The Chaotic-Neutron

Saw Avatar today and was blown away by the cinematography and special effects. The story itself was almost predictable yet very distinct from the usual junk I’ve seen recently. Although it does remind one of ‘Dancing with the wolves’, the Avatar takes it to a whole new extent, a realm beyond mere physical restrictions, to capture the harmony of every life on a planet, a symbiosis, a reminder of what this Universe might be. String theorists and philosophers alike are trying to find the link that connects us all, human and plants, living and extinct, visible and the intangible. And here, another stark reminder that we are probably probing in the wrong dimensions.

Anyway, this is definitely the best movie I’ve seen this year… Wait, when did the ‘Dark Knight’ premiere ? I guarantee that it is bound to get couple of academy awards and will revolutionize many a movie to come.

I have to watch it again, may be in IMAX 3D now to catch the subtleties I missed the last time.

Just taking a walk on a beautiful morning,
Watching fall colours waving in a dance,
Blending with rustling symphony of leaves,
Breaking the trance, cool, serene, gusts wafting
A remote breakfast, delicious flavor, stimulating
Higher senses without effort.

Another day, mundane incident.
Beauty immeasurable. Senses fulfilled.
A life enriched.

This is a pure rant and thoughts that came across based on a mundane incident.

Today I met a guy at a grocery store and passed “hello” casually while buying the milk I had in my hand. I noticed the guy talking to his friend on his phone and realized he was talking Bengali. Even if he looked a little middle-eastern/Indian, I wasn’t sure initially about his origin but after hearing him speak, it was clear that he was from India. And so while I was paying my bill, I casually asked the guy if he was from Bengal and saw a grin in his face. His answer was “Are you from India ?” and so I happily said “Tamilnadu”. He replied again “I’m from Bangladesh” with a serious stare, without blinking, his grin vanishing and still cold. All I could muster was “OK” and walked away. Looking back, an incidental encounter like that should not affect me but it was still disturbing.

Why ? I ponder. Did he have to break off the conversation because I was from India ? May be he suffered in the hands of some random Indians, amongst the billion of us. Or he just hates Indians. And more specifically south Indians. Either way, I do not care. But it pains me to think how all of us, humans in general, hate each other so much and create segregations based on race, religion, land, ethnicity, faith and even ideas that we often forget the beauty of the divine unity.

Sometimes I think, the only way to bring people together is to create this all powerful ‘Alien’, a devil, that oppresses every human, immaterial of the origin or belief, all the same. Then, the hatred can be channeled on this one source and unite us as the earth race. And that is the first step to reaching universal singularity. I hope that will happen eventually because this attitude we carry is self destructive and cannot last long and will not let us live in peace. It is probably the nature of our species and a higher evolution might change the perspective. Or so I hope.

I diverged from couple of steps to light years on this post but my thoughts, hopefully come across clear. May be it is time for me to get a smart phone to type this up as when I get the thoughts rather than remembering what I came across couple of hours before.

Being hungry a minute and devoid of it the next,
The sated feeling fills body and mind;
If only food and everything else tasted heavenly
Like this, every moment, beyond deliverance.

One thought opposes, another cheers on,
In difference, another sense of satisfaction.
All transient pleasures short lived in eternal time,
May be only the final sleep will quench this thirst.

I recently came across this amazing Ultra marathon and have been unable to take my mind off it. I follow Bart Yasso on Twitter and got the first introduction there to this long endurance race. And a great first hand account of the race and its challenges by someone who completed it, is here at runnersworld. Remarkable !

My body is far from being ready to face 55 miles right now but I want to do this some day. In the next few years. Before the years wither and wane this body I carry around. 2011 might be the magic year and I’ll hopefully be able to conquer this distance. Time will tell …

I have been meditating for a few years now and every now and then, I have this realization that I can expand to the entire size of the universe and contract myself to the size of an atom, just moving with my breath. It is a beautiful feeling but my words are inadequate to express them.

