Handcrafted and artisan

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I was walking around the quaint and upcoming neighborhood of South Park in San Diego today when I noticed a growing fad on the shopfronts. I noticed how a lot of them had started using generic healthy sounding words like 'artisan' and 'handcrafted' to describe their fares which included stuff from chocolate to beer to clothes and more. Terms like these were all over the place and although generally they can be dismissed as merely a quaint amusement, it is also worthwhile to prod the topic a little because to me they belie a demographic which is as gullible and, might I say thick, as the one which it looks down upon so much. And America, being the fascinating place that it is, with all its freedoms and its tolerance, harbors them all and listens to them with patience. I hear people from outside the country coming here and feeling dissatisfied, even angry, with certain facets of America - and I do too sometimes - but I am eternally amazed by the fact that in this country you can always find a chunk of people whom you don't like very much, who have very different values than you do, and it's all a testament to the country's incredible diversity and tolerance.

And, therefore, you can find here wide swathes of land inhabited by those whose lives revolve around hard religion and conservative ideologies and numerous coastal pockets of population who are their complete opposites. I am intellectually fascinated by all this variety but I also cannot help but be cognizant of the existence of follies in any form of 'belief system'. I am not sure if I have a belief system but I am sure that if I have one then it's both flawed and inconsistent. I am also aware that it is okay because finally the only important thing is the color of life and all these badly constructed systems add to the humor of life and to its botched iridescence. So on the one hand we have the far right of America with its heavy insistence on the final word of the Bible, and on the other we have the far left with its own superstitions in pseudosciences such as homeopathy, astrology and other new age claptrap. They both look askance at each other whereas people like me, who think of themselves as being in the middle, are allowed to feel smug!

I was struck, then, by the repeated usage of terms like handcrafted and artisan on the shop windows because these terms don't really mean much. They do however intend to make the buyer believe that the things which these shops are selling are somehow superior to those which come from huge factories. Whenever I come across such words I cannot help but think that there is a sly effort to sell me vague associations of green pastures, clear streams, and old grandmotherly knowledge. To me the intent is so incredibly devious that I am instantly repulsed by it and am rather inclined put my trust in the red bottle of coke with its honest description of high fructose corn syrup and 150 calories.

A tale of negative density

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While thinking about some of my research problems today, my mind wandered off to a time many years ago when on one morning during an undergrad class of solid mechanics I was first introduced, rather unceremoniously I must say, to the revolutionary concept of negative density.

We were trying to figure out some academic arcana about a pendulum, a water tank, an accelerating vehicle, and that universal scourge of high flyers everywhere, gravity and as it often happens in matters of little consequence, the stakes were enormously high. I was standing at the blackboard having just drawn a schematic of the problem under discussion, the quality of which stood as a testimony to the complete lack of the artistic strain in my blood. My sorry efforts at trying to draw a container of water had given it the kind of waves which the moon would be proud of generating in the Pacific on one of its 'in the zone' days. And the pendulum hung there inside the bowl with the pathetic visage of one who has just learnt that his parole application has been denied. The motion of the vehicle on to which my ghastly contraption was supposed to have been placed was indicated by a few swooshes in the opposite direction - an effect that was no doubt the result of having read one too many comics.

So there I stood fidgeting alongside my hesitating contribution to postmodern sketching and it should not be hard to imagine that in that moment of vulnerability in front of my classmates, my attitude towards the problem at hand was inspired by the old adage of attack being the best form of defense. I don't remember the exact train of arguments but I do remember it being broken by the voice of a friend who has always been surer of himself than I have been of myself. Confrontation with him on a good day is quite an ordeal but he had chosen to speak up at a time when the iron had just been removed from the kiln and lay red and embarrassed on the side of the subpar schematic.

