Alice, Dual Monarchy and Euler’s Identity

Let me first take up the Euler’s theorem or Euler’s Identity. It is an equation as neat as Einstein’s e=mc2 and in the words of Prof. David Percy of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, it was “a real classic and you can do no better than that … It is simple to look at and yet incredibly profound, it comprises the five most important mathematical constants.”

Euler’s Identity is written simply as: e^iπ + 1 = 0

The five constants are:

• The number 0.
• The number 1.
• The number π, an irrational number (with unending digits) that is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It is approximately 3.14159…
• The number e, also an irrational number as π . It is approximately 2.71828….

But the weirdest thing about Euler’s formula—given that it relies on imaginary numbers—is that it’s so immensely useful in the real world. By translating one type of motion into another this equation has application in real world. π and e are deeply related, but in a very weird way, as adventures of Alice after falling through the rabbit hole.

Such irrational events that Alice experienced are in a dimension perpendicular to the world of real things—a place measured in units of i. The square root of –1, which of course doesn’t exist. Mathematicians call it an imaginary number.

Because Alice shows effects from obeying instructions ‘Drink me or Eat me’ down there is in literal sense while in real world what one faces is no less embarrassing as losing face or feeling small. In short our existence is the axis around which both irrational and real world make their claims on us, even if it is only limited to a nightmare. This equation is all pervasive in human affairs where an element of irrationality is in-built.

We cannot multiply a number by itself to produce a negative number anymore than we can repeat a dream by our will, The letter i is therefore used as a sort of stand-in to mark places where this was done.

The Queen of Hearts in the Lewis Carroll’s story might order about but Alice holds the ultimate authority and when she asserts it shows what is wrong with the authority of the Queen. She is only a number in the deck of playing cards.

e^iπ + 1 = 0

In the Euler’s Identity Alice is the constant 1. As seen earlier her place in the equation makes the pother and the strange procedure of the trial of the Knave of Hearts as zero another constant!

The beauty of the Euler’s theorem is that it has a transcendental quality of human existence where a person or an event (represented by the number 1) can undo all the carefully orchestrated Power Games of nations to mean nothing. Even while Austro-Hungarian monarchy or Dual Monarchy was lording over the ethnic minorities of the Balkans little did it realize a single event like assassination of the Archduke of Austria (1914) would bring down the empire like a pack of cards!

Similarly all that the Great Britain had amassed as a maritime nation, with colonies stretched into far corners of the globe (The Sun will never set on their empire’) shall with two Great Wars evaporate.(the constant 1 can represent both Great Wars as one set)

Benny

 

 

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Lesson from Snowden Affair

Mr. Edward Snowden is traveling by commercial air while the USA want him grounded and delivered to them. Can’t a Giant get his wish?June 23.

The USA have their reasons while Mr. Snowden his reasons for what he did. Alas there isn’t an earthly court where they can establish truth.

Till such time truth can be revealed and understood by all, suffering of each is not for own self but also for sins of others.

Prisons, till Truth is enshrined in the land as real, are for the dispossessed, weak, poor and needy. The biggest rogues are let free. Because they know how to manipulate the system to their advantage.

When society made prisons it made its burden of guilt also more harsh.

June 24,

What an humbling exercise to find you have practically none when you need help? President Obama is in a fix.You may judge how effective has been the US foreign policy from this.

Pres.Obama has been reaching out but his long arm, both Secretaries of State, seem to have drawn blank. It is not for want of trying but the perception others have of real intentions of the US. Is it trying to create conditions for peace and International understanding? Each nation will have its own opinion.

Diplomacy is not in not simply picking chestnuts from fire but controlling the fire till chestnuts are got out.In post-Cold War the US policy was all along to take opposite view of Russia (the war in Syria) Why should Russia oblige USA over Snowden? Now Russia takes this opportunity to deny cooperating with the US.Those who need friends must show themselves friendly that applies both in personal and national relationships. No exception to it.

June 25.

Snowden affair seems to get murkier with each day. He is now like Jonah swallowed by an ideological whale. Where it will spit him out?

June. 26

Snowden still at airport, Ecuador asylum decision could take months. Reason is simple. Ecuador has to think of trade with the US.

Ecuador has to think of its flowers, vegetables and the Yankee dollah funds its economy. So Snowden has to cool his heels longer.

