Selection Functions

After a brief brush with matrimonial exerscises six months back, my parents gave me back the baton to proceed as I see fit and let them know of my choice. I havent done anything on that front till the last week and my folks were slowly thinking about wresting back the control knobs for accelerating this process, which brings me to this musing.

In an effort to see what can be done via online communuties, I did the usual thingy of putting up my profile and stuff. It also happens that you can search for people based on certain search criteria. I have seen profiles that were straitjacketed into the standard a/s/l, hobbies,demographic data, etc. almost like I am analysing census data for this year. These are profiles that never moved me despite the desi tradition of micromanaging the details .The only part of this standardized user interface o, where personas can be expressed happened in the section where people write about themselves, the free form text field where you write something (with the assumption that the person willing to be married is writing it as opposed to someone else in the family or friends). This is the only bit where someone's taste shows up. Sadly, most folks put in 2 liners like "I am a [adjective], [adjective] and [adjective] person. To know more, write to me." Some of the stuff is written by parents in ALL CAPS thus making it seem like they are akin to a towncrier advertising for the latest news or what have you. Then there are folks who spout inanities like "I am a fun-loving person". (who isnt? ) or some blanket statement like "I am a broad minded person" whereas in their partner preferences you see a contradiction that contracts the sample space for that person's search is almost zero within the same online matrimonial site (or their competitor). If you dont believe me, you should try this just for the heck of it. In essence, it is very confusing for me. I know I should proceed it the way I do and use the online thing just as a selection criteria for further distillation but somehow something in me tells I am missing out on something of a protocol that is very well understood by these folks.

I understand the Darwinian theory attributes that selection of mates is not based on how intelligent/rational/elegant the mating partner is, but more for survival and reproducability. That is, if I have an Einstein, a Farmer and a Woman who can bear 10 children, the darwinian selection algorithm would choose the woman which means the genius of einstein would be lost for the next generation.

One of the first projects I was involved was, in a genetic algorithm for a game called "Reversi" where it was upto our group to decide what we wanted to code into our so called utiility function that would be used as a criteria by another selection function to make the best move in a given situation. We just coded it to do one thing alone (which was dont care for the opponents' score but aim for getting the diagnoal squares) and it worked well enough that it beat one of the best humans to play the game. Thrice. That was our professor.But then that was a simple term project.

I recollect there was an experiment done by neurosurgeons who removed the part of brain responsible for emotions,etc so that they have this cold calculating human who will always be rational and make the best move. Guess What? The fellow couldnt get out of his hospital bed as his brain was thrown into a loop about calculating should he get up or not. The point here being that emotions feed the rationality of the brain. Each half cannot survive without the other.

So all in all, I need to have a particular selection criteria so that I can set my partner preferences in those (just maligned) online matrimony sites. I think it can be put in one statement : "I should choose someone for no reason at all". That is, I shouldnt be able to express why I like a certain person. If I can say I like so and so because of these xyz reasons, then the lack of xyz in future would cause some issues.( not really a bright logic here but serves the justification) . So the best selection algorithm available for me is that I should like someone but for no reason whatsoever that making sure that I have no reason to dislike her too. Strangely this starts to sound like a Caffeine Deficiency Syndrome posts by gvenum. That means I have to stop now :-)

The God Abandons Anthony

"When suddenly there is heard at midnight

A company passing invincible

With wonderful music, with voices, -Your fortune giving way now,

your works, Which have failed, the plans of a lifetime

All turned illusions, do not mourn uselessly.

As one prepared long since, courageously,

Say farewell to her, to Alexandria who is leaving.

Above all do not be tricked, never say it was All a dream,

and that your hearing was deceived;

Do not stop to such vain hopes as these.

As one prepared long since, courageously,

As becomes one worthy as you were of such a city,

Firmly draw near the window,

And listen with emotion but not with the complainings and entreaties of cowards,

Listen, your last enjoyment, to the sounds,

The wonderful instruments of the mystic company,

And say farewell, farewell to Alexandria you are losing.