What about negative density, he asked. I eyed him suspiciously unable to comprehend the level at which I should refute that incongruous little quip of his. Suddenly I found myself face to face with a question far greater than any that I could have dreamed of. Not only was I not able to establish my position as to the effect of negative density on the problem, I was not even able to comprehend if he was joking or not. I eyed him suspiciously like I have often found myself doing when faced with someone whose character evinces a certain unidentifiable shiftiness and asked after much internal deliberation, what about it.   What if the liquid had negative density, he persisted? What happens to your pendulum then? I looked at my sorry pendulum in my sorry jar and wondered how much more it would have to go through at the hands of sadists such as him. It had already been through enough under my penmanship, its whole substance reduced to a dented bob of arbitrary circularity flimsily attached to a feeble wire and left to brave the torrential waves of a bowl of badly drawn liquid. Surely the pendulum had been through enough and could do without further torment. And moreover, said I to myself, what the hell is a negative density liquid anyway. In the face of a complete lack of evidence that such liquids existed, I promptly concluded that subjecting my down and out pendulum to such an alien ambiance must constitute as some sort of a violation of the Geneva convention or something. In fact I was so incensed by the suggestion that I instantly snapped at my friend for the mere mention of so ghastly a possibility.

I have since realized that my impatience that day was misplaced and that fate, in the semi cruel and semi sadistic sort of way in which it likes so much to operate, designed my life so that eventually I ended up doing a major part of my research in the field of materials with negative densities. And that one question on that fair day in Guwahati which elicited such a visceral response from me has come to serve as a persistent reminder that the true worth of an idea, howsoever ridiculous it may appear at the first, second, and fifth glances, must never be judged based upon irrational emotional attachments to one's sketching abilities, especially to sad looking pendulum faces. I also realize now that I need to learn how to extract useful morals out of life events.

Comma

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For those who are regular visitors to this blog and who are disappointed by its increasingly infrequent updates, I apologize to the both of you! I have had quite a busy last month and I expect this hectic schedule to extend into March but when the dust settles beyond the horizon I hope for the advent of a new spring in its wake. I hope then to have the time and the experiences to, as Ezra Pound rallied, 'make it new'. For now, here's the frozen Niagra which I visited recently, thereby accomplishing my life's purpose as far as being an Indian in America is concerned (having already visited the Grand Canyon):

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Death of a motorcycle

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5 years, 30000 miles and the motorcycle that I have come to refer to as my noble steed has decided it quits. Since I have had relatively few material possessions during my time in the US, I have grown fond of the few that I did have. And the 2003 blue-white yamaha yzf600R is perhaps the one that I have cherished the most. In the company of a certain yellow suzuki sv 500, it has taken me through the stunning mountains of Utah and to the incredibly desolate deserts of Nevada in the North and Baja in the south. On it I have scaled the beautiful Southern California shore under its mild cold Sun an innumerable number of times. I have crisscrossed across the myriad neighborhoods of San Diego, from the affluent north to the seedy south and the surprisingly diverse east. I have ridden it in the sweltering heat of Calexico and the cold damp of Flagstaff. I have ridden it on ribboning mountaneous roads with nary a soul to be seen and on the suffocatingly clogged freeways. I have taken it to its limits, to speeds which would be imprudent to mention and I have slipped it through exceedingly tight tolerances. And it has always responded with vigor and has made me feel alive on those sweeping curves where I had to bend it low, very low, with the asphalt a small distance away and the world frozen in an amber drop of serenity: the Sun reflecting in the visor, the rippled jeans, and the incredible drop a few feet away. Well it has been an absolutely great run and hopefully there are bigger and better things ahead!

Model railroad museum

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I visited the SD model railroad museum to begin my new year. The museum has elaborate models of rails set within the industrialized settings of early 20th century. What I found immensely fascinating were the little models of shops, people, cars, bicycles etc. which formed the setting within which the trains were plying. I presume that the models represented some form of reality which must have existed 60 years ago. The deserted roads, the old beetles, an afterthought of a graffiti on the wall, little kids playing soccer, a wedding scene, all with a moving train in the backdrop.

