You use a metaphor to describe some concept. The metaphor isn’t the thing you describe – it’s just a tool that you use. But someone takes the metaphor, and runs with it, making arguments that are built entirely on metaphor, but which bear no relation to the real underlying concept. And they believe that whatever conclusions they draw from the metaphor must, therefore, apply to the original concept.

You see the same problem constantly, in almost any kind of discussion which uses metaphors. There are chemistry cranks who take the metaphor of an electron orbiting an atomic nucleus like a planet orbits a sun, and use it to create some of the most insane arguments. The most extreme example of this in my experience was a guy back on usenet, who called himself Ludwig von Ludvig, then Ludwig Plutonium, and then Archimedes Plutonium. He went beyond the simple orbit stuff, and looked at diagrams in physics books of “electron clouds” around a nucleus. Since in the books, those clouds are made of dots, he decided that the electrons were really made up of a cloud of dots around the nucleus, and that our universe was actually a plutonium atom, where the dots in the picture were actually galaxies. There are physics bozos who do things like worry about the semi-dead cats. There are politicians who worry about new world orders, because of a stupid flowery metaphorical phrase that someone used in a speech 20 years ago. 

It’s amazing. But there’s really no limit to how incredibly, astonishingly stupid people can be. And the idea of an imperfect metaphor is, apparently, much too complicated for an awful lot of people.

The pendulum sways in space
Unaffected by what it sees.
Twelve numbers watch
The two hungry hands
Alas! "sleeping time"...

-!nversed Poignancy!

Earlier this month, Sri Lankan(SL) Cricket Board had asked their players to return back home by May, 2011. Apparently, the Sri Lanka cricket board wants the team to focus more on the England Tour ahead instead of IPL.

The call from the country is blatant that they would want their players to return home for the practice, suspending IPL for a while. This decision would impact the IPL in what might be called a "significant game changer". With teams losing out on few of the key players ( Mumbai Indians without the Malinga, Kochi Tuskers and Deccan Chargers without their captains during the tournament), the team's balance might just get tipped.

Amidst all these, "tu-tu main-main" [http://dict.hinkhoj.com/meaning-of-tu-tu%20main-main-in-english.html] between the players and the boards.I felt that there was more to it than what meets the eye -- I felt that it was a torrid move by the SL to somehow hit back at India, for the alleged "ill-treatment" of the SL president during the World Cup Final -- and IPL, IPLs Big Bucks and the plausible state of it 'minus' SL players might have seemed like the only way in which SL Board could have it easy to give a 'cold-shoulder' to India.

The whole scenario reminded me of the multi player generalization of the Prisoner's dilemma (PD) -- with dilemmas surrounding multiple players and it ofcourse gets difficult to get rational,more so, in getting the selfish agents to cooperate for their common good.

Just when I was trying to segregate the in-roads and aggregate the flaws in this decision, I stumbled upon a view from elsewhere, which said that the entire situation might suffer "big time" if there is a formation of cartels. As we know Cartelisation[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel] is said to be the best way to break Nash Equilibrium. Sangakarra, Jayawardene, Dilshan, Mathews, Randiv, Malinga, and Kulasekara form the core of the Sri Lankan national team. Still, the only way they can win this battle is by coming together. But, the cartel will be broken if even one of them defects. With a whole lot of discussions going on between these players, it of-course, is congruent to the mutiplayer variant of prisoner's dielemma, the game of commons.

The franchise owners will definitely not be happy with this. The aggrieved owners include are likely to support the players’ cartel.

The Sri Lankan ministry, on the other hand, would like to form their own cartel with anti-BCCI boards like PCB and ECB. And, they would like to identify the weak link in the players’ cartel and lure him to defect. National captaincy could be a significant incentive and Dilshan could be their target. But, given that the ministry has acted on ego rather than financial considerations, they may be entering the battle with little preparation.

While, in the ordinary , universal cooperation is a pareto-optimal outcome, i.e., there is no outcome in which each player is at least as well off and some are better off. But in the commons game the only pareto optimal outcomes are those of minimally effective cooperation. Whether universal cooperation is nevertheless desirable may depend on the nature of the choices involved.

None, the less, the entire story now seems to have ended with not much "game theory masala" to taste. But, it was nice retrospecting, none the less :)

My thoughts leave
In mute protest
Of being confused
Until am left with
A blank expression

-!nversed Poignancy!

In my college, its a really common ritual to *more than* occasionally share PJs and P+iJs (Poor and Complex Jokes) to the mailing list..

However, as matter of time came a sort of metamorphism that made each of those so called *comedy* look like nothing more than a greater piece of sarcasm, greater insult and greater offensiveness ...
Thus, the phrases such as "your joke was awfully offensive", "your joke hurt my feelings and sentiments", etc soon became a word of mouth and the mouth of the words..

