Both sound and light travel as waves through the air. I may now resort to writing the equation of a traveling wave but that would do nothing but cloud the issue. What is important is that if a disturbance travels as a wave through a medium, like sound and light do, then it is possible to make a measurement of that wave at more than 1 location and say something about the location of the source of the wave. That is why we have two eyes and two ears because if we had only one of each then we would not have been able to determine the location of sources of sounds or the depths of objects. The accuracy with which the location of the source can be determined depends upon the distance between the points at which the measurements are made. In general, the closer they are to each other, the more inaccurate the assessment of the location. Now it is not hard to see how the accurate and efficient evaluation of sounds and objects would have been a winning and desirable strategy in the game of evolution. Therefore nature, being the brilliant designer that she is, has separated our two eyes and two ears by a considerable distance. To my limited biological knowledge, it appears true with all other species but I would be interested to know if this assessment is not correct. In fact, I would go as far as saying that if a sufficiently evolved alien specie were to be discovered on another planet and if it had auditory and visual sensors, they would most probably be in pairs (if not more) and that they would be separated on the 'face'.

This brings me to the point of this post. Smell doesn't travel through air like a wave and, therefore, its source cannot be as easily located in space as the sources of sound or light. The only way in which the source location problem can be tackled for smell, it appears to me, is by using its intensity and this is an inherently more inefficient way than by using the phase information for sound or light waves. Intensity processing also doesn't require measurements separated in space. It appears, therefore, that nature could do only so much for smell localization. It bestowed upon its creatures more sensitive noses but their nostrils were packed together because there is no inherent advantage in having them spread apart. And now the final picture emerges. If only smell traveled through space like sound and light do, our nostrils would most probably have been spread apart and what a ghastly scene that would have constituted! With twice the number of independent facial fissures humanity would surely have been a trainwreck, and for all we know it may just be possible that that quintessential fuel of the evolutionary machinery, mating, may have been resolutely refused by all. It would really have been a nightmare!

Then I started thinking about how the Greek alphabet is used by non-Greeks to express mathematics. It seemed to me that there exists an automatic and unsaid hierarchy of mathematical symbols in academia and one is expected to catch on to it without ever being explicitly told. People in academia tend to use Roman letters (a, b etc.) only to represent trivial things. Roman letters are likely to be used in a construction like, 'if a+b is 2 and a is 1 then what is b.' Such a construction is obviously primitive and no self respecting academician would ever accept to knowing the answer! The only people who still think seriously about such constructions are number theorists and that's only because they make the problem a tad more respectable by bringing in $\epsilon$ in the mix. Now I do this too. I do tend to use the lower case Roman alphabet for the most trivial of things - well mostly explanatory text. Then come the capitalized Roman letters which, on their day, may be used for vectors. But when it comes to higher order tensors it's got to be Greek alphabets. Lower case Greek alphabets for the garden variety $4^{th}$ order tensors but upper case ones for the most hardcore of equations which, as a corollary, must always be taken with a grain of salt.

Sometimes I wonder what the human society would have done without the invention of these symbols. This alphabet which is the mathematical equivalent of 'Here, now take me seriously,' has had a constant presence in most if not all serious scientific papers in the fields of maths, physics and engineering. I wonder how the Greeks actually deal with this problem. I asked this to my Greek friend and she thought for a bit and replied 'we use the Greek symbols for all the trivial stuff and the Roman numerals for some of the serious things.' 'Do they also walk on their heads?' I thought. I was completely stunned at this final revelation and was left reeling at the thought of reading one their papers. It would be a bit like the story of the boy who cried wolf. There was a boy who mischievously cried 'wolf' one too many times for others to believe him on the one time when he cried honestly. And there may very well be a Greek who mischievously said things were important one too many times for me to believe him on the one time when things actually may have been important.

The other day Himanshu said, 'a donut and a bagel were sitting side by side.' And I doubled up laughing! The possibilities are limitless.

...I need to start hanging out with normal people.

A.A. moves his Knight to d5

Tress Vandeley: (Brilliant, brilliant. That's a shrewd one right there. In one fell swoop he has managed to save the fork that was going to be threatening his Queen and Rook 7 moves down the line and build up a momentum which gives him strategic play in the center of the board. I suppose he is thinking of moving his e and f pawns to threaten the integrity of my King's castle while his Bishop controls the black diagonal. And now with his Knight ensconced at such an advanced position I think the game is going down south for me in less than 23 moves. Mr. Alexandrovich's reputation precedes him. But I should never have underestimated a Russian to begin with. Counterattack is my only option. Maybe I can rattle his composure.)