Idealism is fine but cost prohibitive; Ecuador knows by now Marxism may be polished by rhetoric but it is money that fills their belly.

June 27.

If Politics of nations runs on hard realities of dollars and cents individuals are not. So much is obvious.

Whoever first got nation concept accepted as ‘politics of the future’ is the one who sold himself. He might have called himself a realist.Time judges how real he was.

No nation has learned to tame an individual simply because nation is a creature of all individuals where no democracy in its ideal state can exist.Nations at best try to cater to the good of majority which is not good enough for those who happen to be left out.

In the post WWII Karl Fuchs was among a small group of intellectuals who objected the role of USA having total control of nuclear arms. He turned a spy. Compare the fate Rosenberg couple in the 50s and AQ Khan who cut an pasted nuclear secrets and sold through internet.

 Was justice served equally to those who leaked nuclear secret of the west to other nations? Nations blunder as much as individuals.

Modern Age is better served by the likes of Orwell,Thoreau who are best representative of the Outsiders but well tuned to speak truth.

On what motives Edward Snowden leaked sensitive information we may not really know. Was he bent on mischief or out of idealism? Everyone shall have an opinion to which I would rather not get into. Lesson that L’affaire Snowden teaches us that nations tribes, secular, theocratic for that matter any system run by man or body of men, is an exercise in futility. Immoral it shall be and we need to ask how far we may rid us off the sheer fools, mullahs devoid of common sense or how human nature works, from tampering it.For example see the state of Egypt in post Mubarak period. So much blood of ordinary citizens was shed for what, so some religious nut can run the country from bad to worse? Or what about Pakistan?

benny

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Capsule History-3

Is God the Mover and Shaker of History?

Considering the concept of God is so ingrained in people’s mind I shall address the question by using Einstein’s formula E =mc2 Energy as any schoolboy would know is neither created nor destroyed. A small mass of matter when converted releases tremendous amount of energy. All that energy mankind has ever possessed or shall, owe to what was released at the time of the Big Bang.
Let us look at the equation once again. The m must denote any matter that has a mass. This equation holds true anywhere in a material universe, including men.
Here I am concerned with men who have energy and those who make history.
Like the gold standard to which currency of nations are tied, is it possible to refer events and men who make history and tie to a single standard?
To answer let me cite a few examples.
No great monument like the Pyramids of Cheops could have been built on the levels of energy of the ruling class alone. So the powers-that-be hit upon an idea that would electrify the masses. A belief in afterlife and the pharaoh as a celestial symbol made it all possible.
So energy can be pooled and invested for the furtherance of a common idea. Great monuments Cathedrals and Civic buildings are testament to man’s ideals. But these are not living expression of man’s faith but curiosities and a milestone in the march of history. Energies of peoples who made these possible must have passed on to other areas.
Now the example of Napoleon Bonaparte comes to mind. He assumed the title of the emperor of France. His military genius ranks him among the immortals such as Alexander and Julius Caesar. His brilliant victories with such a powerful army battle hardened and disciplined so much so he could not have sat idle. He had to push his ambition further. Thus he was caught in the crest of a wave that took him to his Russian campaign. Disaster was the result. What went wrong? Do you not see his overweening ambition was a trap?
In terms of transactional energy Napoleon could marshal energy of all those who followed him to battle or who espoused his cause in the Chamber of Deputies. Bonapartism was a force to reckon with. For example at first there were 100 deputies in the French Chamber. But by 1898 there were none. Bonapartism was dead within 77 years after his death. If the glory of Bonaparte was gone with his death, energy that he could orchestrate must still be around. As I said at the outset it is neither created nor destroyed.
It is not men, and not ideas that keep the score but energy that fires up both. History shows clearly ideas and achievements of mankind keep circulating just as an oceanic conveyor belt providing certain push or pull to affect the nations, but how ideas have been put to use were never been the same. Bolshevik revolution of 1917 was an experiment for the world to sit up and note and how it fared in Russia and China were entirely different. How they refashion their future in adopting market economy also shows a truism: each nation draws lessons from history with emphases placed differently.
Oceanic conveyor belt beginning as cold current ends up as a warm current. The salubrious climate of North West Europe is the result. Thanks to the Big Thaw some 13000 years ago, the Gulf Stream made Lofoton a small town off the coast of Norway 10 degrees warmer than any town deep in Siberia though these lie in the same latitude. But these conditions shall surely change. Take the Minoan culture of the ancient world. A tsunami may have brought it down but consequently led the Greek mainland to advance and spread the Greek ideals all over Europe and much of Asia. According a Biblical account while Israel was in the grip of a great famine the Hebrew was sustained by the abundance of Egypt. If God’s ‘chosen people’ needed a helping hand it had to be from other ‘gentile’ nations. Advantages of any nation are built up by power wherewith energy of great many can be built up to some purpose. When the significance of the intent is lost all that energy garnered is scattered around. Villains,good, and fools all have had chance using these to shake or move the mankind ever so little. Such supremacy of man or nations is for a finite period.
Men and ideas pass on unable to control history for long. Buddhism with pacifism at the heart or Islam by the sword tilt at the windmills of history. The moral of such energy for anyone to make use seems a sound one. Nature does not put her eggs all in one basket. The idea is to leave both good and evil to be stored away in the collective consciousness of mankind. For ‘God’ a Jew , Moslem or Caucasian or Hindu are alike.This being the case any one imputing He favors any tribe or nation in particular is nonsense.
Each man with energy to spare is a player and has the power to make history. Only that how an individual and a nation behave in terms of energy are as distinct as quantum laws in the heart of an atom is different from the universe where gravity rules. An individual has to get his values and choices right and his judgment is only admissible in a very narrow sphere whereas makers of history are judged by their life’s work. Dictators like Pol Pot or Joseph Stalin may die in bed while Mussolini had a violent end. Think how relevant these are to the present day. Insignificant I dare say.
Benny

