ramadocblog

“It was an odd gathering of people who wander

They had the look of a highlander!

Screams And laughter filled the air!

’twas not a movie but just the town fair!”

When we were young (er!) going to these exhibitions were a big thing! The best things were the cotton candies and the spicy fried fritters! Not to mention those split decision purchases made like the boat which worked only when the guy shows or the multi blade kitchen knife which used to cut like magic in the show but the moment we tried it at home; it could not even cut a tomato! Another often bought and never used contraption were the famous vegetable mincers or slicers! Out kitchen would have dozens of shapes and sizes and color but none of them have seen a vegetable in its life! My mother always used to say that cutting is made easy with them but to wash the mincer later was a big and irritating task! 

One of the things which kids used to love during those days were the rides! Since I was not too much into those rides though, I have never appreciated them! But now when you think about it, they were the center of attraction! The different colors and blinking lights used to look so magical! In fact the fair was a big affair if the chief ride was big and imposing! The bigger the ride, the better the deals! 

In fact if you can see the big ride in the center from very far then the deal is done!

Did you know that there are at least two structures now which are actually world famous but are the direct result of such fairs and exhibition!

One such fair was held long back called the Exposition Universelle of 1889, better known in English as the 1889 Paris Exposition, and was a world’s fair held in Paris, France, from 5 May to 31 October 1889!

It was the fifth of ten major expositions held in the city between 1855 and 1937.

It attracted more than thirty-two million visitors.

Of course that is a great number but what was remarkable is that there was a structure built for the fair which stood 

This tower was 330 metres (1,083 ft) tall!

During its construction, the Tower surpassed the Washington Monument to become the tallest human-made structure in the world and it was the first structure in the world to surpass both the 200-metre and 300-metre mark in height!

You may know this tower as the Eiffel Tower!

When such an imposing structure was made in Paris, how can Chicago be far! So in one fair an engineer George Washington Gale was given the task of making a big ride to rival the Eiffel tower and this one must move!

So George designed a big ride which was around 80 meters was an large imposing structure and an instant hit! Plus the added bonus is that it could be dismantled and built in other fairs of the world! It later became the center ride of most fairs all over the world! 

The full name of the engineer was  George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr!

And yes! The name of the ride of the wheel is The Ferris Wheel!

Ferris thus got the task of coming up with something “daring and unique.” This kind of amusement park wheel had been designed before, but not at this scale. Ferris’s wheel was 250 feet in diameter and it carried 36 cars, each with a capacity of 60 people! History is strange indeed! Strange (r) also is the amazing series Stranger things starring birthday celebrity David Kenneth Harbour! 

Now think about the upside down in stranger things and lie down!

Shubh ratri!

“No one understood him ’cause what he said was esoteric!
Then again his words were also eclectic!
His ideas were too grand for anyone to deny!
Of course only he knew, it was all a lie!”


A casual conversation between some pretty intelligent minds leads to a great theory and then a tsunami of theories and stories and hypothesis to either support or explain or refute the original theory! Confused!? That is the Paradox! Fermi’s Paradox!

During one such high ‘spirited’ talk he actually blurted out, “But where is everybody?”

He was of course talking about the extraterrestrials who are supposedly out there but have still not contact us!

This latest show called the 3 body problem (a good watch but it starts really slow!); is a
direct result of trying to explain the Fermi Paradox!

Now properly speaking, the Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. Basically in simple terms it means that if there are intelligent beings out there who may have developed before Humans and who have the tech and the means of travel and communications, then why have they not made contact with us!?

Now the assumption that there may be intelligent life out there (sometimes I even doubt about intelligent life out here!) can be made since as Carl Sagan says in his book The Pale blue dot, that there are billions of galaxies and billions of stars and billions of even universe so the chance happening of life is not that improbable!

So the valid question of why they have not contacted you has been explained by many including one called the zoo hypothesis!
The hypothesis states that alien life intentionally avoids communication with Earth to allow for natural evolution and sociocultural development, and avoiding interplanetary contamination, similar to people observing animals at a zoo! Basically it can mean that the alien life does not want to have any conflict with us! Or maybe they just do not want to talk to us in which case they may actually be more intelligent than us!