Pacific

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Through the years of writing on this portal I have witnessed reality bleed into my words, its hard edged, metallic backdrop bluntly shining behind the thin gauze of my thoughts and imaginations. I have let the silent cozy infinite expanse of the bluegreen Pacific with its silvery surface in the distance and its faint purpleorange reflections seep into the pores of my words during times of both joy and distress. And many a times I have stopped to catch my breath beneath the shades of its plangent melancholy as the mighty orb of orange rolled to its end and extinguished in its infinite moistness. I have often found myself at its shores, amidst its swirling sand patterns and have wondered whether in its jagged surface of many footprints and many swells, in its bleak reflections and its elongated shadows, there are metaphors to be found for my own experiences of life. I have often juxtaposed its limitless expanse against the neat little ribboned box of life and have found myself overcome by the comparison. Those beautiful cloud patterns through which shoot arrows of gold and those immense puddles of lights on its surface, that clockwork of the waves which weave the skirt of the ocean with white cottony frills and crawl up to the headlands only to vanish among the billions of little motes of sand. There is something immense and and infinitely intricate about it and it's only natural that it acts as a certain foil to life and I have often found myself being drawn to this contrast. The reality of my time near the Pacific, its amorphous essence, has bled into my thoughts and stained its fabric with an indelible hue. And as I raise that fabric and look at the world through it, I see metaphors and juxtapositions, comparisons and ironies emerge from the subconscious and take me by surprise. I thus stand endlessly amused.

Edit: Included is a photo I recently took at Dana Point. It came out surprisingly good and seems appropriate here. Click for the full panorama.

Could of, would of and should of

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I have been coming across a strange linguistic twist lately which has piqued my curiosity. I have been noticing an increasing usage of phrases like 'could of', 'would of' and 'should of' instead of 'could have', 'would have', and 'should have' respectively. I can hazard a guess as to why this change is taking place and it has to do with a destructive force in language which is geared towards economy of effort. As time passes, words in any language coalesce together, lose their stresses in various parts, and morph in different ways to strive towards more and more efficiency of expression and communication. This is a very well documented phenomenon and is a major source of linguistic change. It is, therefore, not surprising that a sequence of words like 'could have', which occurs commonly together and is often pronounced like 'could've' due to the efficiency of expression, has now morphed to the altered spelling 'could of' (see Elision).

I wondered if there was a way by which I can verify whether this relatively new phenomenon is gaining ground. I thought that an obvious first step would be to check what Google trends says about the phrase "could of". Here is the result:

Apart from the weird peak the plot above shows a general increase in the number of searches for the phrase 'could of' since 2004. The plot below shows the Trends results for the phrase 'would of':

which again shows a general increase in the number of searches of the emerging phrase. But these plots only show that the awareness for the new terms is increasing. They don't necessarily mean that the usage is similarly increasing. To find out if the actual usage of, say, 'would of' is increasing, I did a simple Google search for the phrase and restricted the results over calendar years from 2004 to present. The results showed the number of pages in which the new phrase 'would of' was mentioned. Apart from the first few results which invariably were about how 'would of' is a misuse of the phrase 'would have', the overwhelming majority of the results were actual usages. What I mean to say is that the number of pages returned by Google for a search query 'would of' is very indicative of the relative popularity of the expression. Obviously this number by itself doesn't mean anything since the total number of pages indexed by Google each year is continuously increasing. Therefore, I normalized the number of pages returned by Google containing the phrase 'would of' in a certain year by the number of pages returned by Google for a very simple search query like 'have' in the same year. This normalizes the results and gives us a pretty good description of how the popularity of the new phrases are increasing. Here are the results for the phrases "could of', 'would of', and 'should of':

Very informative isn't it? The trends are clear and if there is something to be learned from the above then it is the fact that we are witnessing a small transition in the English language and the day may not be far when the traditional forms of the phrases discussed above remain no longer in vogue. It seems ridiculous now that somebody could have spelled could have as could of. Really, they should of more brains than that!

