A few very incongruous facets ...

Empirical experiment:
Browsing videos on YouTube is probably the best random walk model experiment. Surprisingly I often reach the same videos over and over in a considerable short span of time - hint towards k-degrees of separation.

Consequences of Time travel:
I think life won't continue to be as interesting if we could always go back and could change the happenings. We would lose the motivation to do things to perfection, there would be no need for hard work or no existence of any aspiration. The uncertainty in life keeps us wondering about every tomorrow with a smile. Knowledge will reach stagnation - Einsteins would never die and the advent of newer and fresher minds would be unlikely since the world would never involve taking risks.

Life:
Life is a like a book; but the only difference being, we cannot go back to the previous pages to re-read and understand the situation. If you tear a page in the past, you cannot possibly come back to the present and stick it back at the current page. It just won't fit in there - because the circumstances and the people, all have moved on, save you!

Karma:
I believe life is all about how much you can give away - be it love, be it knowledge, be it service. This is the secret to being rich - love as much as you can - never look back for reciprocation. Spread your knowledge - after all, knowledge is contagious, and you can play a significant role in the knowledge-epidemic. Knowledge is the light to a better world tomorrow. Isn't life therefore about living for the people, even those whom you would probably never meet or never know? Because knowledge and love transcend physical perceptions of familiarity and mutual awareness - a few greater truths we hardly realize in our never-ending hunt for happiness. Happiness? It is right there!

Murphy's Law gets Empirical...

This is the story of my "interesting" life (read a sarcastic tone here). Yesterday was one of the most memorable days yet - though unfortunately it won't go down with any sweet memory.

I slept about three hours when I woke up on Friday morning; but has to rush to lab for the paper I am working on right now for the June 3 deadline (CIKM '08). I had thought of using a nice mathematical construct in my model, so was all excited to be at the lab as soon as possible. I took the bus as usual, as I have been doing all the while this semester.

By 3 pm, I was really sleepy. One of my friends at the department let me know of some free food upstairs, so ran to grab them - ice cream cake, cookies and soda. After the food, no way I was able to stay at the lab. I decided I will leave.

I took the bus back and reached Tempe Public Library where my car is usually parked. I suddenly thought I will get some Indian food from a nearby store. So started driving there.

It was a light rail inclusive road, and I had to turn left. Sleepy as I was, I did. By the moment I turned in, I saw flashing red light and the Police buzzing behind. It was a huge cop on a motor bike. Herein is the story's climax. LOL.

It was not the first time I got pulled over, so I was prepared what to do. But things were not that simple. He asked me why I made the illegal turn - obvious answer I did not notice (implicitly I was sleepy probably, but could not tell him this). This was not the end of my stupidity. He asked for my insurance, and what I realized I did not have the renewed insurance card! I told him, I have insurance, just that I don't have the card as of now. I suggested if he could look up his database using either the VIN number of my car or my license. To add salt to the already messed situation, he said he does not have access to that database.

He wrote me two tickets - one for moving violation, and the second for no proof of insurance. The first one is the first traffic offense in the past one year, so he said I could get away without getting points on my insurance by doing traffic school. And for the second, I have to go to the court within the next one month and show that I have had the insurance at that point of time - and the second ticket then goes away.

So the scene is, I have go to the court to show my insurance, and then I have to do 4.5 hours of traffic school, that costs like ~ $ 130. Very sad situation :(.

I had been a decent driver all this while - never got any tickets till this one. I always drive within speed limits and have been good at abiding rules to the best of my knowledge. Not even that sleep was a problem - I did Grand Canyon (alone drove to and fro from Tempe) on a Saturday and Las Vegas (alone drove to and fro from Tempe) the Sunday after. And nothing happened - everything was just fine, even though I was kind of tired driving some 1300 miles in two consecutive days.

But I guess sometimes life just simply follows Murphy's law - "whenever anything can go wrong, they will." I saw the empirical proof - I could have just gone home and slept and none of this would have happened!

I hate mistakes in life that I commit. And failing oneself never feels good...

Community Visualization

Your participation on Blogger might have evolved as a part of one of these communities in the diagram above. Each bubble is a community. It is based on some experiments I did.

The Moon and the Bread Analogy

Suddenly I got reminded of the following two lines from a famous Bengali poem by Sukanta Bhattacharya,

Khudhar rajjey prithibi goddomoy,
Purnimar chad jeno jholshano ruti

which means,

"Poetry, we do not need you anymore. A world devastated by hunger is too prosaic, The full moon now reminds us of toasted bread"

Life is more of prose than sweet rhythmic poetry. And each of us have some responsibility towards warding off that perception of Moon and bread. The world needs us, some way, sometime, somewhere.

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On a lighter note, today I increased my reportaire of cooking greatly. I made "aaloo paratha" meaning Indian flat bread stuffed with spiced mashed potatoes from scratch - getting the atta, kneading it into a dough, rolling and stuffing it and then baking it on a flat pan. Two tips - they go really well with sweet lemon pickle or hot and spicy potato curry. Here is a picture of what I made.

A Busy Note...

I don't like myself for not having been able to blog for such a long time! Just that things have been too busy - semester getting over and one of the most important conference's deadline nearing on June 3rd. I am trying my best to make it a good paper.

The idea of black holes / Big Bang kind of singularity based community analysis in social networks is one idea I want to expand upon as well. It sits nicely on my desire to use natural sciences concepts in my research. For that I want to target either of the two conferences, one due on July 10 and the other on August 11. Let us see how it goes. The other motivation for this work is that both these conferences are out of country - one in Syndey and another in Spain. A very big motivation to work harder - now do you see why I am not blogging enough? :P

But I am concentrating on the task at hand. Today has been another of the night-out days - but today I did it without coffee! Yeah, and I am also trying to minimize my addiction for caffeine. Tea is working out to be a good alternative - green tea or some nice Earl Grey without sugar / creamer.

Other things in life, like cooking, sleeping still continues. But have minimized much on shopping! Rest for later!

Love and Life's Obsession

What happens when you get obsessed with something? What does it imply to start liking and loving something too much? Do you get sleepless nights? Do you drink ten cups of coffee everyday? Does it anyways touch any tip of your insanity iceberg?

The feeling has been recurring in my life. Reasons have been wide and varied, but they all had a consistent thread - the desire to achieve something, to accomplish something. And the desire sprang from a very honest love of the subject in question.

I am sure many of you have been through such phases. However, the sleeplessness and the insomnia phases somehow frequent me more often than anytime before. Obsession is to such a degree that you feel like loving it all at once! Live life all in one moment!

It has mostly been six cups of coffee a day. And a life hunting for a new way to look at a mundane thing - "how people communicate". This is precisely what defines my current love - research. The sleepless phases are more frequent, but I enjoy them to the fullest.

What do you think about love for something which would never turn a deaf ear to you? Can your love and work match? Can your obsession find a vent to a "free"er world?

Research would never move away. It is perpetual, just as the love of things in my life have been. We might overrate love and move on, but the pining inside the heart is always there. But for once with research, I hope never to crunch that pining inside the heart.

The moral of the story is, love, live life and live your untainted abstract obsessions. Who cares about reciprocity? Life has more colors than the rainbow - you just need an eye for it!

Forgiveness: One Life Ain't Enough...

The most beautiful virtue is probably the ability to forgive others. Human beings have been ruling the Earth since the past few thousand years; adorned by our ability to think, rationalize and reason. Forgiveness is a wisdom, a virtue to be better individuals.

I want to work for the people - everyone. I want to let go past grudges; life is too short to spend like that. There is a bigger picture. We are made of flesh and blood, and that's where I want to work for.

As one of the songs in Taare Zameen Par goes, we have a thousand wings and a sky to climb in front of us. One life ain't enough to fulfill all of our dreams. But one thing I want to accomplish in this life, I want to forgive everyone for whatever reason differences have had cropped up in the past. And I want to work and spend the rest of my life for everyone.

This is my pursuit of happiness in life.