Another hypothesis is called the “laboratory” hypothesis, in which humanity is being subjected to experiments, with Earth serving as a giant laboratory! Well, if someone is experimenting on us then they are in for some disappointment soon! Because as the 3 body aliens find out rather shockingly about us! Human beings lie! Not the sleeping kind but the opposite of truth one! And that is something which no actually intelligent life can ever understand! Of course an intelligent wife can! Talking of wife and intelligence brings to mind birthday celebrity Jyotirao Govindrao Phule and his efforts for women’s rights!

Now give your intelligence a rest by doing the lie of the sleeping kind!
Shubh ratri!

“This is not something which you can tether!
It can go everywhere all weather!
Now don’t make the plans came to nought!
It’s not something you can see, it’s just your thought!”

Do you know what’s common between The Mafia and the werewolf!?

Apart from the fact that they are both scary especially in the night!

The other commonality is that they are the names of a a Russian social deduction game created by Dimitry Davidoff in 1986!

The game models a conflict between two groups: an informed minority (the mafiosi or the werewolves) and an uninformed majority (the villagers). At the start of the game, each player is secretly assigned a role affiliated with one of these teams.

The game has two alternating phases: first, a night-phase, during which those with night-killing-powers may covertly kill other players, and second, a day-phase, in which all surviving players debate and vote to eliminate a suspect.
The game continues until a faction achieves its win-condition; for the village, this usually means eliminating the evil minority, while for the minority, this usually means reaching numerical parity with the village and eliminating any rival evil groups!

With a small minority of people with information fighting a majority of people who have no information and only can do guess work, the usual outcome is that the Mafia or the werewolf win most of the time!

In fact the game is based on a mathematical model! So most analyses of optimal play have assumed both (a) that there are only townsfolk and Mafiosi and (b) that the townsfolk never have a probability of identifying the Mafia that is better than chance!


The game also has been told to have shared roles and Hidden Agendas!
Similarly, within an organization, leaders and employees play distinct roles. Just as werewolves hide their true identity, leaders often have hidden agendas or strategic decisions that impact the team!

Those few people with information can make the uninformed majority bend or move according to their convenience and will! The conclusion is that uninformed majority always lose a battle of information against an informed minority!

And you thought life is a game! Here’s a game which is literally; life! Game was also how it felt when birthday celebrity Satish Kaushik used to deliver his dialogues so effortlessly!

Now stop thinking about games and play the game of life! The latest mission of that now is to sleep!
shubh ratri!

“It went so fast that it was gone the moment his lips were ajar!

He never realized that it could get so far!

The damage it could do was spread north and south!

After all they were the hurtful words coming from his mouth!”

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist and author of “Whole Brain Living” and “My Stroke of Insight” but he is most well known because of his now famous 90 second rule!

The rule is that, ““When a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there’s a 90-second chemical process that happens; any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop.”

Basically this means that when you react to something in your environment that is if you are having a stimulus like anger or fear; there’s a 90-second process where your brain fires a signal and a stress hormone is released in your body to stimulate a fight, flight, or freeze response! That is the trigger point in simple terms. 

Like the 3 body problem, this is like a beginning of a chain reaction or starting of a domino! If you can hold your emotion and let the firing for 90 seconds, the stimulus is lost and you will have a reset point! 

Any remaining emotional response is caused by staying in that emotional loop by ruminating on a thought or event and creating ongoing emotional and physiological responses in the brain and body!

In the book called 30 days to a more powerful vocabulary by Dan Strutzel; the author tell about this rule and give a suggestion on how to make use of the hack of 90 second rule!

The author states how the moment you enter a new place, like say from work to home and you are stressed with the issues at work and all you want to do it put everything on someone; you simply reach home and for the first 90 seconds do not do anything! Simply stare at the clock and wait for 90 seconds! Basically this means that we must try to observe our response rather than engage with it! The better able we are to do this, the more power we have over what we express in the world when we’re under pressure!

After 90 seconds, the trigger or volcano has been extinguished and apparently you can have a controlled reaction! Alternatively you can simply listen to a soft song like that sung by birthday celebrity Bhupinder Singh for 90 seconds or more and have the same result! 

If you are not feeling sleepy you can also read my blog for 90 seconds and am sure you will sleep well!

Shubh Ratri!

