2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 29,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 7 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

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A Clutch of Tweets

1.
Problem of universe is a step into the unknown. Imagination works where Nature is the medium. Between mind and reality it builds a bridge.

2.
Mind compresses and focuses on a specific problem at any time; memory of a smell rides piggyback on Now to the past.
When we look at past with rose-tinted glass we are less harsh as from a wider experience in life; mind can focus only one idea at a time.

3.
Nothing new under the sun; a free-masonry of ideas at the unconscious end and you fit idea rationally to time-space. Mind is a state of awareness.
Here is one to round this post off. Positive intelligence permeates everything from Time-Space framework. If in imagination I make an image and call it God how can you prove me wrong? It merely bridges through evidences I glean in nature. God being Time and Space (Eternal God and Omnipresent) does not need imagination whereas I would need it to serve any given purpose on hand.
Mind as I defined is an awareness and it is called Cosmic Mind. Thus Nebuchadnezzar may dream and Daniel can interpret it to him because the medium is common. The unconscious part of the human brain is the seat of will. We follow our desires and will, and find reasons to justify our actions rationally. In the post of Number Game I mentioned the extra-ordinary way in which late Srinivasa Ramanujan wrote down mathematical functions that came to him in dreams before his death. You find what you seek. His knock on the door of mathematical problems was heard. That is all.
How do we limit our life experience to insignificant level when we dismiss what our conscious mind cannot digest! Instead we should use both parts of our brain to get the best out of life.

I wish you a Happy New Year to you all.
benny

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News on the March-number game

Yesterday LiveScience.com carried a news that is extraordinary to say the least.
“While on his death bed, the brilliant Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan cryptically wrote down functions he said came to him in dreams, with a hunch about how they behaved. Now 100 years later, researchers say they’ve proved he was right.
“We’ve solved the problems from his last mysterious letters. For people who work in this area of math, the problem has been open for 90 years,” Emory University mathematician Ken Ono said.
Ramanujan, a self-taught mathematician born in a rural village in South India, spent so much time thinking about math that he flunked out of college in India twice, Ono said.”
In order to understand what his contribution to the world as we know it we need to step back a little.
Mathematics was my bugbear since my father in his zeal to educate me did all but make a dunce. Only lately I realize mathematics and I were cut out for one another. If my inordinate curiosity to explain my place in the universe was limited by my antipathy to the world of numbers I would be savoring now a discipline called mathematical physics. No it was not to be. Instead I trained my eyes and hands to be an artist and many other things besides. No we need not go into that. It was either or condition that I had lately posted in my blog.
ii
What is mathematics? It accepts order as requisite in delving into patterns of our physical universe, where numbers are symbols each behaving with inexorable logic establishing a relationship. Two molecules of hydrogen when combined with one molecule of oxygen is water. But when we distinguish heavy water from water we are stepping into the realm of chemistry. Suppose we hold the famous equation of Einstein we are looking at the relationship of mass and energy. Here is where mathematical physics comes in. By giving values to quantities mathematics has laid its grip on the chemical and physical nature of our universe. Now let me see if I can make this post sound reasonable without using jargon since I am least qualified to go into its inner sanctum. Let us be honest. We can get a best deal out of our interaction from the world without having to take each apart.
we can write the numbers from zero thus: 0,1,2,3,4 and so on. These are positive integers since it can be divided by the same number and get 1 as the result. Since it is going on a ladder up it is positive integer. From zero we may go down as well, like driving into the basement for parking our cars . It is written like 0.-1,-2,-3, -4. The series is called negative prime integers.It was Möbius a German mathematician who established an order that has since become very useful tool. Its importance becomes all the more vital when we know fundamental particles have their own quirks and quiddity that one is apt to miss in the visible universe. Suppose we use the positive integer for the macro universe and negative integer for the quantum world and find there is a symmetry would not that be wonderful? (Here the analogy of +ve and -ve integers is too simplistic.)
Late Ramanujan arrived at the order of cosmos on a symmetry on the basis of his dreams. It took some 120 years for mathematicians to validate him. In trying to understand Mind we need to look at the function of our brains a little more deeper.
Coming back to the Live Science report:
In developing mock modular forms, Ramanujan was decades ahead of his time, Ono said; mathematicians only figured out which branch of math these equations belonged to in 2002.
“Ramanujan’s legacy, it turns out, is much more important than anything anyone would have guessed when Ramanujan died,” Ono said.
The findings were presented last month at the Ramanujan 125 conference at the University of Florida, ahead of the 125th anniversary of the mathematician’s birth on Dec. 22.
benny

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Graphic Novel- Griswold layouts

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Just One Point: moral quiddity