Although, at first things go brushed away easily, more so, because of the excessive citations and pointers towards statements like *ah!, I was just being political correct* or *Oh!, guess you are overly sensitive*. But, still the Jokes continued, and continued with some discontinuity, of-course...

As time passed and "work-flows" in terms of mind-maturities - the entire process of the *politically correctness* and *overly sensitiveness* pointing citations for once came hand to hand with "was (s)he really hurt?" and "oh, may be (s)he was hurt .." sort of emotions.

This said and done -- Today, I was kind of IETising (Idiotic Emission of Thoughts) about why such misunderstandings happen or is bound to happen and kind of felt that "Game Theory" might just give an answer to this sort of a dilemma..

For the uninitiated..the sender of the mail can either intend it to be a joke or serious. In turn, the receiver can either interpret the email as a joke or serious. There are four possible outcomes:

–If the sender meant it as a joke, and receiver took it as a joke, then both get a good laugh

–If the sender meant it as a joke, and receiver took it as seriously, then the emails would stop until receiver learned it was sarcasm–then they'd have a good laugh

–If the sender meant it seriously, and receiver took it as a joke, then receiver would probably get in trouble with the college’s residential staff

–If the sender meant it seriously, and receiver took it seriously, then both move on without incident

The game thus becomes..

The chart illustrates the dynamics of the game: there are three good outcomes and only a single bad outcome–when a serious statement is taken as a joke. The good outcomes lead to a chuckle or a maintenance of status quo.

As a point of matter, the bad outcome can be really bad. I know people who have gotten in serious trouble with friends and they have had to attend sensitivity training to avoid being kicked out of the apparent *friendships*.

Therefore, the game suggests that it’s best to take most statements as serious. There is almost no risk to taking statements seriously because either it will be a correct assessment or it will get resolved on a double-check that the other person was sarcastic. This avoids the event of a blow-up entirely.

Conclusion: investigate unclear jokes and sarcasm until you’re sure. I wish many had known this in much before they had gotten themselves into a bit of trouble. I hope this post can spare someone else the same hassle.

What say?!

The whole sqrt(-1) imaginary number thing has always been pretty abstract to me (and probably most others who learned them, but then never had to use them in their job or anything). On the flip side, the very own concept of imaginary and imagination in itself is a kind of abstract things too. For the uninitiated, what is Imaginary?- something that cannot be perceived, something that is imaginary? (lolz!, its like telling to understand recursion, you need to understand recursion :P).

With stories charted and realities imparted - I kind of always pondered about this Idiotism [IET] for a loong period of time now, but, unfortunately didn't quite find the zeal to pen something about it, until today, when I seemed to have a quibble with a friend of mine about the same issue. And the rest as they say was history, with me having some sort of a "halo" around me to at-least come out and "try" to define why we have something called "imaginary" and "imagination" at all?!

Let's now start with the basics..imagination for all practical purpose is considered "a power of the mind", "a creative faculty of the mind", "the mind" itself when in use, and a "process" of the mind used for thinking, scheming, contriving, remembering, creating, fantasizing, and forming opinion. On the other hand, as a medium, imagination is a world where thought and images are nested in the mind to "form a mental concept of what is not actually present to the senses". In the sense of the word as a process, imagination is a form of mediation between what is considered "externalized" reality and internalized man and finally, imagination is a term that circulates forms of mass media when the "internalized" private imagination is presented as public, or expressed in a media form, such as film or in virtual reality technology.

But, all said and done - is it not true to assume that the concept of imagination is nothing but a fight between our sense of what we consider private and essentially humanistic. Dosn't imagination challenge the technology to explore what media can do: how far inside man can media extend itself, and how far outside man can man bring what is considered his internalized self? Are these processes transmutable through media, and if so, what kinds? Can imagination be coded? Does technology employ imagination in its productive and innovative capabilities? Or is imagination a human faculty only? If the latter, than to what extent can media technologies mimic imaginative functions and/or expressions? And, if media technologies can mimic 'products' of the imagination, what is the essential difference between 'having' imagination and producing imaginative qualities?

I kind of feel that imagination is nothing but a mere matter of "reproductive projections". One's perception of the Imaginary is an essential stage of recognition of what is real and what is unreal. If the Imaginary is the reflected image in the mirror, it is probable that the imagination is the mental faculty for integrating this 'represented' image into the person's experience of himself in the world. If the imagination is a counterpoint to perceptible reality,then, implication is that the Imaginary is in fact representational. This representation, is a kind of mirror, a mirror that shows all your "reproductive projections".