Audiobook

Non fiction 

The following is a summary of those who may not get time to read or listen to the book and a brief for those who do! No spoilers!

The book starts with the issues of selection in many situations. Whether you select the first one or wait and watch for a better option to come. The same thing is also the secretary problem since in a list of potential people who turn up for the job, you may not go with the first one but then which number do you stop!?

Searching for an apartment in a busy city and the rat race to find it! 

In both these situations, the author tells us about 37 percent!

Use only 37 percent of your allocated time to research and get the first one or immediate one after that!

You can use similar algorithms in every aspect!

Before it was used on computers, it was used in Humans! Finite sequence of steps used to solve a problem 

History of the word algorithm and based on some Persian mathematician! The term algorithm derives from the name of Muhammad ibn Mūsā al’Khwārizmī, a ninth-century Persian mathematician. His latinized name, Algoritmi, meant “the decimal number system” and was used in this meaning for centuries!

Quotes Carl Sagan! Science is a way of thinking and not just a body of knowledge!

Like the book do not think by Joseph Nguyen; he also says not to think and trust your instinct! 

The secretary problem demonstrates a scenario involving optimal stopping theory that is studied extensively in the fields of applied probability, statistics, and decision theory. It is also known as the marriage problem, the sultan’s dowry problem, the fussy suitor problem, the googol game, and the best choice problem. Its solution is also known as the 37% rule!

Merrill Meeks Flood (1908 – 1991) was an American mathematician, notable for developing, with Melvin Dresher, the basis of the game theoretical Prisoner’s dilemma model of cooperation and conflict while being at RAND in 1950. Albert W. Tucker gave the game its prison-sentence interpretation, and thus the name by which it is known today!

The book also tells an interesting story of a famous scientist who used the selection method and pros and cons to select his second wife! Successfully!

Exploration and exploitation more or less the same! In both the essence is to investigate or dig further to get your job done!

The authors tell how it is better to try and fail rather than fail to try!

They talk about the card sorting machine which was actually invented for census because the whole process was long and cumbersome. The Holoret machine for census which later became IBM card sorting machine and finally gave rise to proper computers! The history described in very interesting! 

So the card sorting is essentially getting an order to make the things simple and successful. Sorting is making order; doing laundry properly as the author say!

They talk about computer terminologies like Big O notation, Bubble sort, Comparison counting sort, Ping attack and most importantly Cache which is the key word! How these influence the routine has been described.

Look and leap! Take your chance after a period of thought and then do not procrastinate! But is that the deal always! 

The authors introduced a new term which is almost as bad as Procrastinate which is in fact almost the opposite meaning! So this is the act of completing tasks as soon as possible even if it costs extra effort or the quality of the outcome deteriorates! Some people may use this approach in order to avoid the anxiety and stress of last-minute work! In some areas this faster but inefficient completion of work is actually considered an unhealthy behavior pattern and is accompanied by symptoms such as conscientiousness, eagerness to please, and high energy!

The word is Precrastinate! 

Different types of auction are described like the Dutch, English or Vikry (Do not know the proper spelling because I only heard it!) auction! Of course in most auctions you give the deal to the most cheapest or the highest bid! But then that does not assure the best value! So in Vikry auction, the deal is given to the second best! 

They tell about a textbook available in Amazon for some million dollars plus shipping because of some algorithm error! Apparently the algorithm did not know when to stop!

Revelation principle; any game which requires strategically masking the truth can be transformed into a game which requires nothing but simple honesty! 

Prisoner’s dilemma! which is a commonly discussed issue and how it’s always better to defect! Same thing on a larger scale in field for grazing!

A similar dilemma which can never have a proper solution is Sitting or table arrangement in a restaurant or parking in a mall!

The authors tell about an interesting thing about an ANT which is infected by a parasite and climbs a mountain so that it can be picked up by a bird which is the final destination of the parasite! Similarly how Toxoplasmosis makes a rat not be fearful of the cat! Because the final destination of Toxoplasmosis is the cat gut!

All in all a very interesting book on life and how many actions are algorithmically derived! The final parts of the book end with moral and statements of positivity like Be kinder to others and be kinder to yourself or how life is too complicated and the fact that these aren’t the concessions we make for being rational but that’s what being rational means!