Future of Education

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When I started thinking about how education would change in the future, I was instantly faced with the classic difficulty which a specialist faces when he tries to answer a general question. If you are into science and if you've ever tried to paint, you would know, in analogue, what I am talking about. While sketching, the technical training that I have received forces me to be lost in the minutiae with the result being that I lose the bigger perspective of the scene. Similarly in life, I feel that my professional training is often a hindrance when it comes to general ideas. Being general invariably means that there would be exceptions and inconsistencies in my assertions and my small life in science has taught me not to tolerate them. But let's try something different here. Let's try to conjecture, in general terms, how education is going to change in the future, and look the other way if it doesn't turn out to be so. Let's ignore the texture of the road for its infinite expanse, for our resources are limited!

Prediction is always fraught with difficulties and is often wrong but there are some general trends which appear consistent through history. One such trend is consolidation. Beginning from small hunter gatherer communities, humanity has undergone successive consolidations in all its endeavors. In geopolitics, there have been eras of skirmishes which were eventually followed by larger entities. These larger entities which initially suffered from an unstable equilibrium finally gave way to more peaceful societies within them. The new skirmishes were larger and took place between these larger entities, eventually resulting in even larger ones. Perhaps the single most important reason in this cycle of skirmish and consolidation was technology. With new means of transport and warfare, societies could seek to influence larger geophysical areas. Under the umbrella of technology, therefore, we have the crude chisel of social evolution.

Now how does this model apply to education? There must have been a time when education was much more personal than it is now. It also must have been very different from what it is now. Its form must have consisted of two distinct parts: training and philosophy. Training would have consisted mainly of 'tricks of the trade' passed from one generation to another, like knowledge about farming or selling merchandise. Philosophy would have consisted of all thought geared towards figuring out the world around with little or no immediate tangible benefit. The means of imparting education would have consisted of small intimate groups and oral communication.  This process suffers from some obvious handicaps. First, it makes education a rare commodity and it would surely have helped in creating rigid boundaries in any society. The caste system in India is a relic but the same thing must have existed in Western societies with the monopoly of the Church over knowledge and education in the dark to the middle ages (you only have to notice that most of the great poets and scientists before the 18th century were either wealthy or from a noble lineage to realize that education was for elites). The second problem with such a system is that any given teacher may not have been the most knowledgeable on his subject.

This would have changed with the invention of the Gutenberg press which allowed the wide dissemination of printed materials. Teaching would have become more codified so that it could be imparted to more people. Furthermore, books written by specialists would have solved the second problem as well. Now there could be regional centers which could provide reasonably good education based upon the more concrete nature of it: the advent of the modern university. Now at this point it is worth remembering a major pitfall of these changes. While on one hand they led to many more people getting educated, on the other they also led to a dilution of the very education that was being imparted, a dilution that continues to this day. Since in society there always exists a need to distinguish individuals based upon various factors, the all pervasive nature of the current educational climate makes it essential that there must exist a different kind of hierarchy: the hierarchy of degrees and of schools. The rigid compartmentalization which resulted from the rare nature of early education has morphed into a compartmentalization that is now fueled merely by a different kind of rarity.

Anyway what does all of this tell about the future of education? In simple words! I think that we are on the cusp of another monumental change which is being driven by the technological breakthrough of the Internet. The future is getting clearer and it looks similar to the past, at least metaphorically. We are already witnessing the seeds of change in the form of online learning initiatives like edX and Coursera. I imagine that there would be many more such initiatives and at least for some more time the field of online learning would appear analogous in spirit to the Wild Wild West with many competing players. But it would eventually simmer down into a more consolidated platform where very competent professors from around the world would contribute their lectures and videos and course materials to an organization which would probably span many different universities. The nature of the Internet would make it available to millions of people across national boundaries. We would have both another consolidation and also more widely available access to education of much higher quality. It appears inevitable that the competencies gained through online learning would one day command the same legitimacy that the traditional educational degrees currently have. This would lead to a financial incentive which would lead to a very fundamental change in the concept of a university. Since no single university would be able to offer what a conglomerate of universities would be able to offer, we would perhaps witness a dissolution of the current heavyweights.  We would most certainly see a devaluation of the reputation and clout of universities which cling to the old order. In fact we may start witnessing that within the next decade. High quality education would be accessible to many more people around the world and it would be much more uniform and standardized than it is now.