***

--> by Constantinos P. Cavafy

Another Season

Its been a while since I was here. Occasionally a hiatus from anything you do can only be good. It teaches you a lot of things. For the last 90 days I havent been in touch with my folks or did things over weekends that I normally was used to. It taught me how far could I go without breaking down and what more important to me in life from the perspective of values.

I didnt write because I didnt feel like it. When I have started writing here, I was frequent because words conveyed more than silence. I stop when I feel that words cannot outperform silence. Its amazing how my brain makes connections to work even though I do other things.( For example the earlier spent make me think that on the internet we compress things like text files only because the time spent in compression/decompression more than compensates for the propogation time of the same content over a network). Of late, I have also discovered a special joy of programming in python. While I am complete novice to it, I highly recommend the experience of solving a problem using this language. The reason it was joy was because the language lends itself to expressing your exact one thought into one idion as opposed to being strewn into multiple idioms which spoil the integrity of your intent.

Now that I seem to find enough time for myself over the weekends, I was lost for things to do over the weekend. Then I realised that listening to old music, driving aimlessly and devouring some books are things that really balance my personal life(the same old ones but rediscovered after a gap). I have to mention that reading about mythology is always fun because I subscribe to the theory that myths have far more potency than the plain reality of current affairs.

And its been an year since I relocated to the Bay Area from the East Coast. Gosh! It feels like I have been here for more than that (if you are really counting in Dog Years, yeah!) . It was sunny and felt like I was in Mexico when I first came here. Now, We have been under continous onslaught of heavy rains till today and it is supposed to be spring. Here's wishing for the best of this spring.Time to really turn a new leaf green...

April Fool

April Fool,
Go to School
Tell your teacher that you are a bloody fool.

I learnt that at my elementary school 20 years back and this was a day when you were at you were cautious best and the best day to be paranoid. It served its purpose well and one of the best jokes was that it was a holiday. (Call up a fellow student and say its a holiday because its April 1 and engage him in a serious discussion of how the old nordic/celtic/druid/whatever started their new year today and the romans screwed it up by adding extra months and we have January instead of April, till his head spins in a dizzy and tell him that the school is intent on setting the record straight and hence a holiday just like January 1)

Happy April Fool's Day!

Gametime

A deal is at a critical point and people start counting on you as every minute of the clock ticking is a minute taken away from the deal. You are playing the last quarter with 120 seconds left on the table. You play catch up and even down the difference to 1 point but only 40 seconds left. Then you take a shot at a 3 pointer and miss. On rebound your opponent scores a 2 points with 24 seconds left for you to do what you wanna do. You dont wanna miss this time, so you dribble hard and have the normal 2 points. No major surprises here. Clock's at 12 seconds with the opponent controlling the ball. You intercept a pass with god knows what and take possesion of the ball and call timeout. 7 seconds left and you can either shoot or pass.Then you remember your gods (in this case Jordan helps) and at the whistle you dribble a bit and the clock is at 3 seconds when you go for the all-out 3 pointer. You gasp, watch the parabolic trajectory with a bated breath, the ball bounces a bit and then returns to the basket at the end of the game. Phew!!

Someone once said to be succesful you need to give everything you have got and more. I never understood this more better than today. Now I now what it feels like to be under gametime pressure and I am glad I survived one. Its an undescribable exhiliration you feel at the end of it. You feel more alive than you usually do.

As soon as the next game begins, all this exuberance is history but till then its good to be kicking some butt every now and then.

"Quick Watson, The Game's Afoot!"

The Importance of Delusions

Hmm. I have deluded myself that I will write an email soon to a dear friend, post a new blog, call some folks back home and also keep in touch with somebody. But then I didnt do any of that in the last 2 months or ever since I came back from home.

I have been wondering about the neccisity of delusions in one's life. A mother has to delude herself into thinking that she loves her kids even though the reality might be otherwise and this delusion pays off over time. Abhimanyu did know that he can never come out of the "padmavyuha" alive (because he didnt know the way out) but had to think he can so that he can do his job at the center of it.