“The sweet voice of the nightingale was a euphony

Like the sound of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony!

Nature is beautiful for all to see and hear

Laugh at the joy and for the pain, shed a tear!”

Do you know who is Kane Kramer?

Not the quirky Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld whom everyone knows! Even Kramer though was an inventor of sorts!

Kane invented a music player which was the size of a credit card with a small LCD screen and navigation and volume buttons and would have held data of at least 8 MB of solid-state bubble memory chip with a capacity of 3½ minutes’ worth of audio! He was the first one to patent the idea too!

Plans were made for a 10-minute stereo memory card and the system was at one time fitted with a hard drive enabling over an hour of recorded digital music. His first investor was Sir Paul McCartney! 

Later, Kramer set up a company to promote the player now called IXI and five working prototypes were produced with 16-bit sampling at 44.1 kilohertz with the pre-production prototype being unveiled at the APRS Audio/Visual trade exhibition!

At that time the company at the time had “orders worth £60 million” (value at current day!) for the device from the recording industry!

However, in 1988 a boardroom dispute within Kramer’s company and the subsequent failure to raise the £60,000 required to renew the patent resulted in the patent lapsing and entering the public domain!

Apple of course picked it up and developed the first music player in the same lines! Yes! The iPOD!

So Kane is the official genius behind the iPOD! And he came up with this idea of technology when he was just 23 years old, in 1979! What were you doing when you were 23 years old! Most probably reading! Younger days though would have been spent watching Kung Fu movies especially starring the birthday celebrity Jackie Chan! 

Now maybe ask Alexa or Siri to play soft instrumental music and sleep!

Shubh Ratri!

“He was singing a song for her it felt like a screeching cat!

She was wondering what he was actually getting at!

But she understood it was only the sound which was askew!

The meaning of his words was more important, that she knew!”

This is a billion dollar industry and most famous all over the world and the most popular past time in the country where it was invented!

The literal translation of the word means ”Empty Orchestra!” 

So the story goes about Daisuke Inoue who was a drummer in a band that made its money in the 1960s by providing backing music for drunk Japanese businessmen!

One of these customers asked Inoue to play for him during a trip. Inoue was unable to leave his job and instead offered the man a tape of the band’s accompaniment!

One rendition of a Japanese ballad later, and this concept was born!

Unfortunately for Inoue, he failed to capitalize on the idea despite developing 11 more machines and renting them out to bars and clubs. His failure to secure a patent allowed other companies to move in and develop their own variants of the machine!

His biggest contribution was understanding the difficulty amateurs had in singing pop songs, recording his own versions of popular songs in keys that made them easier for casual singers!

As such he also included a rudimentary reverb function to help mask singers’ deficiencies. For these reasons, he is often considered to be the inventor of the modern business model for this past time!

Now, its musical content is an instrumental version of a well-known popular song. In recent times, lyrics are typically displayed on a video screen, along with a moving symbol, changing colour, or music video images, to guide the singer!

Nevertheless this spread throughout Kobe, then, over the course of the Seventies, all of Japan as major manufacturers such as JVC began producing their own versions of the singing machine! 

So did you get it!?

Yes! Its Karaoke! 

The official patent holder of the karaoke machine is Roberto del Rosario, who is from the Philippines. He developed the karaoke’s sing-along system in 1975 and is recognized as the sole holder of a patent for a karaoke system in the world!

With the advent of apps like Smule and you tube music; Karaoke is a global phenomenon and it does not matter whether you sing well or not! It is a fun time activity and not the Grammy award! Talking about Grammy reminds me of another world famous Grammy winner and today’s birthday celebrity Pundit Ravi Shankar!

Now maybe sing a soft lullaby on Karaoke and sleep!

Shubh Ratri!

“He fished it out and threw it far yonder the fence!

Warning if it comes back then it will get its comeuppance!

He may be a giant in front of the small and irrelevant ant!

But it is a big issue when it gets into his pant!”

Long post alert!

Over so many blogs I have been trying to give credit where it is due when the credit is given wrongly or completely to one person! Like you have the invention of Light Bulb and all we have been told is Edison when such inventions are a team effort and series of efforts and not one person who got up one day with a light bulb in his hand! 