Walked I aforth in quest of that happy certain,
Forever it took in the rugged terrain of dark mountain;
A mind and body - heavy with the coal of grudges,
Till it dawned that forgiveness could take it all abreast.

I now see a soul everywhere,
A life I want to lead without letting it go haywire;
I want to kindle that candle of knowledge,
A time I want to spend, a tribute to all as a token of towage.

Stress, Life and Grad School

Doing PhD is now getting nasty. Too many deadlines to meet. The ever-heightening greed to materialize all your research ideas - get them published. Coursework, none the less as well. The desire to get noticed in the research community. Keep up with the new upcoming work being done so rapidly (read literature very frequently to keep up the pace). Writing efficient code - preventing the reinvention of the wheel. The increasing complexity of the math model. Even including organizing and backing up the data properly, year after year. And the list could go on.

There are mostly no insights in this blog post; other than the self realization of how busy life has gotten already and how much more it is going to get in the next 2-3 years. I am about to be done with my coursework next semester, so that brings up the question of whether I could take the comprehensive and proposal defense in next Spring. Not sure - depends on a lot of factors. But I think I know my thesis problem - have a broad idea. Let's see how it goes.

In a way these short term deadlines, work stress and always the penchant to learn more and discover more is the most beautiful time of grad school. All this is keeping me very busy, and although right now I am stressed, but I am loving it in a way. Makes me cross over the past - focus and look forward to something else in the near future.

I met a senior researcher from Adobe Research, Boston yesterday. Rightly said by him, grad school is the best time to try and feel free to do whatever that interests you; if your advisor lets you do that, it is perfect. Else the leisure time is always there - after all, research is a passion so could be a hobby as well. It is true - I want to make use of this time of my life in the best possible manner. He was also saying, grad school is also so nice because you don't have to worry about life - getting married, having kids, their education, your professor tenure, and the list goes on.

Though neither marriage, nor kids (of course not their education as well!) or being a professor (a long term goal ideally) isn't at all on my cards as of now and this would be the same for quite a long time I guess. But sure, it does seem grad school is really the last time you get to breathe and feel independent in whatever you want to do! I wonder why it is not so apparent!

The Rift between Industry and Academia?

The gulf of difference in the research approach in the industry and the academia is markedly astounding. Recently there was this article on the Wired blog about how Google is losing grounds in advertising with the new Web 2.0 tools coming up. The article is here. It describes how, even with the rich and extensive user data as well as data about a person's online social activities (e.g. Orkut) Google has been sticking to its conventional "search" ideas to targeted advertising and therefore losing grounds monetarily.

I work on social networks broadly and my research deals tremendous impact on tomorrow's new definition of targeted advertising. So I am rather dumb-founded finding out how Google is targeting advertising in a social media simply based on analysis of the textual content. This might have several limitations:

1. On a social media, the content on a person's page could be generated by the person or by his contacts or even by people who aren't related to the person in any way. Targeted advertising focused on the person and based on the textual content would therefore fail.
2. The person might receive a lot of spam messages / scraps (note, certain people on a social network could be spam, which a conventional spam detection algorithm can't possibly find out; "splog detection" is a separate research area therefore). However the context of these spam is no way related to the user.
3. In a very natural setting of the society, people acquire roles in communication. When I go a party, I know that Jane is the girl most outgoing and likely to know loads of people - a role culling out of Jane's interactions with people. Why not target such people for targeted advertising?
4. The article apparently talks of a small company like a start-up which is exploiting this idea of Influencers in the social networking advertising domain. However, they are missing out on another interesting attribute of people in a social network - that some of us are more susceptible to certain kinds of information than others. Some of us are inherently vulnerable to the influencers.

This is the strong point of surprise and rift with the academia. We have known from simulations (ref. Duncan Watts) that flow of information in a social network depends on mining the vulnerable people as well. And through our work on MySpace (still ongoing work for a journal), we want to establish the empirical validity as well. But the interesting issue is, is the industry not aware of this powerful idea? Or they don't really care about it?

Google with its million Terrabytes of data, could actually work wonders in realizing a dream of putting social networks to very strong use beyond the commonplace "friend-of-friend" notion!

Thoughts on 'God Created Man?'

Disclaimer: This post is not written to hurt anybody's feelings about God, religion or anything else related to them whatsoever. We live in a free world, expressing ourselves within our own dogma.

In my previous post I was asked to pen my ideas and thoughts on the issue of whether God created Man. So here they go.

I keep on returning to this topic in my thoughts very often - question myself and seek answers, read extensively on the recent developments in Physics and Philosophy that might reflect on this issue even remotely. So my thoughts are really diverse in this matter. But in a one liner, I don't think God created Man.

We can think human beings to be complex molecules that generated on Earth due to evolution - we are just like any complex machine, but with some characteristic traits like the ability to think, to reproduce and reason. And we are ridiculously intelligent - any complex molecule that can reach a zenith of who created him has to be really smart!

Now comes the question of why we were created - also why are we the way we are. The question draws back to why and how the universe was created. There are contradicting arguments among physicists about it, but the most widely accepted idea is that the universe was created out of a singularity, like the Big Bang. Of course the probability of a singularity occurring and the creation of complex molecules on one of the zillions of planets does not really sound like a planned Godly creation!

There is also the theory of multiverse, a hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise all of reality - every dimension could be explained by a different universe governed by its own set of laws. Hence in our perceived sense of three spacial dimensions and the fourth dimension time, it is possible to think that things of life occurring on Earth could have been a planned approach and describe the way things fell in place. But the reality we might might just be an illusion and could possibly have several dimensions (unknown to us) which could explain the possible creation of universe and the subsequent origin of life. So sitting in some remote corner on Earth, the chances that the millions of physical and chemical interactions would result into some complex intelligent molecules seem rather coincidental from our limited perspective!

The other side of the debate believing in the Godly creation might resort of ideas such as the anthropic principles that constitutes a "lazy way out" of accounting for features such as the apparent fine-tuning of parameters in relation to the existence of life. However, I believe the frame of reference matters. Anthropic principle saying that everything was created with a purpose in mind - a purpose to explain the existence of life on Earth, seems to be rather conditionally biased by our identity. If we could change our frame of reference and forget for a moment that we are a part of the principle's purpose itself, we might see the degree of randomness.

However we tend to observe that many real life problems could be solves deterministically and aren't very random (chaos theory). This beats the idea of a chance and advocates the anthropic principles of existence of life. The principle says that:

• If there were a large number (possibly infinite) of different physical laws (or fundamental constants) in as many universes, some of these would have laws that were suitable for stars, planets and life to exist. The anthropic principle could then be applied to conclude that we would only consciously exist in those universes which were finely-tuned for our conscious existence. Thus, while the probability might be extremely small that there is life in most of the multiverses, this scarcity of life-supporting universes does not imply intelligent design as the only explanation of our existence. Critics of this argument point outthat the cause and the effect have been reversed by those who claim that the universe seems to be fine-tuned for our benefit. Critics cite the vast store of evolutionary evidence which shows that life is perfectly and naturally tuned to the universe it arose in. Fossil, genetic and other biological evidence abundantly supports the observation that life adapts to physics, not the other way around. **

I am not trying to place any sort of convincing idea here that God does not exist, and that obviously could not have created Man. But as the scientific arguments say, there isn't enough evidence to support the presence of a super power. But I am not demeaning the readers who think otherwise. It is a free world and everyone has the right to cherish his or her own set of beliefs. The catch being, none of the schools of thought have much clinching evidence to support their beliefs.

There is a thin line of difference between belief and truth. Who knows what the truth is! It is our beliefs for now, and as far as they take us! To quote what Wikipedia says, "The hope is sometimes expressed that once a grand unified theory of everything s achieved, it will turn out to have a unique "solution" corresponding to the observed universe."

However, it seems less likely that all the physical laws were intentionally fine-tuned for conscious life as we experience it - ruling out the possibility (as of now) of God having created Man with any conscious purpose.