So what exactly is that I talk about when I say "reproductive projections"? Well, I would say that its a simple concept of "filmi flashbacks", whose basis lies in a given or experienced knowledge that must be reproduced to 'short'(as in Electronic Circuits) the proof posited by the senses. For example, shouldn't one use her/his powers of imagination to deductively reason that even though s/he cannot see all sides of a cube s/he is looking at there are six sides to the cube. For, based on the viewer's experience, a cube factually and observably does have six sides. Were s/he to pick the cube up and examine it, s/he should see and note it as fact observable by her/his senses. However, since the viewer has the faculties of her/his reproductive imagination, s/he need not rely on her/his senses. Thus, if reality can be observed by the senses, imagination addresses a certain no-man's land between what is observably "true" or "real" and that which is considered totally "fictive" or "false," in a sense, imagination provides a shortcut. Imagination in this sense, fills in what could in all likelihood be observed by the senses, and apprehends a sense of reality based on the experience of the proof of his senses, without the executed proof.

Although, it would be really abrupt to end at this point - I still have no option but to end it (Thanks to the dearth of imagination(s) within me :P).However, I would sort of leave the entire quibble- still open ended- as to whether, imagination is indeed the ideal communication- to supercede our romantic notions of the untranscendable 'imaginations' or is a pure form of built in "Inception"?

I was kind of rambling about some serious stuffs and got into thinking about some strange thoughts connecting "Agreement" and "Marriage". Not sure if Mr. Krishnamurthy (Who thought us the basics of Legal Issues and Agreements) had a kind of induced inception into me, but, I some of felt that there's some connection between these two quoted words.. I am not sure if this would be turning into a reality someday (Maybe not on this level) But, a food for thought none-the-less..

My thoughts were could two people agree to make a relationship work and succeed. Think about arranged marriages. Two people basically agreeing to make a relationship work. Is it more likely for a commitment like that to work than for one built on emotions. Emotions will screw you up every time.

But if you have a relationship without the emotions and feelings and only on "agreement" to have the relationship work will it be a happy one? Will love grow between the two people? Marriages are entered into every day and broken everyday.

I know this doesn't make sense...but this is one of my rambling thoughts......

You never know when someone might catch a dream from you.
Or something you say may open up the windows of a mind that seeks light
The way you live may not matter at all,
But you never know, it might.
And just in case it could be that another's life, through you,
might possibly change for the better with a better and brighter view,
it seems it might be worth a try at pointing the way to the right;
Of course, it may not matter at all, but then again, it might.

-!nversed Poignancy!

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS President Dr Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death.

Here is the Case:

On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head.
Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.

"Ordinarily," Dr Mills continued, "A person, who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide." That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.
In the room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun.
The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Mr. Opus. When one intends to kill subject "A" but kills subject "B" in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject "B".
When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife were both adamant and both said that they thought the shotgun was unloaded. The old man said it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her.
Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, if the gun had been accidentally loaded. The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident.
It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother.Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of the murder even though he didn't actually pull the trigger. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes the exquisite twist-
Further investigation revealed hat the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered himself, so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

Just about a week ago, I was in conversation with a friend of mine- about what sort of active thinking needs to be inculcated in Undergrads before they go ahead and pick their majors.

This is a sentiment of a cry that usually lurks behind academia at large—for classics and philosophy majors who do not know what to do with their majors, for social science majors who become frustrated with the gap between jargon‑intensive theories and real‑life phenomena, and so forth. Except, perhaps, for premedical students, the academic journey taken by most students in college is fraught with questions of purpose.

In the past people have attempted to bridge the gap between academic theory and practice. One of the major points was that “in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.” In other words, if the theory is well‑supported with evidence from reality, it should naturally have relevant implications for practice.

But on the other hand, I would like to point out a subtler undercurrent of student attitudes towards academic texts like those read as part of the Core. The attitude, which I argue changes over time, goes something like this:

We enter into college, or for some of us, high school, excited about discovering truth and enriching our minds. We soon discover that we can’t agree amongst ourselves on interpretations of texts, let alone on fundamental concepts. Does “thou shalt not kill” apply to acts of self‑defence? To animals? What about capital punishment?

Frustrated with the ambiguity and dissonance, we throw our hands up, sighing, “It’s all relative. It’s all the same. Who cares?”

I think that this disillusioned response is due to a previous presumption that there must be one coherent theory that contains all truth. With this presumption framing our minds, the conflicting plurality of theories bowls us over—we swing over, deflated, to the other end, denying all truth. But to maintain this presumption would be to reject Newtonian mechanics simply because they do not work on the atomic level. It would be to deny what each idea and person has to offer. At its worst, this attitude becomes an ear‑closed arrogance, but a polite one at that—a kind that often takes a variation of the response, “Oh that’s interesting. Well, that’s just what you believe.”