My aim is not to belittle the known inventors but to state that some big discoveries and invention cannot be the work of one person! Like you cannot credit the freedom or independence of a nation to one person and take away the sacrifice of several other freedom fighters!

Today’s debunking involves someone who is so famous that even kids know his name!

Everyone knows the seminal work done by Charles Darwin on evolution when he published the Origin of species! In fact you must understand that he had kept his findings locked for several years without realizing their true worth! In fact he actually wanted to become a monk! 

The book was revolutionary and altered the way we think about nature on this planet. Controversy still exists relating to many of the specifics proposed in this book, but Darwin’s work forever changed the course of scientific study into nature! 

So much so that talk evolution and you cannot think of anyone else!

But there was another theorist, explorer and noted geographer whose work has contributed equally if not more about the initial understanding of the theory of evolution!

His name was Alfred Russel Wallace.

While his work garnered a certain amount of respect from his contemporaries, he also came up with the theory of evolution via natural selection entirely independently of Charles Darwin. At the time, Russel and Darwin worked quite closely, with Russel providing samples from his travels for Darwin to use as evidence for his upcoming book. This led Russel to propose his own theory regarding evolution that was nearly identical to Darwin’s. Though this was recognized during the time period, posterity has not been so kind to Russel. 

Like fellow naturalist and colleague Charles Darwin, Wallace traveled the world, observing and collecting samples of species. He traveled to Brazil and various islands of the Malay Archipelago that make up modern-day Indonesia and the Philippines, where he collected thousands of specimens of insects, birds, and other animals but due to a marine tragedy all of Wallace’s notes and samples were lost at sea!

Despite this setback, Wallace set off on another voyage in 1854 to Southeast Asia to collect more samples. By 1855, his observations led him to the conclusion that living things change over long periods of time—they evolve. However, he could not explain how or why they evolve. Then, in 1858, while still in Southeast Asia, he became ill again. Wracked with a fever, he suffered hallucinations, but when the fever broke, the answer came to him—species evolve by adapting to their environment! The truth seeker in me though normally cringe at such stories since they may be exaggerated like the apple and Newton! 

Wallace’s research on the geographic distribution of animals provided critical support for his evolutionary theories and led him to draw a boundary line through Southeast Asia that divides Asian and Australian animal groups. It signifies the unexpected distribution of animals on either side of the line. Several mammal, bird, and fish species are found in abundance on one side of the line and only in small numbers, or not at all, on the other side! This line, runs from the Indian Ocean to the Philippine Sea and is deservedly called The Wallace’s line! Some recognition albeit late!

Now while you can still make Wallace play second lead to Charles, he should be given the credit where its due! Playing second lead and actually doing a great job was the trademark of birthday celebrity Sreenivasan! Rest assured talent will shine one way or the other!

One of the biggest problem with the evolution is the upright posture which is why the only way we can sleep is down and straight! Pay your dues for being the so called evolved species and sleep!

Shubh ratri!

“He had no fear, he felt no shame!

He rolled the dice and called out a name!

He lost all his money; the wretched dice was to blame!

Oh do not worry too much, it is just a game!”

When you were young (er!) you would have played this game and when I was introduced to this, we were hooked! The game had a dice and a board and money! Of course at that time it was just printed paper money but still the joy of having money in the bank and buying properties all over the world was a thrill indeed!

When you get broke, you literally felt the loss of money even if it was fake! When you had to ask loan from the bank you would literally feel the heat! It was fun for the whole family and a good introduction to the big bad world of business! 

In India I remember it to be called The Business game while all over the world it was called The Monopoly!

This delightful game of capitalism and money was actually having two twists when it comes to origin!

The official common story of rags to riches may have been something you may have heard, if not here it is!

For generations, the story of Monopoly’s Depression-era origins delighted fans almost as much as the board game itself! 

The tale, often repeated and even printed as a story in the game box along with the Community Chest and Chance cards, was that an unemployed man named Charles Darrow dreamed up Monopoly in the 1930s!

He sold it and became a millionaire, his inventiveness saving him — and Parker Brothers, the beloved New England board game maker — from the brink of destruction!

Fans of the game also learned that Hasbro, which has owned the brand since 1991, would tuck real money into a handful of Monopoly sets as part of the game’s 80th “anniversary” celebration!