But when you look at two images side-by-side, representing the macro and micro universes and find similarities beyond comprehension, there is very little to express in words any more.

Oral surface of a young seastar (40x)

The neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova

Just look and meditate on it. Enough said.

So I bought this sweet XPS 1340 laptop which has some great specs and is lightweight while still providing enough power to run my PhD code ! I threw out the Vista it came with and installed Win7 ultimate on it. Now, as part of the painful process of installing the new apps I needed to make the laptop usable for work, I came to the part where MATLAB installation started.

I found out the hard way that Win7 does not like the Java version that comes with MATLAB 7.0 and hence ran the setup itself in a deprecated mode. And once the installation finished, even the splash screen would not be displayed anymore. Searching the internet yielded very little but then looking at MATLAB/work directory, I found several error logs related to Java again.

The next logical thing was to update my Java version to the latest one and I changed the “MATLAB_JAVA” environment variable to the right location. This useful nugget via Mathworks solved the issue. Of course, I spent couple of hours trying to figure this out based on several other forum postings but none of them helped. And some of these fixes were complicated too.

Amazing how often the simplest solutions solve the problems we encounter most elegantly !

I’ve hummed along to the beat of this song by Wolfmother so many times but just listened to the lyrics and found them graceful and beautiful. Here’s the full lyrics for the song.

When the time is right and the night is bright
We will see the things we’ve come to find
I’ve been searching for just a little more
but the days girl just slip away
And the red sunset that we just met
I can see forever

Come and see the mind’s eye
We can find it if we try
Come and see the mind’s eye
Transfixed upon the why
Come and see the mind’s eye
We can find it if we try

Well they say it’s right if it feels alright
When your love burns up in the mire
So I burnt a fire for a lost desire
See it burning higher

Come and see the mind’s eye
We can find it if we try
Come and see the mind’s eye
Transfixed upon the why
Come and see the mind’s eye
We can find it if we try

I’ve got to admit, there is some nice word play and poetry in there. Subtle and elegant.

Every now and then, you find something so insane and mind boggling that just freezes you on your tracks. I came across this article today and couldn’t help but remember that I passed Hirsch around my 20th mile. And I thought to myself then, “Wow. How did he get here so fast” while little did I know that he was 75. Holy mother of God.

Seriously, if I live that long, I’d be happy to walk around the block without pain in my knees and back. Kudos to pushing the limits George Hirsch !

When I was growing up and had to decide what field to get in to for my college, I was in a dilemma. I really liked computers, after the really simple BASIC and C programs I wrote during my high school. But on the other hand, Physics seemed too fundamental and I wanted to understand what is going on around me and explain it with the Math I so love. But what did catch my interest most of all is the explosive reactions that Chemistry opened up. It was something I did not understand at all and that intrigued me. Of course little did I know that Chemical Engineering had nothing to do with pure Chemistry. But enough of that reminiscence.

It always is interesting to me to find experiments that open up new perspectives on things. And recently, this article “Top 10 Mad Science-Worthy Chemistry Experiments” via Neatorama caught my attention. And I just couldn’t let it pass without writing a rant about it…

Do read the article and watch all videos to get some interesting new ideas and the possibilities that Chemistry opens up.

Finally, the day came and I conquered the 26.2 miles. There was no turning back, no stopping now. No matter how many hurdles were thrown, with increasing/decreasing elevations and with beers the day before, or with sombre thoughts on finishing research, these legs are not going to wear out today. And that’s exactly what happened.

Chicago was great last year but this time, NYC marathon was a whole new experience. I never forgot the agony of the first marathon but somehow, I enjoyed it this time around and that pushed me to make a personal record (PR). In 3:54 hours (unofficially) and 4:02 (officially), I broke my previous time and have increased the confidence in my training methods. Maybe couple more marathons will prepare me a lot better, both physically and mentally to have the endurance to face what may come unexpected. Pressure is the only thing that always streamlines my mind and it is good to know, that this is still the case.