If we are made of atoms that have inherent quirks and quiddities it must also show in some unmistakable manner when made as complex as human beings. What is the nature of atoms? You smash atoms into fundamental particles but you try dividing them further you get more of the same. Can it be a moral quotient to give us a place in the scheme of things? We are connected to all things at the level of atoms where quiddity of nature has written its moral imperative consistently throughout. It is like a giant jigsaw puzzle where we must fit with all mankind. In terms of a physical dimension it may not be possible. Yet in terms of moral sense we are painted with the same brush. You destroy one area and you are breaking the moral order of universe in some manner of speaking. Its consequences, (I deliberately avoid the term ‘sin’ for its theological connotations) must leave its impact in some manner. For example, you exploit nations and the lawlessness of it, call it imperialism, leaves its mark on you. Africa was formerly the white man’s burden and Africa has still not recovered from it. While the west exploited the Arab merchants were carrying on slave trade in the heartland of the continent ,converting the natives and throwing down the genuine and natural form of their culture to suit their form of religious requirements. If Africa is reeling under the fresh onslaught of these Arab imperialism the west paved the way. Moral sense when outraged as Africa has experienced it must express itself in some manner. It may be that in not so distant future Arab fundamentalism will be pitted against the west from this part of the globe.
benny

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Then and Now

I am a war child, in a manner of speaking. When I came to this world, there was a world war inexorably grinding down to its bitter end. Short of everything that made life easier, the wartime austerity left its scars on me as with all others of my generation. At home a meal was not just a meal without being told we ought to be thankful whatever was ladled out to us. ‘Consider the millions who are orphans elsewhere and you ought to be thankful..’ while the spinach and rice were served, leftovers warmed for the occasion. The parents prided on their duty and knowledge they did it with their sweat of blood. It was thus our meal-time, it was tantamount to a moral issue every time. A clean plate at the end equated with a clean conscience.
Now that I am on my own (I for one eat indifferently) while my siblings and I have learned to put our ghosts behind us. We have no excuses and we dribble a little with our conscience when we splurge on food we have brought from far corners of the earth. Did we not filch with our colossal capital reserves from those who are economically less endowed? We call it free enterprise that they must deliver at our terms. Africa, Asia and Far East we know as country of origin when we survey the overstocked shelves in our supermarkets. Fishes from their rivers feed us and their grains we import wholesale, in cereals, crispies cookies and what not. We supply the cunning to make their produce palatable, We bar code their sweat to make it sell. Moral issues are dismissed with the click of cash register. When we cart our weekly grocery we are only conscious of the parking place and not of some rain forests cleared for biofuel. We of our generation have distanced from the burden of our parent who made both ends with hard cash while we do it on credit. Our families were raised on future promises by living beyond our means. Plastic credit cards opened doors at High Street shops and our children knew branded items gave their childhood pleasures a shine. A pair of Reebok shoes made them forget the boredom of walking to the school bus. Our consumerism dulled our conscience from harsh realities of global trade and commerce unduly. Children learned to appease theirs.

Moral issue of now is made more abstract, since our children have no time to listen to us anyway. They are all into the sweet life of virtual reality, of their consumables and privacy of their own den. We are made to feel more as intruders at home since our economic clout is becoming fainter and less constructive to be providers for all. Of course children have their own means of which we are least in the know. We have our own worries: issues of pension funds to sort out than of children whose worlds are on fast tracks. Our world wherein we lashed ourselves to work ethics and burnt incense before family gods for prosperity is gone; those corporate heads whose appeasement was chief concern also have gone; and so are pension funds.
Coming to think of it we have only ourselves to blame.
benny

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News on the March- Darkness over Africa

Here is the Reuter’s news of Dec 22,2012 dealing with elephant poaching. This threat is only a tip of a much larger threat that faces Africa. A shadowy group operating from Sudan is hellbent to create Africa in its medieval retrogressive image. BBC in April 2004 had written about the Jindjaweed group that set off outrage and still continue to do so in Sudan. More than one million people fled Sudan’s Darfur region, the victims of what UN officials have described as an “ethnic cleansing” campaign by a group of Arab militiamen. Here I shall write upon the way they generate cash flow to fund their campaign. It is nothing short of changing the social history, culture and customs of non-Arab population. Why must they require funds but for their much wider agenda?

