Creation of Life

Why did life start only on the planet Earth? Is it related to its distance from the Sun?
If it was so, then there should have been life on Moon too. The Moon is supposed to have been originated from a collision between a semi-molten Earth and another large heavenly body. In that case, it must have been part of the Earth, billions of years ago. If there was there anything in the Earth's crust that facilitated creation of life, then why did the Moon get left out? Why did it go through a much different evolutionary path? One possibility is that life came to Earth through an external medium. Like a meteorite. Even though it sounds exciting, I find it to be an incredulous theory. It would have been far more believable if the Moon had vast amounts of water like Earth. According to me, it was the Earth's atmosphere and hydrosphere that "created life". Because logically, the moon must have had the same lithosphere (rocks etc). But then, what created the atmosphere and hydrosphere? Probably, the atmosphere was not created from the earth's crust. So, it all gets very confusing in the end. Can somebody throw a light?

IT enabled sweet shops

I just visited Sharma sweet shop, the proximate halwai, for some Sunday evening sweetmeats. On his showcase, I could see a laser print-out stating:

Sharma sweet shop (Contact: XXXXX)
Jalebis and dhoklas would not be available on 10th and 11th Oct 2005

That somehow reminded me of our IT helpdesk mails: "Server won't be available on 20th Oct 2005".
Bangalore is the IT city of India I tell you.

Carl Sagan on Swastika

The swastika appears ubiquitously in pre-historical art and design, sometimes symbolizing good luck, sometimes the sun, and sometimes Brahma (the creator God). The swastika can be found almost everywhere in early human history, with the exceptions being most of Africa and South America. It occurs in Asian, European, African and Native American cultures – sometimes as a geometrical motif, sometimes as a religious symbol. It was used extensively by Hittites, Celts and Greeks, among others.
The ubiquity of the swastika has been explained by three main theories: independent development, cultural diffusion, and external event. The first theory is that the swastika's symmetry and simplicity led to its independent development everywhere. According to the second theory, the swastika symbol spread due to cultural diffusion. It is sacred in Hinduism, which is considered the parent religion of Buddhism and Jainism, both dating from about the 6th century BC, and both borrowing the swastika from their parent. Buddhism in particular enjoyed great success, spreading eastward and taking hold in southeast Asia, China, Korea and Japan by the end of the first millennium. Similarly, the existence of the swastika as a solar symbol among the Akan civilization of southwest Africa may have been the result of cultural transfer along the African slave routes around AD 1500. However, the existence of the swastika symbol in the Americas is a clear challenge to the diffusion theory. While some have proposed that the swastika was secretly transferred to North America by an early seafaring civilization on Eurasia, a separate but parallel development of religious symbolism is considered the most likely explanation.
Lastly, we come to Carl Sagan's reasoning. In his book, "Comet", Sagan reproduces an ancient Chinese manuscript that shows comet tail varieties: most are variations on simple comet tails, but the last shows the comet nucleus with four bent arms extending from it, recalling a swastika.
Sagan suggests that in antiquity a comet could have approached so close to Earth that the jets of gas streaming from it, bent by the comet's rotation, became visible, leading to the adoption of the swastika as a symbol across the world. Very interesting, isn't it?

Vidyapati

Also known as Maithil Kokil Vidyapati (Vidyapati, the cuckoo of Maithili). Vidyapati's position as a poet and maker of language has been described as "analogous to that of Dante in Italy and Chaucer in England."
Vidyapati is primarily known for his love-lyrics, composed in Maithili, a language spoken around Mithila (regions on the northern Bihar region on the Ganga), closely related to the abahattha form of early Bengali.
The love songs of Vidyapati, which describe the sensuous love story of Radha and Krishna, follow a long line of Vaishnav love poetry, popular in Eastern India. This tradition which uses the language of physical love to describe spiritual love, was a reflection of a key turn in Hinduism, initiated by Ramanuja in the 11th century which advocated an individual self realization through direct love. Similar to the reformation in Christianity, this movement empowered the common man to realize God directly, without the intervention of learned priests.
And finally the poem. What imagery I tell you!

All My Inhibition
All my inhibition left me in a flash,
When he robbed me of my clothes,
But his body became my new dress.
Like a bee hovering on a lotus leaf
He was there in my night, on me!

More here

How much money does a man need?

How to answer this perennial question? The difficulty, to my mind, lies in distinguishing between need and greed. Tolstoy "the wise" came to the conclusion that a man does not need more than two yards of land. For all men deserve a decent burial. (Refer short story “How much land does a man need?”)
Unlike Tolstoy, who perhaps looked for answers in religion, I took the refuge of mathematics. Not economics, for economics is a treacherous science, if it is a science at all. So, using game theory, I came up with the following model:
Imagine you are in heaven, waiting for your next birth. You are asked to assemble in a hall, with ten other people. You are not able to know anything about each other. God manifests himself. He says “All of you, take a piece of paper each, and write down the sum of money that you need in your life. Be careful, because you won’t get a penny more than that in your entire life. The person who quotes the smallest sum will be the chosen one. He shall get the entire amount he desires. The rest will get half of the sum the chosen one gets. And beware, you are not allowed to communicate with each other.”
What amount will you quote? Will you factor in a car? Will you take into account a large mansion?