T.V. moves his Rook to c2

Anatoly Alexandrovich: (Why the hell did he do that? I'll move this long towering one.)

A.A. moves his Queen to a4

Tress Vandeley: (My god, such genius. Such genius! 12. Qxd7, Kg8, 13. Kne7, h6... ... ... I estimate a checkmate in 17 moves. Unless I do something now, my demise is just around the corner. To think that someone could have come up with such a deep move at such a nervous juncture of the game. It doesn't take a genius to see that Mr. Alexandrovich has descended from the land of the Karpovs, Spasskys, Kramniks, and Kasparovs. My god, what shall I do here. The only hope I can see here is my aggressive flank on the Queen side and I should try to step up the pressure.)

T.V. moves his Bishop to e3

Anatoly Alexandrovich: (The short stumpy one then the long slender one then the short stumpy one then the long slender one. I get it now. Here gallops my horse.)

A.A. moves his Knight to f6

Tress Vandeley: (Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn. What insight! What absolutely brilliant insight! Is it time that I resign to a guy who is well and truly on the top of his and our game? He already has a significant strategic advantage. Although I am ahead on material but hindsight shows that Mr. Alexandrovich offered his gambits and I lapped them up without enough thought. But what could I have done in the face of such brilliance? That pawn sacrifice on the third move - who could have thought that it was offered to gain positional advantage 25 moves down the line? There is no other way. It's time I give up and accept defeat against a man who is pushing the envelop in our field.)

T.V. resigns by flicking his King.

Anatoly Alexandrovich: Dude, you tripped your slacker.

The teacher frowned at me and said
The past of feed was - plainly - fed.
Fed up, I knew then what I ned;
I took a break, and out I snoke,
She shook and quook (or quaked? or quoke?)
With raging anger out she broke;
Your ignorance you want to hide?
Tell me the past form of collide!
But how on earth should I decide
If it's collid
(Like hide and hid),
Or else - from all that I surmose,
The past of rise was simply rose,
And that of ride was simply rode,
So of collide must be collode?

Oh damn these English verbs, I thought
The whole thing absolutely stought!
Of English I have had enough,
Those verbs of yours are far too tough.
Bolt upright in my chair I sat,
And said to her 'that's that' - I quat.

-Guy Deutscher

In the golden lightning
of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning
thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race has just begun. (-P.B.S.)

No, I am not allowed to do any of it. Rather, I must worry about how to expand the amount of my work so that it at least appears as if my last 4 years have not been completely squandered. At 66 pages currently, and with hardly a hope of going beyond 150 (doublespaced mind you), my contribution hardly appears a gushing spring of knowledge. It's more like a gentle, dying trickle from a broken tap in the middle of a parched desert. And Masters students routinely clock 200. I think I'll have to fiddle with the spacing, and tinker with the font, adjust the margins, and tamper the text in  order to post such gallumphing figures.

Maybe I am exaggerating but that is one peeve that I have with the whole process of 'growing up'. There is something behind this that I feel strongly about and often feel saddened by. It's that we do not exaggerate often and well enough as we grow up. This ability of making things up from thin air, adorning it with beautiful false ideas, coloring it with dazzling deceitful colors, it not only leaves us to some extent as we grow older, it also suffers as we develop a condescending attitude towards it. And  as this vitality shrinks within, we are left predictable, and immobile, all our ideas fossilized into useless sediments - just reminders of times gone by. And some of us  go on to produce Ph.D. dissertations so bland, it's more fun a watch a glacier melt.

...and it would be a crazy happy world. Truth would only be a matter of one's imagination. Fallacies would be the only consistencies and no professor would be smug. People would be generally confused and disoriented and no one would bat an eyelid when sold 5 oranges after paying for 6. It would be a chaotic world with its unsure zombie like citizens walking around on crazy Mobius strip shaped roads. The principle of mutually assured destruction would cease to exist because no one would be sure if 10,000 is greater than 1. Hence countries would stage preemptive nuclear strikes and finish off this stumbling, hobbling world and the rest of the universe wouldn't give a damn.

But there would be advantages, definitely. If somebody asks you what would you do if you had a million dollars, you can simply say that you don't even need a million dollars. And yes, quantum electrodynamics would probably have a believable premise.