This would  lead to another cycle of dilution and if, just if, we try to look far enough into the future, we can perhaps conjecture about the nature of it. I feel that degrees and specializations would eventually lose their conventional meaning in the world of online learning. It made sense to compartmentalize education based on our current scheme in the times of industrial revolution. We live in times of a digital revolution where it is not required for people to have core competencies even to do highly specialized  tasks. For example it is beneficial but not required for a mechanical engineer to know the Navier-Stokes equation in order to find out how a fuselage responds to air turbulence (in fact it doesn't help much!). And that benefit is already running thin. I think that the educational future would be one which would be respectful and cognizant of its digital tools. But we shall leave the rest of the conjecturing to some other time.

Digressions - 1

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Several years ago I came across a TED talk by a famous physicist called David Deutsch and I thought that it was the best talk that I had ever seen. He talked about our place in the universe in the context of how humans figure out new knowledge about our surroundings and then he went on to connect his talk with the current problems facing the human race and what's the right way to go about figuring out the solutions. I went ahead and bought his book called "the fabric of reality" and was immensely impressed by the ideas presented in the book.

In his book, he tried to put forth the case that four of our current theories, put together, may already suffice well enough to serve as the theory of everything. A critique of his claim is beyond both the scope of this post and perhaps even my intelligence but one of the theories that he talks about is Karl Popper's theory of the growth of human knowledge. I was very intrigued by Popper's idea that the process of new scientific advance is deductive as opposed to inductive. This means that revolutionary new scientific understanding almost never comes from observing nature but simply by a process which, for all practical purposes, is the same as guessing. Obviously verification and fine tuning are still within the domain of observing and learning but the seed of new science is basically just a hunch. I came across this concept yet again in a YouTube video of a physics lecture that Feynman gave in Cornell (highly recommended again). But it was only recently that I got the chance to read Popper's original paper which first presented his theory. He presented it in the context of the philosophy of the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers.

The great Carl Sagan begins his TV series Cosmos, which to me is the greatest TV series ever made, with an introduction to the philosophies of such names as Thales, Anaximander, Democritus, Heraclitus and more. These people lived around 500 BC in the geographical region which now constitutes parts of southern Italy, Greece, and western Turkey and they wondered about the deeper questions of life. Specifically, they tried to explain the inner workings of the world around them. By modern standards, their explanations would appear ad-hoc and childish but it is easy to see that their ideas must have been groundbreaking in their time. They presented a distinct break from the anthropocentric Greek legends and they tried to give a mechanistic explanation of the world. And by criticizing each other and building upon each other's theories, they laid the foundation of the Western scientific tradition. It is also fascinating to see how 'far out' their explanations are and it is evident that their understanding is more guesswork than studied induction.

It takes a special society to tolerate such imagination and creativity, especially when the creative energies are focused towards the deepest questions that there are. It was not before long that this frail tolerance was lost to dogmatic views of the world with the advent of Plato and Aristotle. While western science finally recovered from the dark ages with Galileo, and the western thought with the beginning of Rennaisance, it is interesting to note that this success was never repeated anywhere else. I'm sure that the ancient Indian philosophers asked the same questions that the Greeks did and I'm sure that their answers were equally insightful and beautiful. I'm sure that there existed a time when the philosophers were merely feeling their way in the dark and their theories and thoughts were open to severe criticisms. But today the Bhagwad Gita, for example, is used to ensure that witnesses do not lie in court, thereby imparting to it a rigidity which would have been anathema to the philosophers who contributed to the great work. Other religions have similar stories but I find it odd that the Hindu equivalent of Bible and Koran is the Gita.

So what's the point of this post? Digressions!