. On the contrary. But in the interest of accuracy, I would submit that when we say that we care about the environment, what we are really saying is that we care about what will happen to us if we don't care about the environment. We don't care about the environment. Not really. What we care about is our own pockmarked hides.

So the real question is not whether the environment can defend itself. Sure it can. Can we afford to play with it, and wait to see exactly how it will defend itself? No, that would be stupid.