** Wikipedia: Multiverse

Technology and Us

Who does not love to, or at least compulsively use technology today? Everyone of us do, in some way or the other - be it for our education, our business, or for our pleasure. But what we expect out of technology is very astounding and strikingly different. This is coupled by what we expect from technology compared to what it could possibly cater to!

You ought to find sometime to take a look at this section in Wired which apparently hosts photos as "badges of honor for human freedom fighters around the globe". If you are not clear what this means, it shows the best ten pictures depicting some gruesome fate some of us have brought to technology from time to time - ranging from hammering down laptops, burning motherboards, thwarting computer monitors or cracking Blackberries! Yes, you read all this correctly, and trust me, some of us do really engage ourselves in such activities!

The point of this blog is however, not to criticize those people - they could draw any possible fate to their technological gadgets. What I am rather trying to point out here is much profound - our life's inter-twining with technology.

Man develops technology to find a servant to cater him better. Sometimes these endeavors strives to quench our intellectual thirst, nurture our intellectual curiosity. But time immemorial has seen technologies turning into vices rather than confining themselves to human virtues or the Earth at large. It is our responsibility; blaming the technology is simply wry.

In the article people have expressed dissatisfaction at compatibility issues or issues like certain gadget getting out of vogue. However, man who, today is so much dependent on technology possibly has lost a sense to think coherently that cursing the technology is lame, everything is subject to temporal evolution. Technology is meant to make us wiser, not to cringe our logic. It is in the benefit of Nature that technology is still made the servant and we the masters. Its vices are not inherent in it, but it is us who need to be more responsible.

If you have considered leaving Orkut or Facebook because you are annoyed with fake and junk profiles, and you curse the whole online social networking technology for that, whom would you blame those junk (or not-so-liked) people in the real world in the very first place?

Blame game does not make us wise; let us use our conscience to develop into more responsible and sensible individuals.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional

I just read somewhere: Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. But ironically enough, we often spend our precious times suffering from the ordeal that pain causes us. We fail to take the pain as a part of life, we fail to realize that life is sometimes governed by circumstances over which we don't really have control, we retract from learning from the sources or causes of the pain. We suffer, till time turns into an eternal savior to relieve us.

The toughest thing in life is how to look ahead and not turn around and look back - whether golden times or dreary moments. If you can look way into your future, you will see that life can be made beautiful again. It can again be adorned with all the love, care and success that are sought after.

We cannot change the past, unfortunately. But we can define our future. Past is gone - a remnant left in the sands of time, a few grains of sand that have run through the sneaks of our hands. Just let it go. After every sunset, there is always a sunrise.

We have heard and read about it so many times at so many occasions. People, things or circumstances that cause our pain deserve forgiveness; but suffering for their inflicted pain ought not be our cup of tea tomorrow morning. Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

Life is to look forward - and I can already see, admire and breathe in its beauty.

Quote of the Day: Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Why Religion? Why Not Science?

If you have been following the democratic presidential candidates and the programs and bills they seem to be approving, debating on or thinking to work upon, you will see most of them are things like health care, immigration problems, religion, terrorism, education etc. These are definitely the burning issues for elections in any country today, and the politicians need to have clarity in their policies towards tackling these problems; more so, because they connect directly to any commonplace person in the country - these define the basis of our existence and society today. However it is very interesting to note their inclination towards exploiting the issue of religion, often to their own benefit, than participation in a science debate! Is it because people are more sensitive to religious issues than science? Is it because people connect to religion more, and take science rather for granted, or to be something which only a handful of people take interest in?

If you would take a peek into the Wired blog to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest technological endeavors, you will notice that as reported here, the two most promising candidates for the 2008 presidential elections, Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama, refused to attend a science debate, whereas in their other debates they would directly or indirectly always pull up the issue of religion.

It is unfortunate that the politicians who are going to spearhead a nation for probably the next two tenures are turning a deaf ear to scientific issues. Scientists and environmentalists from round the globe are worried about global warming and energy crises, and a nation where power is dissipated almost next to wastage, a nation whose main backbone runs on power mostly derived from non-renewable exhaustive sources, these two issues are customary to be considered for a whole next generation's survival. The count of deadly challenging diseases are not on a dip, rather everyday reaching newer heights beyond the expertise our current technology possesses. Under such situations, America needs probably a more scientifically-conscious candidate. Despite the fact that both Obama and Clinton have their own set of skills in certain policies, and they have huge public thronging behind them, their outlook towards scientific issues are rather disappointing.

The question remains, how is America's next President going to define the fate of this country or the ones associated, about issues that are currently being pushed back so much...

Tandoori Casserole

Do try this innovative but really simple recipe! This serves three people.

Main dish:

Ingredients:
Green, yellow and red bell peppers (4 nos.)
Yellow and red onions (2 large nos.)
Large Tomatoes (3 nos.)
Freshly cut Pineapple pieces (1 / 4 th of a whole pineapple)
Salt
Red chilly powder
Garam masala
Ginger Garlic paste
Yogurt
Vegetable Oil

Method:

First of all cut all the vegetables in 1 inch x 1 inch square sizes. Now in a large bowl, mix the vegetables with salt, red chilly powder, garam masala and ginger garlic paste and leave it covered for 30 minutes. After that pour yogurt and little bit of oil on the mixture and further mix well. Cover it and leave it on your pantry for another one hour. In the meanwhile turn on the oven to 350 F. After the mixture is ready, pour it over in an oven safe casserole and turn it inside the oven. Keep checking and after 30- 45 minutes the casserole should be done!


Side(s):

This thing should go well with mashed potatoes or jeera rice.

To All the Teachers...

The biggest challenge of teaching is how to explain a higher level concept using lower level ones. You can always explain lower level concepts by higher level concepts e.g. explain a triangle using a random walk model - you start from any node and traverse the edges with random probability. If you come back to your starting point in exactly three hops, then the figure is a triangle. Interestingly, the point to note here is that triangle is a kinder garden concept, whereas random walk model is a senior level or graduate level concept in stochastic processes.

But observe how challenging it was for our kinder garden teachers to make us learn math, arithmetic / counting or the language alphabets. We didn't have any sort logical background absolutely, and that made it all the more difficult! Teaching graduate level courses are much simpler. The instructor knows the people in the class are smart enough and have an inherent niche for acquiring knowledge and exploring things without much external intervention. And with easily available knowledge sharing paradigms like the Web, learning for grown-up people with certain logical look-out has become all the more easy.

The greatest of the teachers are therefore probably not someone who taught me random walk model in grad school. Rather it is someone who taught me plane geometry or arithmetic. It is not about whether or not I could understand the string theory in physics, but how did I learn the three laws of gravitation.

Teachers have a great role to play for a new upcoming generation - they mould them, trigger the intensity in them to acquire newer knowledge and think out of the box. They are responsible for inspiring and reaching a much wider array of inquisitive folks. And that's is the trigger for a civilization's progress towards a far-reaching utopia.

To me, knowledge is nothing unless it is shared - it is the only thing which if you give away, you get richer. And teaching, to me, is the most noble profession. My heart-felt regards and thanks to all the people who have played the role of teachers in my life, to all the people from whom I have learnt something so valuable enough, that it could attempt to make me a little better in life.

Party

Saturday was a busy day - some pics of the evening outing...

Life is difficult. Often we are not sure what we really want, or rather what would make us happy. We run across the illusive river of life, thinking the grass on the other side is always greener. Until we get really done with life, and feel like running away from everything. Has this happened to you ever?

To err is human

To err is human. It is so true that it cannot be emphasized any more. But how many of us rectify ourselves - learn with those experiences? Even if we do, are people around us ready to forgive us?

The question also is, sometimes we just try to rectify our lives instead of our real mistakes. We start hating the cause of the mistake - "yes, I did this [mistake] because X was acting weird..."

It is so easy to push off our own faults to someone or something else. The exam went bad because the question paper was so freaking hard. I have no time for tennis, because of so much work. I had break up with her because she was not being so nice to me. And the list could go on.

