Have not blogged for weeks! Thought of making a hatrick trilogy!!
- Space research: We in IITG had our technical festival few days back. In one of the events, we have organized a student model competition (for school kids). It had a preliminary round and only the selected few had come from all over the country. I was a judge. Many models were on outer space exploration. I remember, in my teenage I also was fascinated by space. So I asked them about ISRO. But to my surprise, none of them knew about any achievements of ISRO. Few even did not know what is ISRO. They all knew what is NASA!! I know its not proper to blow ones own trumpet. But when the world is getting increasingly deaf, we have to blow trumpets. Why is it that media never talks about success of ISRO or the failures of NASA? This makes people think that ISRO has no success and NASA has no failure!
- Kishore Kumar: Its been a habit for me to go to a rickety tea-shop beside the institute campus, almost every evening, for tea and samosa. One day I was alone and there came a guy. From his talks to the shop-keeper I thought he is some gunda! Then I realised its his style! Then he sat beside me and ate something. There was a glass/tubler beside my plate and it was empty. There was also a jug full of water in the table. In India many people like to drink directly from the water jug (it has a different feeling when you are really thirsty!). But mind that they pour the water from a hight so as not to touch the jug with their mouth. Anyway, our friend must have been damn thristy. He took the jug, saw my empty tubler and filled it up and gobbled up the water. This he did as if its the natural way to drink water for human beings, i.e. first feel up the glass of others and then drink yourselves! And I was also not supposed to say any thanks or such after this action. The main show came after that. He was there for almost 15 minutes. In those time he joked and talked with almost everyone in the shop! It reminded me of Kishore-Kumar's movies. May be these are the characters who inspired those filmy characters!
- Natural selection: I was revising some texts on genetic algorithm (GA) few days back. One thing struck me! I have always had this doubt about evolution theory. If its simple "servivial of the fittest" philosophy, then all we should have been left with is a single specis. What then is the cause of diversity in nature? Then I realised that the cost-function in nature (or the fitness curve) is not a smooth one. Rather it has loads of local maximas. And thats why species can settle down at these local maximas and stay for ever in the same state of affairs! These local maximas correspond to niches in natural habitat. So far so good. But then if this is so, then GA should not work. But to my little knowledge GA guides itself by almost all the rules of evolution. Hence, may be the rules of evolution need some finetuning! Bad for GA (that then it wont be able to converge at the global maxima); but we will get a better evolution strategy... more close to nature!