“Faced with the threat of horse-mounted Sudanese elephant poachers armed with machine guns, the central African nation Cameroon has deployed military helicopters and 600 soldiers to try to protect the Bouba Ndjida National Park, a former safari tourism destination park and its animals.
Its decision to call in the army follows a bloody incursion into the park last winter during which poachers from Sudan killed some 300 elephants, or 80 percent of the park’s elephant population, within a few weeks.
Armed only with World War One-era rifles, the park’s eco-guards were defenceless in the face of the Sudanese ‘jandjaweed’ poachers who had travelled thousands of miles on horseback to seize the tusks.
The raid left hundreds of elephant corpses in its wake.
Elephant poaching is an illegal trade that has become a multi-billion dollar industry in Africa fuelled by demand for ivory ornaments from China, some of whose citizens are increasingly wealthy.
Ivory sells for about $300 per kg on the black market, according to conservation group TRAFFIC, meaning that an average-sized tusk weighing 6.8 kg can be sold for a small fortune in central Africa, a region plagued by poverty and underdevelopment.
Officials said there was evidence that the Sudanese poachers were on their way back to the park – a territory of lush forests, rivers and hilly plains about the size of Luxembourg – now that the dry season had arrived, making travel easier.
Equipped with helicopters, night vision gear, and scores of jeeps, Cameroon’s military has set up two garrisons in the park and several camps along Cameroon’s border with Chad and the Central African Republic.
What is happening elsewhere , Mali,Libya, Tunisia and Egypt are not isolated events. These are sure to merge as one unless the African Union make a concerted effort to kill the hydra-like Arab hegemony.
benny

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A Fable for the Times: either or

Prometheus found the gods on top of Olympus night after night sitting around the campfire and entertain each other with stories. Ganymede would go around them filling their cups and the godly jollity went on day after day. Prometheus on climbing down one night asked other clan members,’why not we also sit around and entertain each other?’ Some clapped their hands with joy and thought it was an excellent idea. One elder by name Calchas said it was a foolish notion. ‘Foolish notion?’ Prometheus could not understand,’ They are like us.’
Calchas looked at the whippersnapper sadly,’ Prommmy, they are immortals. They are of a different league.’
‘But they steal, seduce innocent girls and take no responsibility to take care of the waifs or their mothers and they tittle-tattle..’
‘Enough said,’ Calchas was getting irritated, ‘These gods owe none any explanation so they may establish, each his moral code and is a law unto himself.’
Prometheus went that night to his straw bed and next morning he saw the glorious sun rise sending its golden beams all across the land. Prometheus said,’Gods live indeed in splendor!I will steal a little of their fire if it is the last thing I do on earth.’ He went and begged an audience with the king. He said the gods had fire for the day as well as for the night. I shall steal a little fire.’ The king was astounded but was convinced the motives of Prometheus were above-board.
Did he not say the fire would serve them well in cold nights? He permitted him to try his chance. He cautioned him however,’Prometheus, if you are found out I will plead no knowledge of our interview. You are on your own.’Young Prometheus understood the risk. He said, ‘as much as I love my king and my clan I shall risk dangers so it benefits us for ever.’
Thus he climbed Mount Olympus by stealth and stole their fire. He brought it to the people below and they all acclaimed him as a hero. The gods discovered the theft soon enough and the punishment was swift. As demanded Prometheus was bound by the king and delivered to them. The gods had him chained to a rock. Hephaestus The lame god while creating the fire noticed a fire-bird fly out of the sparks. It was out of his control. ‘He said,’You can eat his liver. Better than dogs eat hm alive.’
He went back to the abode of gods.
This raven would daily visit him to eat his liver. Mankind pitied him and said,’the sin of daring gods was punishable by death. At least he escaped death.’ They went off as quickly as they came up. Prometheus had become too hot for their comfort, Months later they hardly went that way to give him company or share his misery. The fire-bird went on feeding his liver that somehow gave him healing powers. Nobody could explain why. He became cheerful and could withstand pain and endure inclement weather. Gods wondered whether the god of fire helped him. They questioned him. He put to rest their doubts by saying that in the punishment gods had a safety clause that they could not have avoided. ‘As gods we are dealing with Either or situation’.
Now it so happened gradually mankind took to bed often from illness that they had never known. Many of them died young or would die a lingering death. What the gods did not know was that mankind in learning to cook their meat and making it rich they had irreparably damaged their constitution. From overcooked meat and too much fat their liver became exposed to various maladies ever since.
Gods could not escape Either or situation; neither would mankind escape it. In their indifference and giving cold shoulder to Prometheus despite of his selfless service had invited something of the curse of impiety laid on him.
Moral: progress has its kill/cure condition. People in accepting fire from Prometheus was destined to suffer in some other manner. Look at the way the gun culture the Constitution of America has helped to be part of their way of life, decimate the young and vulnerable! Their very ‘manliness'( of which gun has symbolic value) has robbed them a way forward, a sane law that shall be in their best interests.
benny

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Silly Excuse: aborted Mayan Calender

The world didn’t come to end since time was found hanging on my hands. Imagine! It still is.
benny

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Silly excuses: a double act

1.
“Boss, I am trying to see the man behind the Gucci you wear. Am I seeing the pair or your double face?

2.
The stud: a lot more would have loved me had I downplayed my act.

3.
The family that prays together could have stayed longer till some joker brought a glock handgun and said to them ,’Here is what I got as answer to my prayers.’
benny

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