I am not saying that those people lie. It is probably true in some respect. But no problem is unsolvable, I believe. If the exam was hard and you didn't do well, then work harder the next time. If things are not being so nice between you and your significant other, then talk it out and make things fine. I am a firm believer that it all lies on our own will to make things right in life. No another person is to blame, or no another thing deserves to be hated.

When things start going wrong, we seem to take the shortest and the easiest way out. We blame the symptoms of the problem, instead of going in and trying to find why things are wrong. Hatred is seemingly such an easy solution, unfortunately.

"Random" Musings

For the gen X people (like you and me), have you ever realized how many times you use the word "random" in your conversations? Just look back and see - I was almost freaked out today!

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I suddenly realized that the handful of people I talk to most recently, I talk only in English. Going back to 2001-03 since when I lost touch with Bengali other than talking to parents and roommate, seems like now I am losing ground on Hindi altogether as well. I ran into this girl I know in my department in the elevator, and happily asked "To exam kaisa tha kal?" I felt so weird - felt like after ages I am talking in Hindi. And more astonishing, after a couple of sentences couldn't but get to English suddenly. Sad, sad. I don't want to lose my confident grasp on the three languages any time.

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The new domain of my research interest is, can we find a mapping between the second law of Thermodynamics and communication evolution in social networks? How does entropy fluctuations affect our communication? If you have any insights on your personal communication behavior, do let me know!

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This talk I have been waiting to attend since quite sometime - but to utter disappointment didn't find it very interesting. Surprisingly don't know why none of the students tend to ask any questions!

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I made nice chicken tacos today for lunch - should be able to post its recipe soon. A quick dinner suggestion, if you have left over daal from last night and wondering what to get for lunch the next day, I make it easy for you. Make the daal thick by boiling and evaporating most of its water. Take a couple of corn tacos and stuff it with the thickened daal, lettuce, hot salsa, avocados and cilantro. A very healthy quick lunch is ready for you!

More next time - on some heavy philosophical stuff. By the way, what is your take on smoking?

Find out your Love Language

I feel love is anyways over-rated - a complex emotional artifact of the living mind. The site says, unhappiness in relationships is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don't understand our partner's requirements, or even our own. We all have a "love tank" that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others.

The question is, how many of us really understand this, till it is too late to rectify things?

My Primary Love Language is Quality Time.

My Detailed Results:
Quality Time:	11
Acts of Service:	6
Words of Affirmation:	6
Physical Touch:	6
Receiving Gifts:	1

Take the Quiz!

Our growing "Technical" Sense of Humor

I am amazed at the complexity in which things evolve over time. We grow - and surprisingly enough we often don't realize it until we look back!

When we were kids, I remember the April Fool days - the worst jokes would be "look there is a bird shit on your head" - and that was it - fool the friends! Technology has entered deep into our blood now, especially the past ten years - thanks to all the web technologies. Consider all the April Fool hoaxes that Google has been coming up with since as early as 2000! You can find a full list here. Please refer to the very funny ones like the Google TiSP where they intended to provide free high speed internet using the power from flushing your toilet; the Google WakeUp kit where they are determined to wake you up in the morning, going as far as spilling a bucket of water on you; and of course this year's hoax of the Custom Time where they apparently solved the issue of the grandfather's paradox! To add more fun April Fool hoaxes: that Taco Bell has bought the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and named it Taco Liberty Bell and that Bill Gates was shot dead by a lone gunman at a charity event! Some of them do sound ridiculous, and some not so nice.

Coming back to jokes - thanks to all these websites hosting so much geeky jokes - phdcomics and XKCD. The funniest part is, they say,

• Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).

Good fun stuff!

On a different note, I am planning on starting a research blog soon under this blogger profile. You are welcome to visit that, should you like bubbling ideas and crazy thoughts on future technology!

Pandora's Box (not of Troubles) but Facets!

This is probably going to be a post mixed with several ideas that have been running through my mind in the past two-three days (might be the whole week also!). Some of them are internal reflections, as I always write, some are amplifications of certain things I never cared to think about; and some are simply the typical blogging materials. Here they go.

Part I (Research)

I met this guy on Thursday who is a researcher at Microsoft Research, Redmond. As illustrious his academic and professional career might be (MIT / MSR / innovative research etc), his talk made me think of an altogether different perspective to the way one can look at one's research problem. He had come to visit AME (the lab I work at) and I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to talk to him about my research. A few nice insightful pointers he gave about thinking on a research problem: the research problem should be one which you can connect to. This guy works on developing music from several bits of notes, and he himself is really into music composition. I also saw my advisor so much into multimedia research - he is an awesome photographer. Now the question comes, how do I connect to my problem of communication dynamics in social networks? Once my advisor told me, it's nice I was so much into observing how people communicate on social networks, because I am myself so much active on Orkut and Facebook. But personally this guy's talk made me feel, I need to find more interesting avenues for that connection. Also doing research is almost like being in love. The more we harbor the chemistry or the connection, the stronger is the bond! :)

Part II (Fun - the movie Race)

I went to watch this movie Race on Friday night with some friends. It was good fun, as far as going out (and not typical Friday night outing with drinking!) was concerned. Topped with the explanation that I was watching a Hindi movie (in a theater) after a long time, after Om Shanti Om last semester, which I re-watched with someone again on the computer in Winter. The movie (Race) is full of twists - almost like too many cooks spoil a kitchen. Katrina was terrible - she really needs to work on her acting. Saif was kind of good. And I don't like Bipasha (no, despite being a Bengalee).

Part III (Socializing)


Saturday was a small get together day with the AME people - and I once again had a wonderful opportunity to try nice cooking! It was barbecue, so I marinated chicken thighs (boneless) and some veggies (bell peppers, green onions and tomatoes) with yogurt, salt, red chilly powder, lemon juice, garam masala and ginger-garlic paste. It was good fun.

Somehow I felt, however much I try to impress upon myself that chilling out alone in the weekend is so relaxing, yet we all are social animals. Socializing always helps - a big take away from the wrecks we go through all the time.

Part IV (Regularity in life)

I have been working out daily (yeah, daily, for those who know me in and out, ain't I religiously into fitness now?) all this week (skip Friday). It is amazing - kind of turns into something which if you don't do, you don't feel good. Running on the treadmill is good fun and gives you a good night's sleep after a tiring day at work!

I have also been cooking everyday this week, and getting food for lunch. Trust me, it is much tastier and you can control you likeness for variety in food. Yes, it is healthier as well. And I just figured out, with certian basic elements of cooking items and a little bit of experimentation, you can almost cook everything!

Waking up early is also so amazing! It makes the day feel much longer. And in a place like Arizona soon hitting the 90's in the temperature, morning cores are fun. I woke up 8 am today, and already enjoying and chilling the day out! Late afternoon, the work starts.

It is not always the technical contribution that matters...

Enough has been said time and again whenever the topic of the first ever solely women Computer Science conference Grace Hopper came into discussion with most of my male friends. It is unfortunate but most of them find it difficult to digest the very idea of it.

I know it is strange. It is something which was not ever done before, and something which is like re-writing history for most women gatherings round the globe. When I attended the conference last year, it was a record with 1,400 women attending it - the largest women gathering in the world!

Let us move beyond facts and figures. Anybody reading this, irrespective of gender, would agree how minuscule is the women representation in engineering, coupled with the size of the women community in research. When I was in college, women representation was less than 15 % in Computer Science. This is really unfortunate, given the fact that population-wise men and women counts are almost comparable.

Most of you would say, women probably aren't smart enough. I won't repeat the cliched feminine dialogues. I agree women don't much have a technical bent of mind (of course there are many exceptions to this) - in fact, they are more creative in different ways. But as I stand being part of a really creative research community, I see that many women could make a lot of difference, because they are creative. Nevertheless, sadly, when I went to PerCom in 2007, I was the only woman speaker in the whole Workshop session!