Two ways of travelling

There are two ways of travelling. One is the highly planned, pre-scheduled tour where hotel rooms are booked in advance and each meal of the day is pre-planned. Every morning you wake up, you know what you would be doing for the rest of the day –
9:00 Breakfast
9:30 Bus leaves for beach
9:45 Bus reaches beach
10:45 Bus leaves for Entertainment Park and so on

The second way is to wander mindlessly like a nomad. Needless to say, I prefer this to the surgical precision of organized tours, which treat leisure and business travel alike. According to me, travelling is more about spontaneous urges than well thought over, scientific decisions. Its about letting your feet take you wherever they wish to go. The end result is nothing short of an adventure. What use is traveling if it has the monotony and predictability of your daily office life?
Perhaps the best advice I can give to a fellow traveller is the saying by Lao Tszu:
"A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving"

Wodehouse on commerce

The following is an excerpt from "PSmith in the City" by P.G. Wodehouse. My empathy for Mike (the bank employee) stems from the fact that my feelings for commerce are no different. Let me bring it to the reader's notice that Wodehouse too used to work as a clerk in HSBC. Therefore, these emotions might be regarded as genuine.
"There are some people who take naturally to a life of commerce. Mike was not of these. To him the restraint of the business was irksome. He had been used to an open-air life, and a life, in its way, of excitement. He gathered that he would not be free till five o'clock, and that on the following day he would come at ten and go at five, and the same every day, except Saturdays and Sundays, all the year round, with a ten days' holiday. The monotony of the prospect appalled him. He was not old enough to know what a narcotic is Habit, and that one can become attached to and interested in the most unpromising jobs.
He looked through the letters he had stamped, and re-read the addresses. Some of them were directed to people living in the country…It made him home-sick, conjuring up visions of shady gardens and country sounds and smells…About now, if he were not in this dismal place, he would be lying in the shade in the garden with a book, or wandering down to the river to boat or bathe…Few workers in the City do regard lunch as a trivial affair. It is the keynote of their day. It is an oasis in a desert of ink and ledgers. Conversation in city office deals, in the morning, with what one is going to have for lunch, and in the afternoon with what one has had for lunch."

Harry Potter - the movie

I finally managed to see “Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone”. The movie was not as bad as I had thought. Potter is essentially a potpourri of Tom Brown’s school days, Oliver Twist, Lord of the Rings and the Grimm’s fairy tales. The worst thing about this Potter book is its predictability. However, that would torment you only if are an adult, accustomed to the twist in the tale. Children should enjoy this book immensely. It adds an exciting flavour to their dull school lives (when you are a child, you are sure that school life is dull). As an adult, I prefer to watch the movie version and be through with it in two hours.
Judging on creativity, I would rank Tolkein much higher than Rowling. For most people, even the comparison is sacrilege. Tolkein’s ability to create hundreds of characters and fit them together tightly, like in a jigsaw puzzle, is unsurpassed. Coming back to the comparison, Dumbledore seems to be heavily inspired from the all powerful, yet selfless, Gandalf. Voldemort, the Dark Lord, is something akin to Sauron, desperately attempting to regain his lost power. And Malfoy, like Saruman in LOTR, is helping Voldemort in his ulterior motive. Then, Harry Potter also features an elf who has a vocabulary similar to Gollum. So, Tolkein the king reigns supreme at the top.
Overall, my assessment of Potter is - not as bad as I thought.

A Palestine here, a Lebanon there, Londons everywhere!

Before you blame the Americans for being somewhat lacking in Geography, let me apprise you with some facts. The US has some six Londons, two Bagdads and one Lebanon. Have a look at Texas alone. It is littered with historical places like Athens, Carthage and Palestine. You'll also come across cities like Edinburgh and Paris. Then there are cities named after Newton, Dickens & Dumas. That’s just one state of the US. The Americans truly have “The whole world in their lands”.

Insult of the day

How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunich jelly thou!
---Alex, in The Clockwork Orange

Nice blend of Shakespearean English, Captain Haddock-isms and street-side slang! It very well depicts the feeble intellectualism of Alex eclipsed by his violent nature. That’s why the tagline of the movie aptly said – “Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven.”

Song of the day

When some pretty maiden sulks, she turns prettier
When a train leaves the station, it turns 1-2-3

Adapted from:
Koi haseena jab ruth jati hai to, aur bhi haseen ho jati hai;
Station se gaadi jab chhut jati hai to, ek do teen ho jati hai
----Veeru, in Sholay

The Calculus Affair

I read “The Calculus Affair” some time back. I was reading it for the 4th time, which is much below my overall average for Tintin comics (15+ times). Hence, ample scope for research existed. Ultimately, two interesting facts were unearthed:
1) Herge’s “self-portrait” as a journalist. This can be seen where, following the strange incidents of glass-breaking, Marlinspike Hall becomes a popular tourist spot.
2) The ubiquitous whiskers of Kurvi-Tasch - Used as a swear word, emblem on Nazi-style badges and also as a diacritical mark!
Sadly, all this research can already be found at Wikipedia!

Disposing UK's nuclear waste

Firing nuclear waste into the sun, placing it in Antarctic ice sheets so it sinks by its own heat to the bedrock, or putting it under Earth's crust so it is sucked to the molten core. These are three of the 14 options the government's advisers are considering to get rid of the UK's troublesome nuclear waste legacy.
Nuclear waste stays dangerous for 250,000 years and even the best constructed concrete bunker is likely to need upgrading every 100 years or so.
UK government's estimates it will soon have 500,000 tonnes of higher level nuclear waste it has no home for, even if it never builds another nuclear power station.
Complete news article at http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,9061,1191443,00.html

On Thursday

Thursday is an aberration of Thor’s day (Thor being the Norse God of thunder). It was earlier known as Jove’s day, after the Roman God Jupiter. Since Thor was associated with Jupiter among the Germanic people, Jove’s day became Thor’s day.
Now, among the Hindus, Thursday is called “Guruvaar”, which again means – Jupiter’s day! This is something that I find quite peculiar.
Similar link can be found for Sunday, Monday, Wednesday & Saturday. I am yet to find out the linkages for Tuesday & Friday.