So reading and thinking about theory does inevitably translate into an attitude and, consequently, a practice—the question is, what sort of attitude? A retreat into cynicism can become, I argue, a thinly veiled intellectual laziness that does not actively engage ideas different from one’s own. An active engagement means a critical assessment of ideas to judge whether or not one would subscribe to them and often involves a revaluation of one’s ideas. Such a mental exercise of reflecting, judging, and even imagining is useful in its own right. It trains the mind’s faculties and the heart’s toleration of difference—“mental gymnastics,” as my geometry teacher once said.

Theory may enlighten our understanding, but it ultimately trains our way of thinking. It is left to us to strike the right balance between contemplation and action and to translate the mode of thinking into practical action—a frustrating and ambiguous responsibility, certainly, but ours, and only ours, nevertheless.

It kind of seems contradictory when you talk about loneliness and contiguousness in the same breath. But, I think that there are a whole lot of integral elements that would infact lead to enhancement of the so-called "loneliness factor" via Social Communications - What I call the Socially Transmitted Disease..

For the uninitiated, how can the lonely their loneliness through social networks?

It makes sense when you think of people’s movements in social networks over some period of time. The lonely may not always have been lonely, but gradually, they tend to cluster together on the periphery of social networks, suggesting that the social connections with other lonely people exacerbates any de facto loneliness they experience. That the lonely would be somewhere on the periphery of social networks is somewhat tautological, but that the lonely would cluster together at the periphery is not, and is surprising.

We’re all aware of how contagious diseases can spread through social networks; when individuals interact, they transmit pathogens back and forth in apparent ways, such as through physical contact or the air. But it’s less obvious how emotions and behaviors spread between people. The idea of spreading loneliness initially seems counterintuitive. After all, don’t lonely people normally keep to themselves? Aren’t they socially isolated, away from where they can spread anything? Not exactly. As the article notes, loneliness and solitude are two different things. Even if people are not physically alone, they can still feel lonely if they perceive their social ties to be weak.

So how might loneliness spread within a social network? Lonely people tend to interact more negatively with people they encounter; they are more unfriendly, more anxious, and in general, more unpleasant to be around. These negative emotions not only induce others to feel and act negatively, but also, over time, they can erode relationships between friends. Strong positive ties grow weaker and weaker, and may even turn negative. Social bonds are lost, leaving the non-lonely people with fewer strong connections and therefore pushing them one more step towards loneliness. Then the cycle repeats itself with those who were “infected” and loneliness spreads throughout the network. A lonely person can easily get stuck in a downward spiral, becoming lonelier as more friends are lost. As a result, lonely people are likely to get pushed to the fringes of the network as they cut ties with friends. Ultimately, you have a weakened network, frayed at the peripheries.

I used to go for a walk every night. It was a pleasant habit—exercise, fresh air, quiet time alone to think. I made a point, whenever possible, of walking in an area away from the city lights, where the sky was dark enough that I could get a good look at the stars. I knew how to pick out some of the constellations, though I could never quite understand how anyone could see a goat or an archer in the patterns of stars. Seeing shapes in clouds is one thing, but mentally connecting the dots to form a complex picture didn’t really work for me. That’s not to say I didn’t see anything in the stars, though. As I looked at a particular star, I would think about the possibility of life in outer space, the chance that a planet circling that star may be home to people like me—or unfathomably different beings. I’d think about how Earth is just another one of those countless planets and the sun just another one of those countless stars. And picking my favorite star of the moment, I’d say to myself, “Someday I’ll find a way to go there.”

Looking at the stars and thinking about them in this way always had a very calming effect on me. I felt as though it gave me a sense of proportion, that it put my own crises and ambitions in perspective. It didn’t make me feel insignificantly small; instead, it made me feel somehow privileged to be able to see and understand what may be out there, and to realize I’m a part of something so big.

Nowadays I don’t notice the stars very often, and when I do, I don’t usually think about them as I once did. But every now and then, I’ll be on a trip—an island, a desert, a rural getaway somewhere—and again the stars will catch my attention. Invariably I’ll wonder why I hadn’t noticed them in so long. Is it just that I’m older and busier? That may be part of it, but a bigger part is that the lights of the city often make it very hard to see the stars, always focusing my attention on the surface of my own planet. This is one consequence of the increasing problem of light pollution.

The term “pollution” is apt because excess or unwanted light can be an irritation or even a safety hazard. Like air pollution, light pollution is typically a by-product of machines and devices that were intended to make our lives easier, more convenient, and safer. Another similarity is that light pollution can be reduced greatly with careful attention to design. But because most people have become accustomed to light pollution as a fact of life, there is usually little incentive to worry about it when designing or purchasing lighting products.