Coming back to the point of Grace Hopper. This conference is a little different from others - its primary goal is not really making a technical contribution, rather it is a platform where in an aspiring woman struggling to find her unique identity in the society gets an opportunity to meet other aspiring women who think alike. It is also a great way to meet successful women - I got to meet the first woman Turing Award winner in the world when I went to the conference last year. And this wasn't the end. Meeting other successful women and learning their stories is a big moral support to many of us wanting to make a difference.

I am not saying let it be a all woman world - or similar things like woman dominated world. Any gender dominating the other seems strange and against the way the world evolved and Nature exists. Man and woman are two sides of the same coin - two inherent aspects of life. No one can exist without the other - this is as much true biologically as it is in every other mundane aspect of our lives and civilization.

I just wish to see something much lower down than this big picture - I want to see a research community luring both genders equally and a reasonable gender representation. And Grace Hopper is a wonderful means to feel encouraged. After all it made me really feel, "I Invent the Future."

Our Political Ramifications

When I was a kid and the news of the European Union (EU) being formed was in the offing, my Dad used to say that this might be a great step towards a new concept of political geographical re-organization of the world. It was 1993, a time just after the Cold War ended. And as far as I look back, I can draw my senses to understanding politics and all what I was told and saw on the TV is the concept of the world categorically divided into two (or three) sheds - supporters of US and those of the then USSR. Dad used to tell me that though India was highly inclined to USSR, it rather maintained a neutral attitude (and there comes the third genre of countries) in terms of world affairs.

Things in the world political scene were dramatically changing, one with the end of the Cold War, and secondly this whole new concept of the European Union. As a matter of fact, the very idea of having a single GDP and currency among so many countries was intriguing!

Dad told me that may be this new culture would spread wider and deeper, and become more rampant. More countries would probably embrace this idea. Instead of fighting wars and spending millions on defense every year, countries could be stronger if they got geographically coherent in certain aspects. Only time had to tell what was going to happen. But even at that point of time, despite being a kid, I used to think that things could be so much nicer if the whole of South Asia could join hands together and form some kind of what EU was going to do.

And now we stand here today - the hatred and the tendency of countries to wage wars is only going higher. But look at EU. They did well - they are actually a big competitor for the US currently in so many terms, starting from middle-eastern oil purchases. Why can't the rest of us learn something from these guys?

I have so many times been faced with the question: why don't you plan to go back to India and do research? I am kind of speechless at those points. Not because I don't like going there, but because how does it matter? I believe whatever I wish to do would benefit the research community (and in far reaching effects probably the society), irrespective of the country I live in. But there is always this sense of "who is the better one among countries" thing going on - and the consequence, people really asking me to pick one place over the other.

All this sprang up into my mind when I watched the movie The Day After Tomorrow yesterday night. Though based on a really blown up science, the political surge in US was interesting. The fact that a US President makes his first statement on a foreign soil Mexico was a token to the very concept of "one world". But it took so much in the movie to reach that point - it took the whole humanity befall a massive climatic change like the Ice Age. Is it possible that we realize this, before we have to pay heavy prices as people did in the movie?

I want to live in a world where we live unbounded and work for the mankind. The political ramifications are only going to tear us apart. But I don't know who is to blame, or for that sake, who can really fix this. How do we start thinking of a much bigger picture than our little village or city or country?

Walking the Aisle of Our Intellectual Curiosities

Today I was reading this article on New York Times where they report that Hubble has dicovered methane (a basic ingredient in the evolution of life on Earth) was found - methane plays a big role in forming carbon-di-oxide and mono-oxide which in turn play key roles in formation of life. Though the article also says that the possibility of living creatures actually existing there is very low due to one side of the planet facing a star and another side freezing all the time, the research was quite an endeavor!

And the list could probably continue: there have been so many attempts till today to harness man's curiosity to find life elsewhere in the universe. And it is immensely intriguing to us (including me) all the time! But today, a more pragmatic question occurred to me - what are we really trying to achieve through this kind of research? Is there anything substantial for the humanity as a whole, apart from nurturing our intellectual curiosities in these endeavors?

Imagine the extent of resources, efforts and money invested in these kind of broad-spectrumed research. I am somehow burdened by the thought that we could have used all these resources may be to fight hunger in Africa or to address prisoners of war at the time of Cold War or may be just to alleviate the condition of common people in Iraq.

I am not against intellectually stimulating research endeavors. I love research and have chosen it to be my way of life, and it has come to so many costs. But what I am trying to realize is, how many times before trying to reap a harvest out of our curiosity, we actually take a step back and think what impact is my research going to have on the society? What difference I am trying to make to the world?

Research is beautiful. And the way we can make it more beautiful is an ability to justify it to ourselves - a justification which would transcend our mere curiosities or our desires to tell the rest of the world that I am smart or my intellect surpasses most contemporaries.

At the end of the day, life is not all about proving I am the better one and running a marathon driven by our intellectual curiosities. We are undoubtedly the most intelligent species on Earth till date and we need not re-iterate it to ourselves time and again by striving to be better with another accomplishment which does not have any impact on the rest of us. Our interests, if goaded by a more holistic desire rather than simply to profane the person in front of us, I am sure the world would be a better place to live in. Do we then care about life in another planet then?

The "Not" Mavericks

"The real religion is the veneration for man's creativity - ideas and the power they entail."
(From the book The Singularity is Near)

I respect all religions and religous texts - though I don't follow any one in particular. Thinkers in the past said that all religions are just different roads leading to the same goal; but it is true that those paths are quite significantly different from each other. Despite these differences, religion I feel is more about a set of philosophies - certain truths our ancestors and great thinkers have accumulated over time. Religion I feel is just a way to organize our lives better and the reason our ancestors emphasized on it is because it yields a structure to our lives, more given that man is a societal being.

But the question obviously arises, where do the people not following any religion stand? I believe these people are the ones who cull their own philosophies of life - or are the ones who believe in philosophies that transcend any particular religion. People not following religions aren't mavericks to the society. It is just giving oneself more room - to draw in our own logic and to evolve. There is evidence of evolution in biology, shouldn't our society and our beliefs evolve over time as well?

Writing a Good research paper!

From the reviews of my papers (accepted ones - a matter of fact all were accepted :P), I felt that doing good research and writing a good paper are slightly orthogonal. Here I have cited a few pointers which might help one writing a good research paper.

Disclaimer: These points are mostly ad-hoc from my perspective and based on the experience of getting my (four) papers accepted.

1. Emphasize on the broader contributions of the paper - the bigger picture and the challenges you have faced. This should be grounded with the specific things you exactly accomplish in the paper.
2. The mentions and references to related work cannot be emphasized more! The reviewers are typically very sensitive to the survey or at least the mentions you make about the prior work done related to your problem in the paper. As a matter of fact, before making a claim like "To the best of our knowledge, there has not been any work about XYZ...", be extremely cautious; I think better to take a softer and more lenient take and say "Prior work has mostly been focused on ABC instead of XYZ...".
3. At least in my research community, the kind of data used for validating the model is extremely key. Use of more popular / standardized or comprehensive datasets make the results more impactful and believable.
4. Explanation in the figures need to be very concise but explicit - remember no hidden mysteries should exist, neither should there be the tendency 'yeah, this is so obvious, why mention...".
5. Discussion of the experimental results - if it is some graph, explain what the results mean. If it is a diagram kind of visualization, explain the different dimensions and what the patterns observed mean.
6. Avoid typos and grammar errors - these give a very bad impression.

Yeah, so more than whether or not people might like reading this particular blog post, it helped me a lot in straightening out the ideas of writing a good research paper!

Life's Serpentine Journey...

Life is too short to traverse a journey as long as and as meandering as stooping over to ponder and be morose. Each ray of the Sun brings new hope, novel opportunities and unbounded potential for a new dawn tomorrow. Just as simply as today I woke up to read an email which would have changed my day for a considerable time to come - even though be it papers or conferences, getting accepted always sways us, drives us into a new world when the long journey of life unravels its mysterious veils of new beginnings.