What an amazingly sweet story! But the story is just an amazing fairy tale! The origin that is; the tucking of real money may still be true!

The real inventor of this game was from a left-wing feminist named Elizabeth Magie!

Magie created and patented an early version of Monopoly, called The Landlord’s Game, in 1903, about three decades before Darrow. Darrow learned about the game from a couple who had played it in Atlantic City (which is where many of the game’s street names come from) and made a few changes: The original game included a wealth tax, public utilities and it had two sets of rules, one that allowed players to create monopolies and crush their opponents, and an anti-monopolist version that rewarded all players when wealth was created. Of course the Monopolist version became more popular and how!

Now for the real story! So one night in late 1932, Charles Todd and his wife, Olive, introduced their friends Charles and Esther Darrow to the Landlord’s game. As the two couples sat around the board, enthusiastically rolling the dice, buying up properties and moving their tokens around, the Todds were pleased to note that the Darrows liked the game. In fact, they were so taken with it that Charles Todd made them a set of their own, and began teaching them some of the more advanced rules!

One day, despite all of his exposure to the game, Darrow – who was unemployed, and desperate for money to support his family – asked Charles Todd for a written copy of the rules. 

After he sold a version of the game to Parker Brothers and it became a phenomenal success, eventually making him millions, one journalist after another asked him how he had managed to invent Monopoly out of thin air – a seeming sleight of hand that had brought joy into so many households. “It’s a freak,” Darrow told the Germantown Bulletin, a Philadelphia paper. “Entirely unexpected and illogical.” Of course it was a lie told out of thin air!

Magie though lived a highly unusual life. She supported herself and didn’t marry until the advanced age of 44. In addition to working as a stenographer and a secretary, she wrote poetry and short stories and did comedic routines onstage. She also spent her leisure time creating the board game that was an expression of her strongly held political beliefs!

The second twist in the story is that she actually designed the game as a protest against the big monopolists of her time — people like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller! So it was an anti-Monopoly game! So many twists is like the movie Dhrishyam! Of course I am a fan of the original but still Birthday celebrity Ajay Devgn did a decent job! 

Life may not be a game but still everyone has to play!

The move now is to sleep!

Shubh ratri!

“The pressure was so high that several times he did whine!
It was natural and normal, not a petty crime!
He was alright don’t fret you all!
He was just answering the nature’s call!”

Many times you want to curse someone or something and you are a decent guy like me (since I do not like to curse or call names! or say stuff like f@@@!); then you would most probably settle for crap!

Crap of course is a polished form of shit which is also used by many to curse!

The earliest, late 17th century, sense of the noun crap was to mean money. The root of this is standard English crap, waste or chaff or French crape, dirt! In addition the word has roots in the Dutch krappen, to pluck off, cut off or separate – an image that also underpins that of turd, excrement, which comes from Old English tord, that which has been torn or split, i.e. from the body!

Another possible association of Crap with shit may be because of plumber Thomas Crapper! Apparently his name appeared on the once-famous Crapper brand of toilets!

Crapper in spite of his crappy name, however, did not invent the flushing device with which he is so associated! He did patent the U-bend and floating ballcock — key components of the modern toilet — in the late 1880s, but he never held a patent for the flush toilet!

Much earlier, in 1596, John Harington, an English courtier and the godson of Queen Elizabeth I, described what can be considered the first flush toilet (Only two working models were made, one in Haringon’s own home and one in Queen Elizabeth’s palace.)!

The first patent for a flushable toilet was granted to the Scottish inventor Alexander Cumming in 1775 and his design included an S-bend and a more sophisticated valve system, similar to those in today’s toilets!

Thomas Crapper came into the plumbing scene in the 1860s. Between 1881 and 1896, Crapper took out nine plumbing patents, for simple pipe improvements! You could say his patents were just crap!

Even though it feels odd talking about it, the process is one of the most important one which you have to do everyday so thanks to Thomas you can go in peace! Now if you are stuck somewhere with no options then all you can do is dance! Do not dance like birthday celebrity Prabhu Deva though; it may lead to some smelly accidents!

Now use the Crapper…I mean restroom if you have to and sleep peacefully!
Shubh ratri!