People (my parents, say), don’t understand how I have a PhD in Computer Science and can’t help them when their Windows box crashes.

- A Rutgers University professor

Management :))

A manager went to his programmers and told them: "As regards to your work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave at five in the afternoon." At this, all of them became angry and several resigned on the spot."

So the manager said: "All right, in that case you may set your own working hours, as long as you finish your projects on schedule." The programmers, now satisfied, began to come in at noon and work to the wee hours of the morning.

- From the book "The Tao of Programming" translated by Geoffery James, one of my personal favorites. Must read for any programmer. You can get the complete text from here.

Princeton ...

Princeton in 1948 was to mathematicians what Paris once was to painters and novelists, Vienna to psychoanalysts and architects, and ancient Athens to philosophers and playwrights. Harald Bohr, brother of Niels Bohr, the physicist, had declared it ”the mathematical center of the universe” in 1936. When the deans of mathematics held their first world-wide meeting after World War II, it was in Princeton.

Fine Hall housed the world’s most competitive, up-to-the-minute mathematics department. Next door -connected, in fact - was the nation’s leading physics department, whose members, including Eugene Wigner, had driven off to Illinois, California, and New Mexico during the war, lugging bits of laboratory equipment, to help build the atomic bomb. A mile or so away, on what had been Olden Farm, was the 118 Institute for Advanced Study, the modern equivalent of Plato’s Academy, where Einstein, Gödel, Oppenheimer, and von Neumann scribbled on their blackboards and held their learned discourses.

Visitors and students from the four corners of the world streamed to this polyglot mathematical oasis, fifty miles south of New York. What was proposed in a Princeton seminar one week was sure to be debated in Paris and Berkeley the week after, and in Moscow and Tokyo the week after that. ”It is difficult to learn anything about America in Princeton”, wrote Einstein’s assistant Leopold Infeld in his memoirs, “much more so than to learn about England in Cambridge”.

In Fine Hall English is spoken with so many different accent s that the resultant mixture is termed Fine Hall English.... The air is full of mathematical ideas and formulae. You have only to stretch out your hand, close it quickly and you feel that you have caught mathematical air and that a few 51 formulae are stuck to your palm.

If one wants to see a famous mathematician one does not need to go to him; it is enough to sit quietly in Princeton, and sooner or later he must come to Fine Hall.

- From “A Beautiful Mind”, the (e)book.

The Milky Way

I had a late night chat with a friend (if 2.30 am is late enough for you). We chatted on myriad topics, ranging from a literary review of Suketu Mehta's award winning book, Maximum City to weird geometric object called fractals.

One particular topic which singularly set the discussion on fire was about our galaxy, the Milky Way. From childhood, we have been taught and found in textbooks that our galaxy looks something like this when seen from the top. I asked him like how did they arrive at this. I assume that nobody would have peeped out and seen how it looked like. Intuitively, exploring the structure of other galaxies seems to be much easier than doing that for our own galaxy.

However, my friend did have a reply which I found quite interesting. He said that we realized that planet earth was spherical long before we ventured out in outer space. I said that there is a rather simple explanation for that. When you stand on a coastline and see a ship approaching you, you first see the top of the mast followed by the sails followed by the complete ship. Also, this is true for all directions at any point on Earth. If that distance is measured, using some trigonometry the curvature of Earth can be found out.

He said that somebody must have done an analogous experiment for the Milky Way. However, we couldn’t think further. Can you help us?

Note: Neither of us is an astronomer, nor has had any formal study of it. We are just lowly Computer Science grads ;). But knowing about the cosmos is not the primary motive here. It is all about challenging the assumptions/half-truths rather than accepting them blindly, and to prove or disprove them for yourself. I feel that true understanding can come only through this way. My friend put it more beautifully. He said that this path is something even bigger than that. It is a path to enlightenment.

The Ancient Masters

Thus Spake the Master Programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless".

The programmers of old were mysterious and profound. We cannot fathom their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance. Aware, like a fox crossing the water. Alert, like a general on the battlefield. Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests. Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood. Opaque, like black pools in darkened caves. Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds? The answer exists only in Tao.

Grand Master Turing once dreamed that he was a machine. When he awoke he exclaimed: "I don't know whether I am Turing dreaming that I am a machine, or a machine dreaming that I am Turing!"

- From the book "The Tao of Programming" translated by Geoffery James, one of my personal favorites. Must read for any programmer. You can get the complete text from here.

Goodbye Lenin

Of the rest of the countries in the world (i.e. all except India), Germany (Deutschland) is the one which fascinates me the most. I always had an admiration for things German (Deutsch); the land with its over 2000 year old history, its industrious & hard working people, the language so hard & precise and of course beer (bier :)). This was sufficient motivation for me to learn the language (and also to post in Deutsch sometime).

I also did read quite a lot about German history, particularly post-war (primarily from Wikipedia). Was really fascinated by the fact that a city (Berlin) standing at the cross points of two civilizations. I always wondered how life would have been on both sides of the wall, with perennial atmosphere of hostility but still being united by a common language and culture.

I saw a wonderful movie last Sunday - "Goodbye Lenin". It’s a movie about an East German family coming to terms with life post re-unification. I was greatly impressed by the movie and also as I had a German version (with English subtitles); it helped me brush up my language as well. Also I really enjoyed the experience of seeing the things which I read happen live before my eyes.

The story goes something like this. An average German family is living happily in East Berlin. Fearing persecution for not towing the party line, the father absconds into the west. But still the mother appears to be a headstrong socialist. Now in the late 80's the boy Alex grows up and is clearly dissatisfied by the scheme of things. In 1989 at the 40th anniversary of East Germany (Deutsche Demokratische Republik - DDR), an evening-walk protest is organized. As expected, the troops called "greens" brutally crush the protest. While all this is happening, mother is a mute spectator. As our hero Alex is being 'softened', mother faints. It is later declared that she went into coma after having a major heart attack.

When she is asleep, the wall collapses and Germany reunifies. Capitalism storms into the East and along with a deluge of westernization. In end (after a few months) the East ceases to exist.

In 1990, mother wakes up but is still in a fragile state. Now the doctor strongly advises Alex that she should be kept far away from any excitement, otherwise results could be fatal. Now Alex moves her into their house and comically tries to create an atmosphere like the old times, with bogus TV broadcasts, hiring kids to sing patriotic songs etc.
The movie goes on with many twists and turns and incidences that will make you laugh and cry and at least I didn't anticipate the ending.