Fish in Water

What does a fish know about the water in which it swims all its life?

- Albert Einstein

The Universe

The Universe
Constantly reveals herself
In all her glory
Pouring her heart
Telling her whole story
Her every little secret
In mirthfully silent giggles
In every moment of every day
In every particle of existence;
And quite unmindfully yet, we ignore
This great miracle unfolding
Right in front of our eyes
Coming up with theories
Providing explanations
Questioning still
Missing completely
This grand telltale picture.

Gin Joints

Of All the Gin Joints, in All the Towns, in All the World, She Had to walk into Mine.

--Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca

Mathematics and Objective Reality

How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things. --Albert Einstein

Thirty two flavors

squint your eyes and look closer
i'm not between you and your ambition
i am a poster girl with no poster
i am thirty-two flavors and then some
and i'm beyond your peripheral vision
so you might want to turn your head
cause someday you're going to get hungry
and eat most of the words you just said

both my parents taught me about good will
and i have done well by their names
just the kindness i've lavished on strangers
is more than i can explain
still there's many who've turned out their porch lights
just so i would think they were not home
and hid in the dark of their windows
till i'd passed and left them alone

and god help you if you are an ugly girl
course too pretty is also your doom
cause everyone harbors a secret hatred
for the prettiest girl in the room
and god help you if you are a phoenix
and you dare to rise up from the ash
a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy
while you are just flying past

i'm not trying to give my life meaning
by demeaning you
and i would like to state for the record
i did everything that i could do
i'm not saying that i'm a saint
i just don't want to live that way
no, i will never be a saint
but i will always say

squint your eyes and look closer
i'm not between you and your ambition
i am a poster girl with no poster
i am thirty-two flavors and then some
and i'm beyond your peripheral vision
so you might want to turn your head
cause someday you might find you're starving
and eating all of the words you said

--Ani di Franco,Thirty two flavors

The most beautiful experience

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

-- An excerpt from the essay "The World As I See It", by Albert Einstein

How strange is the lot of us mortals!

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving... "

-- An excerpt from the essay "The World As I See It", by Albert Einstein

Lessons from Dijkstra...

A recent article on a blog about the "Great Indian Software Engineer" who is really the "Bechara Software Engineer" got me into some serious soul searching. That, combined with the influences of some of the recent lectures of the professor of my Advanced Distributed Computing class, made me think, why not put my "higher" education of an MS degree, to some use, and look at this problem, like a good scientist would, from a research perspective. So although I agree to most of the things said about the people encompassed under the umbrella of "software engineers" in the article, myself included, I would like to conduct myself in the spirit of a true Computer Scientist, and would like to tie this discussion to a more interesting and perhaps more productive analysis by turning attention to the question of: "What real value can software engineers bring towards ensuring mature thought processes in problem solving?" (Think "algorithms"!!!....)

Basically, what role can Software Engineers(ugh!! I hate that term) so I'll stick to "Computer Scientist"(as that's what I would like to think of myself as) play, in inventing novel approaches that can solve fundamental problems in any scenario, indeed even one such as making an underdeveloped nation wrought with problems become an efficient developed nation? This process actually involves, as its most preliminary steps, a lot of reading between lines, quality research and a special genre of laziness. Yes, a laziness, that can effectively cause sharp research minds to come up with elegant solutions and novel ideas such as the shortest path algorithm. For this, even if we have to change our education system, that is currently engaged in the task of producing "clones", then so be it. We shall have to be lazy enough to reject those paradigms, and create an education system that teaches people to be truly lazy, i.e. "inventing".

See:
The Shortest path problem
Dijkstra's algorithm
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Resources from Dijkstra's "EWD" archive

The following is Dijkstra's views on Computer Science education but it is no less than a lesson in "radical novelty" which is a must-read: (hand-written)/(transcribed)

Will sign off with this quote from the above paper, as food for thought -
"The usual way in which we plan today for tomorrow is in yesterday's vocabulary". - Prof. E.W. Dijkstra

We need just a few hundred people in the nation from our vast pool of software engineers that think like Dijkstra. Are the computer scientists listening?

Best,
Useless Banter

Computer Science

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. - Prof. E. W. Dijkstra

Thou hast made me endless

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.

- Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

I slept and dreamt

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. - Rabindranath Tagore

Religion

There remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.

-Albert Einstein

The unreasonable man

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

-George Bernard Shaw

Beauty and Truth

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

- Albert Einstein