Notes:

• The picture is taken by me on a long drive somewhere along the way. To the amateurs, the morose look in the picture is ascribed to the sepia tone along with HDR from three differentially exposed similar pictures.
• The reason behind this jubilation is because both the papers I submitted to Hyper Text 2008 got accepted for publication. It was an immense source of joy - a hope or a promise that I was awaiting in life for quite sometime.
  

I am profusely disillusioned

I want to ramble about four completely disjoint things:

1. I am impressed by people working or spending their lives for a cause. It can be as simple as being a scientist and doing something novel for the rest of the world; or being an economist and affecting the society; or an entrepreneur or a doctor or a manager, someone who can look beyond his or her own material pleasure.
2. The best works on literature probably happen when we are morose. Though Shakespearean works are mostly considered comic tragedies, still the profundity of darkness in his work are phenomenal. I am happy and sad to be in the phase I am currently at.
3. People with whom I can connect most are the people with whom I can converse; converse on pretty much everything under the Sun. I like crazy thoughts, philosophizing and practically analyzing life and its so many multi-faceted aspects.
4. Life is transitory, nothing stays in the sands of space and time. How many times has that been literally true in your life?
   

I am profusely disillusioned, disillusioned about the whole concept called life. I am definitely not talking in the best of the profound positive moods as my other blog posts. But yeah, not all days are the same. Life has its share of grays as well.

Circumstances have been confusing. There seem to be no definite direction, a bunch of all desolate and dismal gloomy paths is all what is visible. Nothing seems to be leading anywhere.

If someone would ask, I would quote:

“I write of what I’ve lived,
Of past love lost, and of my life.
I can’t help rolling in the ashes,
It soots me."

Though I believe in what they say, there should be incumbent negative energy and outpouring positive energy, yet I wrote this poem:

I step my foot into the white world,
A world full of icy curls,
An ambiance of darkness and gloom,
Amidst all the brightness all I decipher is the loom.

A chilly wind blows my shoulder,
Eroding every sense of me to get bolder,
Leaving me in a world to shudder,
When no one passes by me any closer.

A black swan sings a melancholy tune somewhere,
The cold only making its feathers to shriek and shiver,
But in some corner I silently murmur,
When will the white world of darkness ever care?

Following Keats...

I was reading the famous poem Hyperion by John Keats today and loves these lines:

"The blaze, the splendor, and the symmetry,
I cannot see - but darkness, death and darkness.

Even here, into my centre of repose,
The shady visions come to domineer,
Insult, and blind..."

Indeed life has all its grandeur: it has blaze, the times of flashy happiness, it has splendor, the ability to enthrall us with the most unexpected and symmetry, the fact that history repeats itself.

How often, however, are we lost in darkness? Why does it happen? Why do we get lost in the terrains of "darkness, death, darkness"?

Somehow, sometime, all of us retire to a repose. A state where we wish to seek peace, a place to recuperate ourselves. Life is probably the hunt for that state of repose. But as Keats says, the shady visions still domineer, insult and blind him. When does our quest for the repose end then? What are we really running after?

Love and Tears

One of Nature's most amazing gifts to human beings is probably their ability to feel emotions. And coupled with that comes our notions of joys and woes, happiness and sorrow, laughter and tears. Tears, why after all do we shed tears?

Grief comes as a big burden to heart: grief at things not being the way we wanted them to be, grief at losing a loved one, grief at feeling helpless and seeing something go by, something really close to our hearts. We are definitely the smartest species on Earth, and so comes our inability to accept the reality so many times. We shed tears.

Tears make us feel self-pity. They lighten our heart. They are definitely a way to combat the symptoms of grief. But how many times are we really strong and bold enough to relieve ourselves from grief? I am afraid, often we cannot.

Nevertheless, when times are not so rosy, I often stick to shedding tears. They are mine I know, and are going to be mine whatever happens. I feel close to myself - I feel, when I am shedding tears, I can feel my heart; at a point of time when the dearest people in your life have turned a deaf ear to you - a feel as if they never cared.

These are tough times. Everyone of us has his or her share of it in some manner. And I guess these are the tests of life we have to stand time to time. Tears come in handy - I am not a big advocate of nurturing hatred for a person who leaves me at life's crossroads. I am not a person like that. To me, love subsumes everything. And even when that love inflicts pains on us, tears come to us. We continue to love, may be after several thin threads of transparent water rolling down our face. This is still universal: love which is true to me forever.

Sometimes I feel love doesn't probably need reciprocation, though it is great to have. Love would remain kindled inside my heart always; and tears are the best friends on the difficult road that the love would entail.

"Let the child come home"

Greed. Money. Comfort. Pleasure. Career. Love. Hatred. Sex. Power. Lust.

One and all of us seem to be running after one thing or the other among these in our lives. We are so much so engrossed in fulfilling our desires that many a times we forget the beauty of the existence of life on Earth. Some of us are fighting for oil, some are running after more money, some of us want to be successful professionally - in a never-ending marathon to satiate our never-ending desires. We turn selfish, we forget what we have left behind and we never stoop below to collect the beautiful relics of the wonderful gift called "life". We run after building our very own little realm of blurred insights, in an island which has moved far-far away from a characteristic called "life".

The movie "Children of Men" was beautiful. Not because of its commercial and critical acclaim, it made me think about things which we have far left behind somewhere, in the infinite sands of time. In a world with thousands of people getting killed everyday, millions dying from hunger, another hundreds fighting fanatic wars or some war against terror, the movie made me think what would it take to return to our instincts of being "human beings"? What massacre would have to befall the humankind to return to our utmost identity that we are human beings after all - after all the differences we have sowed in the past thousands of years for caste, color, creed or gender biases? I hope it doesn't take, as the movie goes, a whole species called homo sapiens lose their very instinct to be alive - the ability to bear a child.

Isn't life beautiful? Why and where are we running after then? I know greed and desire for power are required for a civilization to thrive. But I feel we are losing something in between. Something very important; something which I hope doesn't threat the whole survival of humankind altogether.

Before it is too late, I hope we realize our first and the last identity - human beings - and make efforts together towards making the world a better place to live in. A journey which would need a lot of patience, a lot of efforts and a lot of hope which frees ourselves from the shackles of lust, anger, hatred and grudge we have nurtured inside our hearts eons ago.

Let the child come home...

US license plate state descriptors

I thought I would create a list of the US license plate state descriptors! Here it goes in alphabatical order:

Alabama: Yellowhammer State
Alaska: The Last Frontier
Arizona: The Grand Canyon State
Arkansas: The Natural State
California: The Golden State
Colorado: The Centennial State
Connecticut: The Constitution State
Delaware: The First State
Florida: The Sunshine State
Georgia: The Peach State
Hawaii: Aloha State
Idaho: The Gem State
Illinois: Prairie State
Indiana: The Hoosier State
Iowa: The Hawkeye State
Kansas: The Sunflower State
Kentucky: Bluegrass State
Louisiana: The Pelican State
Maine: The Pine Tree State
Maryland: The Old Line State
Massachusetts: The Bay State
Michigan: The Great Lakes State
Minnesota: The North Star State
Missisippi: The Magnolia State
Missouri: Show-me State
Montana: The Treasure State
Nebraska: The Cornhusker State
Nevada: The Silver State
New Jersey: The Garden State
New Hampshire: The Granite State
New Mexico: The Land of Enchantment
New York: The Empire State
North Carolina: The Tar Heel State
North Dakota: Peach Garden State
Ohio: The Buckeye State
Oklahoma: The Sooner State
Oregon: The Beaver State
Pennsylvania: The Keystone State
Rhode Island: Ocean State
South Carolina: The Palmetto State
South Dakota: Mount Rushmore State
Tennessee: The Volunteer State
Texas: The Lone Star State
Utah: The Beehive State
Vermont: The Green Mountain State
Virginia: The Old Dominion State
Washington: The Evergreen State
West Virginia: The Mountain State
Wisconsin: The Badger State
Wyoming: The Equality or Cowboy State

Is this how the technology is outgrowing us?