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Nation or individual?

It was Adolf Hitler who once posed the question: “What is life?” He himself answered it thus:”Life is the nation.The individual is the nation. The individual must die anyway. Beyond the life of the individual is the Nation.”( Shirer:The Rise and fall of the Third Reich. p.933) I owe this article to Wm. Shirer’s excellent analysis of the Collapse of the Third Republic.
Individuals make up the nation and a House divided itself cannot last. So individuals do matter. Which is more important? a chicken or the egg? Or the city or a citizen? There is nothing that can stand by itself as far as anything that is organized to serve a purpose. Man makes the city and is in turn changed by it. One need only visit a city like New York to see the frenetic pace that keeps her denizens moving about. Whereas if I were to set the same pace in a place like Perar, a village in the Hills, Tamil Nadu, India I would be viewed by the locals as one wanting in intelligence. Man exudes a certain energy level, call it his intrinsic worth and when it connected with another it raises him to an altogether level. One only needs to watch a young man trying to interest a young woman. Seen how their making out hits an altogether new patch when another young man appears in the scene?In short synergy of an individual is infectious and it makes all provide their own and lo, the rules of the game will be changed once and for all. A New Yorker if he were to go back to his roots say a hick town will he not feel out of place? He has given his energy for a common purpose and has benefited from the common pool so much that he is changed forever.
The Nation is set up by so many individuals who may be migrant workers, citizens and ethnic groups absorbed into the mainstream for the development,maintenance and support of the Nation. No matter a Nation is doomed in the long run if these bodies of individuals are divided and pressed down by laws that are aimed to protect a a particular group.
benny

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Sheldonia #20 Enter Anarchy (or Archie)

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Terrible Effect Of A Trifle

Jochi the eldest son of Genghis Khan was a prince who did not care much for power; he spent much time carousing and hunting with his cronies than living in style as was entitled to. Once over the cups some nobles seeing a jovial figure so common and harmless began to tease him; but the son of Genghis Khan did not say a word.
The nobles continued at their pastime till a bodyguard of Jochi went over to them and pointed out the identity of their victim.
Realizing the danger the tormentors pleaded, ” We are nothing but dust before the Great Khan!” They quickly left the place.
Jochi may not want power; but as a member of that family of Khans that wielded the destiny of Mongols, he represented power despite of himself. His Life Signs was made stronger by his connections. . When the question of succession came up it was Jochi’s choice that settled in favor of Kublai Khan rather than Ogodei or his successors.
Without Kublai Khan, history of the world would have been decidedly different.

benny

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