Anyway, apart from that rant, this is a shout out to all those people who showed up to cheer the runners, all those who ran along with me, and my friends who spared me from getting drunk the day before ! Until the next 26.2 miles, I’m out to take some rest. A triathlon does sound good right now but if only I can swim well …

Update: Got an email today with pictures of my running during the marathon. I uploaded them online. Here is the link and some images where I do look like I’m enjoying the run !!

In pain, and satisfied like a well-fed child,
Conquering 22 miles in agony, amongst lost strides,
In training, the test still weeks away,
Work to be finished, and more miles ahead,
Another journey with high hopes, treads.

A good week, I presumed.
Bugs fixed, a near marathon complete,
but a little thought reveals a treat,
Of more work remaining,
Completion never in the vicinity.

Cause and effect do change,
Perspectives, opinions and ambition;
Work unfinished, drives and stalls elation.
Does all this work still make the difference,
Between life and beyond ?

I understand, action begets action, the inevitable,
The more you try, the deeper you sink;
Like caught in a quick sand, terrible
the fright, the action necessary is to avoid action.
When will I learn ?

Like always, searching through the archives, I stumbled upon an old post over at Crackled. And the reason hence, for this post …

What is interesting about the article is that, personally, I’ve been naive enough to assume every one of those 5 fallacies at one point or another. Every time, I think I’ve learnt and think that I can’t make the same mistakes again, but a slightly different situation always brings me back to the same coal pit, without even a hint of the downfall. And that is the beauty of nature, and why you and I, have to strive constantly to work towards training the mind to understand that fooling yourself, even for your own good, is dangerous.

But, what doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger, eventually. And that is an axiom I do believe in strongly. And so we move on …

PS: I wanted to ask ‘Is common sense, common’ but considering that it is more of a cliche, I settled for the above title.

Yes. I found out the hard way that gaining weight, the healthy way, is a lot harder than losing weight, even 30 pounds. I used to have chunks of belly just hanging out not 3 years before, part of the price I paid for the fast foods in US, and one of my friend’s machine estimated my metabolic age to be around 40. Wow, now that was an eye-opener. And from there, I just started running and now I’m in this hole which I can’t crawl out of. I’m now probably underweight.

I think losing weight healthily is probably a lot easier than people think and really, it is simple mathematics. Eat less calories and spend more. As long as the net is negative and you are patient, the fat will dissolve and losing weight is inevitable. But once you are hooked on to it, or as addicted to running as I am, it becomes hard to gain back weight healthily. The saddest part is that I eat more than twice as much as I used to when I had more weight but since my metabolism is probably in a lot better shape too, the calories don’t seem to stick around anymore.

For all of you who think I’m just gloating and making things up, really, I wish I was. With a BMI close to 19, and trying to run 25 miles/week, may be meat is the only answer, along with the ample portions of vegetables I already consume… Or maybe I should eat my lunch after a good smoke session, like old times … Anyway, if any of you (the 2 or 3 people who visit this site regularly) have suggestions, then please leave me a comment.

Finally, someone said it out loud and is getting everyone riled up on the idea of a world without nuclear weapons. Here’s the article. This is one of those things that might alleviate a lot of concerns for people in the proliferation policy realm but I think it is ineffective and serves a moot point on giving us a false sense of security that the world is safer, even if all the nukes are disarmed.

Why you ask ? Because we are humans. And unlearning physics that is a simple extension of a much more helpful application, i.e., the generation of power from reactors, is quite hard. In fact to quote from the article,

Chinese President Hu Jintao made clear that Beijing had no plans to scrap its nuclear arsenal.

“We will continue to keep our nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security, and make efforts to advance the international disarmament process,” Hu said.

If every country that already has nukes takes a similar stance, and by suggesting arbitrarily that “we will keep our nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security”, there is still reason for countries that want to get in to building nukes to get a nuclear status and respect from fear. And yes, I’m talking about North Korea, Iran and may be Brazil specifically.

But we strive, and that is probably a good thing. At least, we are heading in the right direction…