A lazed off afternoon, spring break, though still sitting at lab, and a point of time when there is absolutely no looking back, possibly not much looking ahead and a time when deadlines are something we are too used to as graduate students - it was a very typical holiday afternoon at school today. I needed to work on two things with utmost immediacy, but the penchant to constantly live in the present that I have been trying to attempt since past sometime marred a rather eerie blow to my afternoon work! Off I was meeting some friends at the 4th floor of Brickyard (our department): reason, just to chat.

Then came the topic of primitive computers - and certainly came up the Moore's law effect - the boon of the hardware (also software technology) of the new century. Popped up this question, which was pretty obvious, "Remember those days of floppy disk drives?" Sure yeah, we do - and Ice Age it might look, honestly only four-five years back we were using Floppy disks, not only using them, but actually heavily relying on them, often just helplessly waiting for them to get corrupt. And look at today - I just got this buy [dot] com ad email the other day that some 750 GB of external hard drive was decently cheap. 750 GB, isn't that a ridiculous leap from 1.44 MB just five years back?

So obviously, the inquisitive question that comes henceafter is that, is there any limit to this exorbitant flexibility in hardware technology? If so what is that maximum point of stagnation? The Singularity? I am not sure.

On a different track, look at our lives - we are leading a life where probably things are changing at a pace a decently smart human brain can possibly digest at any time. Are we aware of that? I guess no - simple things, the floppy disk transition to external hard drives worth 750 GB. More than countably infinite number of things are at our fingertips - another boon of the technology evolution.

However, the question remains - is this how the technology is outgrowing us?

When will we really grow?

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are entirely mine and are not representative of any group or organization I might or might not be consciously a part of.

A few weeks back, I was watching this movie "A Time to Kill" which tells the story of how an African American man seeks justice in the South where the Whites dominate the society in every aspect. It is how a father who recklessly shoots the rapists of his daughter justifies the reason behind such an act. And how despite all the odds in the "white" society, it shows how we still have people around us who can think beyond the peripheries of color and creed, rationalize a human being through his activities, instead of the color of his skin or religion.

The movie made me really step aside behind a little bit and think of the biases we always cherish in ourselves:

"I won't ever date an African-American guy",
"The manager is a Black person?!",
"Oh yeah, he is a Muslim, he should undergo strict security check at the airport,"
"Oh, he is a Muslim - isn't he finding it difficult to find jobs here?"
"Oh he comes from India, don't people in India sleep on streets?"
"Oh India, right. I heard it's very dirty out there,"
"He is an Asian guy. No point asking him out for any Friday night plan: he only understands staring at the computer screen,"
"Oh Hispanic, those brown skinned people - must have fled illegally to the US."

And the list could go on. However, it is really unfortunate. And the irony being - everyone of us does so in some form at some point of time - biases that we ourselves have generated, gathered from our friends and acquaintances or simply heard somewhere. But how of many these make sense? I agree we almost always can define traits (often negative) for a set of people - since it is so easy to make conclusions then; but how many times does it universally hold? How many times do we actually give a thought in judging the person through his acts, behavior and outlook than by the color of his skin, his nationality or his religion? Seldom.

Why is it that since more than two hundred years since US got independent, there were no African-American presidents? Or that when did we last consider a Muslim guy doing something constructive for the society? It is sad, but true that there are certainly African-American people who could have been US presidents or Muslim guys who probably want to fight against the so-called religious terrorism, instead of endorsing them.

But sadly, we have always overlooked them. We have preferred living in a world driven by our biases - simply because it makes us use our brain lesser and may be simplifies the horrendous mundane and selfish lives we have been leading all this while.

We talk of the "rise" of humanity; but I don't see it coming, unfortunately. When will we break free those shackles? When will we really grow out into individuals who really deserve to be the dominators of the world?

A long winter morning...

"It is not that I don't love you. Nor is that I am being insensitive. Just that, it has been sometime that I felt this relationship has not been working. I also feel we have different expectations from each other and that we are not able to meet each other's needs out of a relationship, staying four thousand miles apart. So I feel I should cut the chord at one point. And I think it is this point... I don't want to keep any contact with you anymore..."

... the letter read, on a day cloudy and overcast, dull and morose as it could be, with no beam of the Sun peeping Sonam's study desk, unlike other winter mornings. It was a day she had been waiting for since a while - since she started seeing Ronny last May. It was the Valentine's Day. As she would naturally do out of curiosity, she stepped up to her mailbox and to her hopes, found an envelope that read "From Ronny G. 324 S. Madison Dr., Foster, RI 02825."

She was stuck to ecstasy, expecting it to be a Valentine card from her beloved. Ran she straight to her study desk, juggled through her tray of knick-knacks to find a knife. She quickly opened the envelope and to her surprise found it was letter. The desk wasn't as bright it would be on other days, so she turned on her lamp. The reading started in the yellow intense light.

Having read it, she felt like having a wet face: they were two thin threads of tears rolling down fast down her cheeks. She knew, the day was long, even though it was still a winter morning. She knew she had a long journey to cover; on a road where she could only see a faint dull glow at the end; but whose voyage to her was unknown. A voyage she would now have to make without somebody at the center of her life, with a spirit which should come with whatever it takes.

It was a long winter morning, till the sun suddenly set.

Would a technological singularity really happen?

I am not sure how many of you are familiar with the concept of "technological singularity". I wasn't as well, till last Thursday!

Singularity is a state (from Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near) when human intelligence transcends the barriers of the laws we govern our physical and virtual realities with. It is a point which is predicted to arrive in this century where there won't be apparent differences between man and machines any more; because we would be capable of designing ultra-intelligent machines. Our intelligence coupled with the machines, humans would take technological strides not only on Earth, but the entire universe. As Kurzweil's book describes it,

"Now, in The Singularity Is Near, he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our own creations."

And ironically this first ultra-intelligent machine would probabaly be the last invention would ever make; as the world would then be taken over a more superior species: the species Man would make himself through technological evolution (compare, biological evolution which yields homo sapiens).

But I am skeptical about the advent of this kind of a technological singularity at least this century. Here are a few reasons for that:

1. I agree we have been increasing our technological capabilities at a accelerating rate: a form comparable to Moore's law. But depends how much extensible it is: is there a threshold to it? We still don't know the future of the exponential curve of technological progress.
   
2. Now the comes the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence in playing a significant role in reaching the Singularity. Look up the kind of AI paper that used to be written in the 90's. Most of the visionary or theoretical papers' goal was how to design that ultimate intelligent machine: which can perceive the world as we do through our five senses, reason, learn and take intelligent decisions. And now see the AI research today: most of the research has been segmented; people work on building an intelligent system which can either analyze human speech, or computer vision, or a robot navigating a rough terrain and taking optimal decisions for movement. The concept of intelligence is now distributed; we are trying to build a host of intelligent machines which render a focused task intelligently. However our knowledge or capabilities of how to integrate all those intelligent machines into one single ultra-intelligent one is still very limited unfortunately. The future of this kind of integration research is also pretty bleak!
3. The achievement of morality. The book says, we might be able to get over the morality that characterizes us today. But the question is, one the way, aren't we giving rise to more deadly diseases? Isn't a significant part of the research diverted to that?
4. The only hope I see that can render technological singularity is nano-technology or bio-informatics. The hope to see an ultra-intelligent machine is predicated by the fact that genetically it has to be coherent with human brain. The question still remains: can we with our limited brains, build a machine which is smarter?
   

Only future can tell us...

Easy to make Cold Sandwich Wrap Recipe!

Here is a great sandwich wrap recipe that is healthy and quick to make! The preparation time is about 10 minutes and ideal for a tasty lunch (that doesn't need to be heated or microwaved) or quick dinner. The only thing you need to have ready is slices of grilled chicken breast, although for a vegetarian substitute you can well discount this or substitute it with scrambled eggs! I usually grill the chicken in the weekend and refrigerate it for the week.