Similarly I am deluding myself of certain things. Even though they never might happen, its useful in the sense that it drives me to achieve further more than what I would have done apart from keeping me happy for a while. I think they have a term called "Vantage Point Effect" in psychology. In the end it sounds like Luky Ali's lyrics

"Ho Jaaye to mein raazi Hoon
Kho Jaaye to mein Baaki Hoon
Yu Samajtha hoon"

Pyaasa

Roodade gum-e-ulfat unke
Hum Kya Kehte, Jo Kar Kehte
Ek Harb na Niklaa Honton Se,'
Aur Aankhon mein Aasoon Aa bhi gaye,

Us Mehfil-e-Kaifo Masti mein
Us Anjuman-e-Irfaani mein
Sab Jaam Bakhat Baithe Hi Rahe
Hum Pi bhi gaye, Chalkha bhi gaye...

I had to get that off my head. All errors in reproducing it are mine (All Wah! Wahs! to Sahir Ludhianvi). Someone once asked me to translate that and I said "learn urdu". Its not to be arrogant or something but some things neccesarily cannot be translated and it offers you a different system view.On a different note seriously wondering how people find time to blog.

Toons!

In English August when someone asks Agastya Sen if he was married, he rebuttal was that he was twice married and once to a Norwegian Muslim. The joke was subtle but insightful (Crusades started from the same region and what not..)

I am not a news person but this one caught my eye. I didnt realise the gravity of the situation until someone else updated me the fact there were riots on a large scale and people on both sides hollerring curses and the likes. Hmm... A danish guy just wanted a picture for a children's book and this is what happens. Even the Queen had gotten involved.

Just like the US tried to rename French fries in their recent riffraff with the french, the Iranians decided to do this. Funny that they took the name of a sci-fi project by the same theme which might not augur very well with some folks.

* Begin* Jokes apart, this issue brought to light something that I took for granted. As far as I was raised you didnt need to believe in what is called religion. I was very much supposed to have an idea about it and be aware of the core concepts but belief, no. A recent conversation with someone who majored in the subject told me that Belief in the religion is a very western concept and the ancient eastern ones didnt require one. Quite a powerful thought! *End*

Wishful Thinking

He went to penance on the ocean floor. If you hold your breath you can do that. Ages came and went by but he was silently lapsing into the first, second, third and the final fourth phase of consciousness. It is said sound travels slowly in water, may be thats why it took so long for the music to reach his ears. Slowly the music reaches a resonating frequency within him and he begans to mentally dance to the tune being played from a far far away source. Then he remembers the time he went into this metempsychosis. It was when Shiva ceased to dance.

Whats different now? He is almost about to give up. Then a sudden realisation dawns upon him that Shiva never danced to begin with. It was us, the subjects that were dancing around an ever static, never moving absolute form of truth. Its our own perception moving around this absolutely anonymous concept that makes it seem like shiva danced. After a while there is no Shiva and of course, no dance.

Shiva know no Bhangra
Nor the Punjabi Rap!
But he’s a divine dancer
Who never takes a nap!

And if for the single trillionth of a second
Shiva ceased to dance

All the world’s great cities would quiver
On a knife-edge of chance

Every star in the universe would
Cease to burn

Neither sun nor earth
Would turn

Matter grow
So dense

So intense
The dark

That your
Cry

Would
Die

On a windless night
In the lap of the sea...
When Shiva sleeps
You will know eternity...

-The Third Eye written for Stephen Hawking by Rukmini Bhaya Nair


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RIPPGW

14 February! Valentine's day as some call it but its a baneful day for literary enthusiasts. It was on this day 1989 that Salman Rushdie was issued a fatwa.But thats not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about the author of these lines

"Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons."

(Lord Emsworth thinking about his son Freddie)

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (also a Doctor should be prefixed methinks) died on this day 1975 and incidentally he died with a manuscript on his lap. My very first work of the master was "Sunset at Blandings" which was his last penned. Homage to you my dear sir. The world definitely would have been a duller place had it not been for your works. And you didnt need to be so profilic as well. Just a couple of your works are enough to ensure immortality but then ...