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?