(Ingredients for 1 serving)

1 burrito size tortilla
salad spring mix (or cut iceberg lettuce, romaine and spinach leaves)
1 avocado (ripe) thinly sliced or mashed freshly
cut red onions (optional)
diced cucumber
diced tomatoes
Alfalfa sprouts
sliced grilled chicken breast
Bit of Mayo
Ranch dressing
Hot sauce
Pinch of salt / pepper to taste

(Method)

Place the tortilla on a plate and layer it thinly with Mayo. Then align the salad spring mix in the middle of the tortilla along a narrow line. Heap the tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, sprouts, avocados and the chicken on it. Apply the Ranch dressing along with the hot sauce. Sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper to taste. Now roll the whole tortilla into a narrow roll and tuck it with a toothpick in the center. Your lunch is good to go!

A dedication note

On this very "hyped" day, when I don't really have anything to celebrate upon (and I am perfectly fine with that!), I randomly came across this lines from the movie Om Shanti Om:

Itni Shiddat Se Maine Tujhe Paane Ki Koshish Ki hai,
Ki Har Zarre Ne Mujhe Tujhse Milane ki Saazish Ki Hai.

And looking back I see that whatever I am doing today, it is really what I wanted to do in life yet! Sometimes I feel lucky; lucky having got an opportunity to do stuff I wanted to do - when the PhD thing happened!

Somebody back from my college asked me a few questions on the PhD thing. I have put two of my favorite ones here. The shayari from Om Shanti Om is dedicated to all the interesting endeavors I am doing, and wish to do in the times to come! The questions are a little tweaked for certain reasons.

1) Why should one go for a PhD, i.e what are the basic qualities or interests required that would help one in doing PhD?

A: I think the primary urge the student needs to have is the desire to learn, apply his knowledge, look beyond $$ and books and explore the world. With a suitable academic background, the only thing a student needs is a "free mind" to nurture his or her academic interests in a more organized fashion.

2) With a lot of emphasis on other careers now-a-days, what makes the PhD course attractive enough?

A: Using the word "emphasis" on a career decision is probably a bad idea. A person's academic or professional interest is not like walking the ramp at a fashion show where you display the "in" or the "attractive" thing of today. A career is merely a person's own choice, unbiased by time; what the person wants out of life. It is not about a "competition" between other careers and PhD as most of you would think today. I would suggest grow out of these wrong notions! Life is much bigger than you have thought of!

There is nothing like a situation when one career is universally better than others. Coming here I see that the physicists, the mathematicians and the psychologists are actually much more insightful than we, the "engineer scientists"! As much as these guys are intelligent, make as much good money as our community, they are actually more respected in the society than just "another programmer" or just "another manager"!

So it was never the "emphasis" laid on me by some career professionals that affected by decisions in life. I have found PhD "attractive" because it is letting me work on something which I want to; something which can strike a difference to the world of tomorrow, someway; a manner which can let me vent out the crazy thoughts inside me; the tool for me to explore and gain insights about the world we live in today! It has definitely been the best decision I have taken in my life, and so would many of my peers agree. Talking of "emphasis", which other career lets you do all these? :)

"The Ideal Relationship"

We often talk about the "ideal relationship". A relationship which we would cherish through our lives.

I believe an ideal relationships is one which does not compel you to change.
I believe an ideal relationship is one which is built on trust and mutual understanding.
I believe an ideal relationship is one which is a strength to us.
I believe an ideal relationship is one which lets you tide over tough times.
I believe an ideal relationship is one where you can always go back at the end of the day; after good or bad happens, after love or fight.
I believe an ideal relationship is one which would not need a physical co-existence.
I believe an ideal relationship is one which you know you are with day in and day out.
I believe an ideal relationship is one when you weigh it more than your personal reasonings.
I believe an ideal relationship is one which is an integral part of your life.
I believe an ideal relationship is one which lets you live...

I read this somewhere and found it to be so true. Relationships might not have worked out so good for me, but I would remember this always...

"Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. "
- Corinthians, The New Testament.

An ideal relationship is built on love: love which happens and exists this way...

Surviving Life as the Fittest

Scientists say, one of the primary reasons the dinosaurs got extinct was that with the beginning of the ice age, they could not cope with the changing environment. And Nature did not choose them because they didn't satisfy the needs of the "survival of the fittest". I guess this is very true of ourselves as well. Life is a great test. And we survive it only when we satiate the condition: survival of the fittest.

It is so easy to snap at a friend when you don't like something about his or her. It is so easy to curse destiny and life for all the bad things that happened. It is so easy to feel self-pity when something goes wrong in life. And it is so easy to feel that life is meaningless without certain things. And it is also so easy to say "I lost it".

However, we forget all this while that the way to lead life is to be the survivor of the fittest! Tests after tests, we need to gear up and running every time for newer horizons whatever life yields us: good or bad. And the way to survive life is to make the good times the strength, and the bad times the closed chapters - the source of learning. And looking ahead. Trust in self. The faith that we can live better. The ability to be ourselves whatever happens.

Another one of my insights...

Life can often be described by several crossroads and some dead ends. Sometimes we have too many choices. Sometimes we are forced to pick one option over the other. And sometimes that option leads us through a road which lands us in a dead end. Sometimes a narrow beam of hope springs us alive. And again sometimes the gloom takes over our very essence of life.

I wonder if life can ever be perfect, or the way we want it to be. I am sure every one of us would have some complain or the other. We would often say "I wish I could change this chapter of my life". And these are the chapters which prevent lives from reaching our notion of perfection.

And so the very truth is, life is not perfect. There are days of high and low; there are times easy and hard. There are weeks we shatter and we repair. And the worst thing probably is, the easy times seem to drift away so soon; but it is the hard times that stick along all the time.

I feel like reflecting on my life since I came here in Tempe. Life has been really variegated: with tough times and little sweet memories. It has been an altogether different life, totally on oneself, trying to build an identity, trying to survive the life of a PhD student and experiments with other aspects of life. Yeah, I would call them experiments. Because you never know one of those chapters of life until you lead it. And if not a surprise, then yeah some of those experiments turned out something I probably would never expect. Some for the good, and some for the bad. Although it is the bad which sticks through; and I am okay with it, because it helped me learn about life probably. And the good, obviously it kept me alive!

Sometimes certain things come very expensive; I am talking about the ambitious career decisions I have made yet. I had to leave several of those chapters behind which were nice. And had to take up several of the other dark chapters, because the ambition cost it. Today, I am torn between several dimensions. But one dimension I know; the dimension of my ambition has always stuck together with me. It has let me justify all those dark chapters, sometime, somewhere. And also helped me learn to complain less about the so-called imperfect life. As long as this ambition lets me justify life, I would continue to make choices, shatter and repair even through those dead ends.

I guess this is what individualizes me after all...

The Wind Blew it All!

When the wind rose alive,
Before it could take her by any surprise,
In just the flick of a minute,
Blew away those memories, till then so vivid.

A cozy corner and a caring shoulder,
Was all that she would need to lead a life more bolder;
Smothered she was in so much of affection,
Memories were intertwined in every nook and corner of her life's jubilation.

Till the day when her life succumbed to a dark sunrise,
Made all the things so difficult to tackle and to stand and rise;
The tombs on which the memories were so enshrined,
The fleeting thoughts pulled her life to move forward and rewind.

Till that day when the wind blew along,
Sweeping the pains in her heart's core so deep and long,
She saw the storm come and the storm go,
And she knew it was no more the time to feel any low!

The Best I can Do!!

May be this should make me learn something! :D
1. The second option is the best I can do.
2. Find a non-nerd life partner!
3. Don't carry a laptop while going shopping.
4. Not have a wireless card in the laptop.
5. Pick the first thing you see in the store.

Now you tell me, why are so many jokes on nerds? :D